What Sky box do I need?

[britishboy7]

We've got Sky in 2 rooms, the lounge and kitchen. Lounge has Sky+ box and the kitchen just a normal Sky box. When the guys fitted the dish when we moved in they ran twin core cable to lounge, kitchen and bedroom for us so its future-proof he said.

Am looking to buy a Sky box, possibly a Sky+ one so Mrs can record programmes onto it. Wheres best to buy one from? Would like a large HD on it, do I go direct to Sky or are the ones on eBay OK to buy?
What will I do about a new card for it?
Thanks, and excuse my simpleton questions, Sky's something I've never been really knowledgeable on

 

[gregers]

get sky to put in multi room.

 

[britishboy7]

get sky to put in multi room.

I will get multi room and I know its an extra £11 a month, but not sure where to get a box from, and does the box I buy come with a card for it, or do Sky provide a new card?

 

[Lucid]

This might be teaching granny to suck eggs, so forgive me if I cover ground you're already familiar with but you did say that you're not that au fait with Sky.


Sky is subscription TV. The recording feature of the Sky boxes is a subscription feature too. In other words, you have to pay for the Sky service before the box will actually do any of the stuff like record or pause/rewind live TV. If you're starting a new Sky subscription then Sky will provide you with a recording Sky box on all but the most basic subscription packages. If you have the add-on feature of multi-room then they will provide you with a second box as well. Viewing cards are supplied as part of the subscription packages. At the end of the subscription period the boxes are your to keep. At this point Sky will pester you to death to take out an extended warranty. It's up to you whether you do, but IMO the cost of it is way more than the price of buying a used replacement box. A Sky engineer won't be able to save or transfer your recordings from a dead or dying box anyway, so if the box gets replaced under warranty then it's bye bye recordings too.

You can purchase your own Sky box(es) from various online sources/stores/car boots etc. But unless there's a good reason for you to do that then as a new subscriber I'd just go with Sky supplying them instead. Your monthly subscription will be the same price whether you spent your own money on a box or if Sky gives you one as part of the deal, so why waste your cash? If you do still decide to buy your own box(es) then simply insert the new viewing card supplied as part of your subscription and then ring Sky to active the box. This is called 'pairing'. Once paired, then the box will have access to the channels that come as part of your package and the features that go with the package too. Until then the box will receive a very limited range of channels (fewer than Freeview) and there will be no record/replay features active.

 

[Sam Gangee]

A Sky engineer won't be able to save or transfer your recordings from a dead or dying box anyway, so if the box gets replaced under warranty then it's bye bye recordings too.

Because he's not an "engineer", he's an installer.

Don't overlook Freesat. You can use a Freesat receiver to view and/or watch the free programmes if that's all you want. You can use Sky and Freesat receivers on the same system if you wish.