Life changing but unreliable (Sky Plus (Sky+))

Member Name: ChandlerFord

Product:	Sky Plus (Sky+)
Date:	29/06/09 (28 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: No Ads, No tapes/DVDs, Live Pause

Disadvantages: No Auto view anymore, unreliable hardware

Sky+ effectively gives you your own TV channel, showing only the programmes you like, when you like.

Sky+ is an 80Gb hard drive recorder and Sky decoder in one. 40Gb is available for recording of any Sky channel (including pay-per-view events) while the remainder of the drive is reserved for Sky anytime.

Sky anytime is an automatic recording system for what Sky think the majority of people might like. However, it doesn't learn from what you watch or record yourself so it is usually full of programs that you wouldn't watch unless well paid. For some reason Sky+ never includes live sport or terrestrial programmes, so we hardly ever use it. There is a facility in the setup to turn it off, but this doesn't give you the 40Gb reserved for it back to record other programmes, which would be nice. So we have it turned on recording lots of stuff that gets deleted. Anytime deletes programmes after a week, unless you move it across to "the other side" by pressing record. This is instant, but now the programme is deducted from your 40Gb.

The recorder function works quite well, most of the time. It is programmable from any web browser via the Sky homepage, and more importantly we can now program it from my iPhone wherever we are in the world, which is priceless when away fro more than the week that Sky's planner allows you to select from.

We have had issues with 2 boxes in the past and are now on our 3rd. The last 2 failed to record due to a technical fault frequently, and if paused during playback would sometimes go back to the start of the recording which was especially annoying during films and sport.

Sky+ also give the ability to pause or rewind live TV like many PVRs and if used correctly this also gives you the ability to record what you've just missed by rewinding into the program then pressing record. It also allows you to timeshift by watching a programme that is still recording. This enables you to start watching commercial TV late and skip the adverts.

We've had Sky+ for a while now and it has changed our lives! Gone are the days of having to either mess about with DVD or VHS recorders and the Sky box... they never made that easy... now we just series link what we like and press record. It means we spend less time watching TV as we skip adverts. We don't have to rush home for a major sports event, we just record it and make sure we don't catch the score/result!

The feature that is missing is auto view. The old Sky box would either remind you a programme was starting or turn over for you. Sky+ either reminds you or records... but this is only a minor irritation.

UPDATE! Another change of box and all our problems have gone away... 4 weeks and no missed recordings or playback errors. This review will be re-written if this remains the case.

Summary: If a programme is really important, don't rely on this box!