Upgrading Sky HD box

[Toby]

Thanks for the very useful info Burble!

Couple of quick questions:

1. Does that copy software allow you to take an image of the original disk and then restore it to the new one, if you can't connect both at once? It's not entirely clear from the site.

2. With a larger disk, does Anytime take the same amount of space (i.e. 140GB-ish), or is it a percentage of the total size?

Out of interest, I know the HD boxes are made by a few different manufacturers now, but are they all physically identical - i.e. made to Sky's spec?

[Del Lardo]

Originally Posted by Burble

Yeah, the PSU's aren't covered in the HD boxes either. Seems a bit silly to me.

Why put a cover over the PSU when the box is not intented to be opened by the end user?

STB pricing is very competitive and as a manufacturer we always ensure that there is no 'fat' on the STB. It may sound daft to spend a several man months refining a board to design to save $1 per STB but when you are building several million units a year those savings suddenly seem very worth while.

Quite simply a cover isn't fitted because it isn't required. You void the warantee the moment you open the case and the manufacturer/Sky are saving over a million $ a year by not fitting a cover to the PSU.

[Burble]

Originally Posted by Vertigo1

Thanks for the very useful info Burble!

Couple of quick questions:

1. Does that copy software allow you to take an image of the original disk and then restore it to the new one, if you can't connect both at once? It's not entirely clear from the site.

2. With a larger disk, does Anytime take the same amount of space (i.e. 140GB-ish), or is it a percentage of the total size?

Out of interest, I know the HD boxes are made by a few different manufacturers now, but are they all physically identical - i.e. made to Sky's spec?

1 - Yep. I only had 1 USB caddy available at the time so I made an image of the original HD to my NAS, swapped the HD in the caddy and pushed the image onto the new HD.

2 - I think it's a fixed size rather than a percentage of the drive so it should still be about 140Gb. I'm a bit grumpy about that tbh as I have anytime turned off so would have liked to be able to use that 140Gb for my own recordings.

I've no idea about the different versions, mine is one of the first generation boxes, made (I think) by Pace.

[Burble]

Originally Posted by Del Lardo

Why put a cover over the PSU when the box is not intented to be opened by the end user?

I agree and meant to imply the same in my post but seemingly forgot.

[Toby]

Originally Posted by Burble

1 - Yep. I only had 1 USB caddy available at the time so I made an image of the original HD to my NAS, swapped the HD in the caddy and pushed the image onto the new HD.

2 - I think it's a fixed size rather than a percentage of the drive so it should still be about 140Gb. I'm a bit grumpy about that tbh as I have anytime turned off so would have liked to be able to use that 140Gb for my own recordings.

I've no idea about the different versions, mine is one of the first generation boxes, made (I think) by Pace.

Cheers,

The Anytime stuff is a total joke tbh - Sky's attempt to con their customers into thinking they have genuine VoD when it's nothing of the sort. I still believe the long term future is VoD for everything where the broadcasters will "release" programmes according to a schedule but viewers will then be able to stream them down to their boxes on demand as and when they see fit. I really can't see where such systems would leave Sky as they have no way of implementing this.

I think the original boxes were made by Thompson but I could be wrong.

[Burble]

Originally Posted by Vertigo1

I think the original boxes were made by Thompson but I could be wrong.

Yep, that sounds about right. I said Pace at the time but wasn't convinced.

[Mark]

Turns out my Sky+ was still working only because Sky ****ed up. Fixed now. I'll be opening it up at some point to pull the existing disk. Whether I bother putting a new one in depends on whether I bother going back to Sky in the summer.