Your TV guide has yet to fully update so it does not know the name of the program that it is scheduled to record at 9pm next Tuesday, yet, but it will once it has completed downloading the TV guide. If you go into the TV guide and press the button to advance 24 hours you will see that the TV guide is still updating. Once this process is complete your planner will correctly show the names of the programs that it is scheduled to record.
Sometimes a failed recording usually due to a 'technical fault' refuses to be deleted. You can delete other recordings but not this one. The reason is that there is no actual file to delete. This could be because when the recording was attempted it failed immediately before recording even one-second of the program to disk, or because the first attempt to delete it worked but it failed to remove the entry in the planner.
Either way, what you are left with is a ghost entry. The only way to get rid of it is to force the system to check what is actually on the hard drive, which means performing a planner rebuild. After the rebuild the ghost entry should no longer be present. Some people have reported that some recordings just won't delete but when they download or record the same program again or another in the series and delete the nested programs the recording is finally deleted.
Sometimes your Sky box will just crash. The general symptom is a frozen picture on the screen and no response to the controls, whether via the remote or facia, or a channel or recording is playing but the system won't respond to any commands. If you were playing a recording from your planner the blue circle lights may still be animated on the front facia and pressing the remote results in LED flashes on the front of the box but there is no response on screen.
There is only one course of action with a system crash: power the box off then on again. Turn the power off to the Sky box for at least 30 seconds then power it on again. It may take ten to twenty minutes before your box will respond as normal without informing you that it is initialising or being generally slow to respond. You can backup your recordings to DVD in SD format using the play and record method outlined in your user manual.
Here is a list of the failure codes that I have encountered so far, along with the common problem associated with the fault code and suggestions for resolving.
Note: These codes may now be out-of-date due to recent software updates. You could try the Sky on-screen error message lookup tool. This is a bug in R of the Sky firmware that leaves you unable to access your deleted items folder. You will get the message "This section is currently unavailable as multiple programmes are being deleted. Once completed you'll be able to view the deleted programmes and restore them to your Planner if required".
This has been fixed with R of the firmware. To check if you have the update press Services then select Settings, scroll across to System Details and look at your Model Number. If you still have the R version you can force R onto your Sky box by performing a System Refresh. Your box will now let you access your deleted items folder and should correctly report the amount of free space you have left. Some mature content recorded or downloaded may also require the PIN to access but it can be hit or miss in that it won't be for everything.
You'll find that your little ones with access to the remote can access any non-adult channel 9xx range or anything in your planner without restriction. You can up the security level by moving to the Ratings tab and setting Restrict on PG to 18 certs. Although the description says for movies only this also works for anything with a certificate set.
A more advanced option is the Channels tab. You can set every channel to require a PIN after 8pm or at any time. Note that this can become really tedious after a while and if you set both the Channel and Ratings lock you can double-PIN some channels.
All that PIN entry is going to wear out those number buttons that your PIN uses making it easier for the little ones to guess your PIN or they can just watch you entering it over and over again. Until Sky improve their parental controls your only real option towards protecting your little ones from mature content and offensive language is to hide the remote and set the channels and playback for them.
You'll have to put up with them coming to you asking you to change the channel or to start another recording but it is far less tedious than having to lock every channel and non-U rating in order to lock down your Sky box. You may notice that your Sky box appears active overnight but there are no new recordings in your planner.
The reason for this is that Sky are pushing downloads overnight to your box via the dish not broadband. The content they are pushing is popular shows and movies that you 'may' wish to view or purchase. It is pre-downloaded to save time downloading it on demand later.
Scroll through the More Top Picks suggestions until you see a program with the playback icon already present. Select it and select the option with the playback icon and press the 'i' information button. It will tell you when it was downloaded and the size of the download. This download is stored in a hidden partition on your hard drive. When you select to view or buy the download is moved from the hidden partition into your planner.
If no listings are available then the first thing to do is to check the signal strength of your satellite feed. Try a planner rebuild first and if that fails to resolve the problem force a software update. For a Sky box this is day one. This is the equivalent of a PC's on-board battery running out of juice and therefore being unable to remember the date and time.
For a Sky box seeing this generally means that your box has suffered a software failure. To fix it power off the box and keep a hold of the backup button on the box as you turn the power back on and keep it pressed until you see the writing on your TV screen. Then leave it for 20 minutes and after that your problem should be fixed.
Some boxes can hang when ECO mode is enabled forcing them to go to sleep overnight. The problem is that the box cannot be 'woken up' forcing a power off and on to recover or in some cases a software update is needed.
If your box is one of the ones affected by this problem it's probably worth disabling ECO mode and seeing if that helps. The last boxes that are still in support - meaning that they can still receive software updates - are in the Amstrad DRX89x range. If your model number starts DRX89 then your box is still supported your version number must also start with 4f If your box is not supported you will be unable to update the software or refresh it if it develops a fault.
If you want to keep on using your box for FreeSat or in this case Sky free-to-air you can but it might be advisable to image the hard drive to provide a rollback option should the box develop a software fault in the future.
W means it has built-in Wi-Fi and L means it's the new 'Lite' version with the telephone ports removed. Assuming an out-of-warranty box and assuming that you have checked your plug fuse and internal fuse, and you are not good at repairing electronics yourself, then the box is still worth a few quid as spares on sites like eBay or Gumtree.
A dead box is worth about a tenner at best as the fault is unknown and the potential buyer is taking a punt with it. You can make more money by selling the parts separately. You just have to pick it up so search based on your location. Make sure that the box you are buying has been reset or the seller still has the original viewing card and PIN so you can factory reset it yourself.
FreeSat gives you around channels. If you leave your Sky viewing card in your box it activates 30 extra free channels. It does this by acting as a de-encryption card even without a subscription. This is called Sky FTA Sky free-to-air and will work as long as you leave your old viewing card in your box. If Sky change the viewing card at any time you may need to pay a small fee to get a new viewing card in order to keep those extra 30 channels should you want them, but card changes are not that often.
Sky charge a fee for this. The EPG remains the same unfortunately so you will have to learn which channels you can watch FreeSat and which are subscription only as you are unable to edit the EPG and you can only flag 50 favourites.
This software allows your box to record, playback and pause feeds. IMO this is a bit of a rip-off. However if you no longer wish to be a Sky customer and cancel your subscription and switch to FreeSat, Sky disable the PVR part of the box rendering the hardware to be nothing more than a satellite receiver.
Plus the hard drive is still operating within your box requiring more electricty than other satellite receivers with no hard drive, adding to your electricity bill. Not surprisingly a lot of people write to me moaning about not knowing this up front and asking if there is any way of enabling the PVR feature themselves. I'm not aware of one. The first way is to purchase a satellite receiver and PVR in-one such as a Humax box.
The second is to connect the satellite feed straight into the back of a smart TV. After an automatic channel scan you can use your smart TV's built-in EPG software to arrange the channels in an order that suits you. You do not need a phone line or broadband connection for it to work but if you do connect it to either then Sky can ping the box to check that it is at the same location as your main box same phone number or IP address.
If it reports back with a different location then Sky may charge the bill payer for two subscriptions or may disable all or part of the functionality of the multiroom box usually after contacting them first.
I get a lot of questions from ex-pats or people from Europe asking me how to get Sky TV in Spain, Germany etc as the Astra satellites footprint covers most of Europe. Some people get around this by registering their subscription at their or a relation or friend's address in the UK or ROI and take their equipment and card with them to their holiday home, campervan, caravan, boat or permanent address in another country within the EU where they intend to use it.
It's when something goes wrong that it can get tricky. When you place your Sky box in Standby red light is on you haven't actually turned it off. All that happens is that it won't output anything to your TV. It will still record scheduled programs, download updates and adverts, and carry out housekeeping tasks such as deleting deleted recordings older than days.
The hard drive will still spin and make a whirring noise. Your box will only go quiet if it's in standby and some time has passed and there is nothing to do.
It will park your hard disk and will wake it up only when it has something to do that requires reading or writing to the hard drive. If you acquire a second-hand box with recordings you may find that you can't delete them without the PIN set by the previous owner. If the box was sold with a viewing card you could try the last 4-digits of the card but that may not work. It's also worth checking if the previous owner wrote the PIN on the label provided on the inside of the remote controller's battery compartment cover.
If bored you could try guessing but your best bet is to perform a System Reset and wipe everything, then update the software. If you have a viewing card you can then pair it and set your own PIN. If you've purchased a second-hand box and want to use it for Freesat or as your Sky TV box you need to reset it then optionally pair your viewing card.
First perform a System Reset to clear out the previous owner's data and recordings. Make sure your box is now running the latest software. If not force a software update. Next insert your SKY viewing card into the new box and try various channels such as If it says "card must be paired" follow on-screen instructions. If there are no on-screen instructions and you have a MySky login visit Sky's activate my channels page to see if that works for you. You don't need a viewing card to view the unencrypted FreeSat channels.
The EPG, planner and recordings are stored on the hard drive. When the hard drive contains corrupted data the Sky box has no built-in recovery software to resolve the corruption like Microsoft Windows or Linux does so it just says that the box is in "diskless mode". The "corruption" that made your box enter diskless mode is not necessarily a hardware corruption but could be a software corruption that occurred during the automated system software update.
Some of us have figured out that forcing a software update can sometimes resolve the corruption but in most cases it requires a system reset. A system reset completely wipes your hard drive and reinstalls the system software and allows the hard drive itself to mark any areas as bad. Of course you lose your planner and recordings in the process. You could take resolution a step further by removing your hard drive from the Sky box, inserting it into a caddy and connecting it to a computer running hard drive diagnostics and repair software.
Or, you could extend your box's life by inserting a new hard drive and performing a system reset to format it and use it as your new storage device. The Sky software supports up to 2TB hard drives. The Keep option prevents you from accidentally deleting a recording that you want to keep or from stopping the automated housekeeping software from deleting programs that you want to keep.
What it cannot do however is prevent Sky from deleting a program from your recordings because the program in question has an expiry date or because Sky has a legal obligation to remove it. Sky push system software updates between midnight and 2am in batches so if your box updated overnight chances are when you next turn it on it will be in one of two states: Telling you that it updated and here are your new features or..
If the former, congrats you are one of the lucky ones. If the latter then chances are you may have lost your planner and recordings. A forced software update may recover your box but you may need to carry out a system reset. If your hard drive is really unhealthy then you may need a hard drive transplant or a new box.
Such is the new norm. Whenever Sky push an automatic update there is always a risk that a hard drive failure may occur. When you attempt to play a downloaded or recorded program your Sky box confirms that your current subscription covers this content.
If it does then playback commences. If not then you will get a pop-up message informing you that your current subscription does not cover this particular program and you are unable to play it. This message can also appear due to someone at Sky incorrectly setting the wrong subscription permissions against the content at their end or by a verify failure.
If you know that you have the correct subscription then it is usually a case of waiting for the problem to be resolved and to try again later. High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection is a form of copy protection applied to display connections.
It was designed to prevent content from being viewed on an unauthorised device. The sending device performs a handshake with the receiving device your TV or monitor to ensure that it is authorised to receive it.
If the handshake succeeds it encrypts and sends the content. However if you do see it and your set-up was previously working, then a change has taken place within your set-up. It could be a legit change such as your SKY box or TV or other display device has received a firmware update that has caused a compatibility issue.
Or it could be that a fault has occured such as a break in your video-out cable or a loose connection. If however you are trying a new set-up or are routing your video-out connection through multiple devices or into a recording device then you may have triggered the HDCP anti-piracy mechanism. To set up your Sky controller so that it also controls your TV volume, mute, etc visit this Sky help page and follow the instructions.
An alteration was done by SKY to the software to prevent users from altering the sound level resulting in a low fixed output from the box. At the time of writing there have been many complaints and Sky have promised to address the issue in Unlike freesat boxes the region postcode is not stored on the box but on the viewing card. If you have a subscription inform Sky of the change of address and they will update your account and send a signal to your box to update the postcode on the card and your channels should automatically update.
If you don't have a subscription then you will need a viewing card from a local source and pair it to your box. If you can't get hold of a card or you have one but you have changed address to a different broadcast region then you will need to contact Sky. Perfect if you only have a small job. Over Happy Customers. Connect With Us. Email address protected by JavaScript. Activate JavaScript to see the email. Digital Aerials. I think that you have come to the right place, but you may not yet.
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