The skys the limit (Sky Plus (Sky+))

Member Name: taylor72

Product:	Sky Plus (Sky+)
Date:	02/03/09 (135 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: no more lost progammes, less arguements with spouse!

Disadvantages: occassional glitches

Having been a happy owner of a sky plus box for over a year now it's time for my verdict.

What is it?
It is a personal video recorder - or PVR for short which you use in conjunction with your sky tv package. The price for me was £50 all in but this may be cheaper now - check with sky for pricing info as it does vary and the sky plus HD box is now only costing £50. The remote control is more advanced for this box than the normal standard one with various extra options.

PAUSE - you can pause tv, this is extremely useful to me as I always seem to get friends / family callng me during eastenders. I simply press the pause button and the programme stops still, then I press play when I am ready to resume watching.

REWIND - My son has the habit of chattering on nineteen to the dozen during my favourite programmes taking little notice of my constant requests for him to "please be quiet for a bit"! If I feel I have lost the plot I can press rewind and see what has actually been going on.

FAST FORWARD - Obviously not possible if you are watching a programme live! I love the fact that I can fast forward my pre recorded programmes durng the adverts - really get annoyed with the amount of adverts on certain channels

RECORD -Now I can set my favourite prgrammes to record and no longer need to make nagging comments under my breath when the husband feels like spending a night on the xbox. As an extra bonus you can set your favourites onto a series link - press the "r" button to set it to record and then press the green button - no more missed episodes of corrie / holby - yey.

When you access your recorded programmes by going to "planner" it will tell you how much percent has been used - sky claim you can store up to 40 hours at a time. I tend to delete programmes as soon as I have watched them but by pressing the yellow delete button. By pressing the blue button on your planner you can choose to "keep" it - all other programmes will be deleted automatically after a certain period of time - several weeks.

You can record two programmes at the same time but if you do this you cannot watch a third programme. It is useful if you are away for the evening and - for example - you want both x factor and strictly come dancing recorded!

Any problems?

Occasionally I have found the programme is slightly out of sync - watching an episode of heroes but the sound was about how wonderful mr muscle is! I have found coming out of the recording and going back into it sorts this glitch out. Sometimes it gets a bit stuck and doesn't want to fast forward if you have paused it - this is a rare glitch but can be annoying if you pause tv you have not recorded.

If I decide to leave sky any time in the future I will definately make sure I have saved up for another PVR before doing so.

Summary: definately a piece of technology worth getting