SKY+ baby!!

Our regular Sky digibox packed up last week and sky were going to charge £65 for a reburished box with only 3 months warranty! After speaking with them, sky+ seemed to be the most viable option. Charging an intial £49 for the box and additional £10/month we would have the awesomeness of sky+ sitting under our TV. Furthermore, paying an added £10/month they would replace our old digibox with a new one and set up sky multiroom (the ability to watch a different sky channle in another room).

The installer came round a few days ago, to set it all up. He was extremely eager to get away as soon as possible and was drilling holes in the wall about a minute after opening the door to him! Nevertheless, he did a good job with the install and even tacked the coxial cable along in some of the more difficult areas along the wall.

Within an hour, he'd packed up and left...leaving me to enjoy an afternoon of playing around with the box. First thoughts...noisy. I asked for a Pace box to be installed, but all I got was a shibby Amstrad one. You can clearly recognise the hard drive needle zipping around the disk and when the fan automatically comes on, it sounds as loud as my PC. Anyway, I'll be asking for a new box soon...so I'm not to bothered at the moment.

As for the functionality...simply incredible! The classic Sky easy to use interface remains, but the addition of the recording feature is seemlessly integrated. After getting over the intial amazement of being able to pause live TV, I decided to set up my regular recordings. Using Series-link I have my favourtie shows automatically recording. So, if ever I'm bored in the middle of the night, I can switch on the box to watch an episode of the simpsons!

Having a twin tuner means being able to do the following:

Record one Sky channel and watch another one
Record two different Sky channels at once
Record one channel whilst watching a pre-recorded programme
Probably some more combinations of the above..

Overall...chuffed...well chuffed....

+nicks