Sky's personal video recorder

Do you have to have the HD Ticket? Does all the recording work, just non-HD in that case?

Just got mysky hdi installed today. You don't have to get the $10 HD ticket and recording will still work. The dude that installed it said TV3 would still be HD without the ticket...but I'm not so surem it's hard to tell and the HD icon doesn't show up...the recording is awesome.

We have My Sky, did not pay for the HD ticket as we don't subscribe to Sport or Movies. It is great and we hardly ever watch anything live, our favourites are all on Series Record and we watch them when it suits us and we can fast forward the ads! Great

Can you record all TV channels and what about freeview channels

We have had the buy at $599.00 for some time.We dont have the HD option. We think it is superb. We are in charge of our TV viewing not the other way. Only moan is the recording space is limited and I would like to keep some programmes for ever!!

My Sky has revolutionised our tv viewing. It lets us watch what we want when we want and to fast-forward through the endless ad breaks. But it has to be left on at the wall, and even on stand-by when it is not recording it runs hot with the fan going continuously. So I suspect the running costs are quite high: it would be good if Consumer could test for this.

I would like clarification of Cathy's post that says she does not have Sky Movies or Sky Sport. Does that mean she dos not have Sky at all?

Also re Gabrielle's complaint about limited memory capacity, is it not possible to link in a DVD recorder to retain valuable programmes permanently?

Mike.

I was very resisitant to getting My Sky but now wouldn't be without it. Sky waivered the cost of the HD option because we are long term customers. Some programms on TV 3 etc are also in HD. We donb't have movies but do have sport and it's amazing the difference in HD.

Mike, as I understand it MySky offers two services in a single package:

- A personal video recorder. This lets you record and view programs from various Sky Channels. You need only have a Sky Basic subscription for this (as Cathy has) but if you subscribe to any add-ons (like Sport) then you can record from those channels too.

- Access to Sky's Hi Definition broadcasts (HDi). This lets you record and view any programs in High Definition that are in this format. Most of Sky's local live sports programs are available in HD. This costs an extra $10 per month on top of all aother costs.

My beef with this is that the only way to watch any Sky program in HD is to get a My Sky HDi device. I dont need or want a PVR but I would like to view HD broadcasts in HD. It seems that the only decoders that are HD-capable are the decoders included in the PVR.

Can anyone clarify Mike's comment re MySky having to be switched on continuously. With our current decoder we unplug and take it with us in our motorhome. Does this mean MySky cannot be switched off at all? What happens when there is a power cut?

My comment is not so much to do with the above, we do have an HDMI tv and sky but we are not worried about whether we see programmes in HD or not, our concern is with the sky packaging in general. I did email sky about it but recieved no reply.

We find that the sky start up package has far too many programes that we just dont bother with or dont interest us. We had movies but cancelled it after three months as we would only watch maybe three of them and then had to wait the rest of the month before anything else came up that we wanted to see.
In a nutshell, it would be so much better if sky were to change its stance, and offer customers a package tailored to the individual. Say a set of five programes of your own choosing for a set price - ie: living channel, food channel, history, mind games, and news of choice. You could add extra's if you wanted for an extra couple of dollars sort of thing. This way we would feel we are getting value for money as we are getting to watch what we want to with out all the other rubbish thrown in.

Hi Clare. I should have been clearer in my comments. We were told by the installer not to switch My Sky off at the wall, but I assume that was because it won't record unless it is on stand-by. I think it is unlikely to be a problem to turn if off if you haven't set it up to record programmes (such as a series). My concern (and surprise) was that it runs hot when on stand-by including when it's not recording.

We had My Sky HDi installed after much deliberration about costs etc. and now don't have any regrets as the convienience of conrol and recording is fantastic. But beware....those units that buzz and whirr and need constant resetting are faulty!
Ours played up from day one, in the beginning we accepted Skys' advice that this was normal, and until after many (frustrating) phone calls and getting four maybe five vists from Skys' Technicians who all blamed each others and Sky Technical Dept's programming "fix-its". We were having to unplug it to get the damn thing working again!(our satellite dish even got an upgrade) we finally got our Decoder replaced,- what a relief, as it now sits there 'silently' doing what we pay it to do.

One problem I came across when I disconnected from My SKY was that programmes stored on the HDD of MySKY CANNOT be retrieved without an active subcription. Found that out the hard way.

I was intending to get a My Sky box , but I read that the makers of the DVD recorders are going to bring out upgraded ones that will record two channels at the same time.

Don't know when though.

Dont know if other viewers have experienced this at all, but when recording two channels at the same time and also have programmed for 1 of the channels to record the next programme, the TV/box Freezes and the only way to unlock it seems to be turn off at the wall and then turn back on which results in some of the programes only partially being recorded. I can only think it is because of the "over run" it does i.e. when recording the follow on programme it is still recording the 2 previous ones. Does this make sense?

SKY could be charged for misleading advertising so who's going to do that? - they advertise $15 per month to use HDi MySKY which is disingeneous to say the least. So we just subscribe to SKY Digital and use HD Freeview until Sky gets some competition and reprices - that's disappeared now CH 6 and 7 are on SKY but no Prime on Freeview! So much for the free market benefiting consumers. Also, see NZ's Tone magazine/website for PVR's with dual receivers.

In response to Clarissa's comments we too have experienced the same thing with the decoder freezing up and we also put this down to overrun (i.e. recording 3 programmes at once) but is anyone else able to confirm this is the case? Also when you turn it off to reset it you lose all or part of the programme it was recording depending if it was at the start or at the end of the programme. But that would be my only complaint. The rewind live TV is great if you have missed something on the news.

We think it's great except when it freezes up. This happens a couple of times a week,usually with some loss of what is currently being recorded and five minutes of what we were watching and recording while it resets. Sky helpline says this is a software problem they are working on to correct and which occurs if you watching one channel and recording two others. To avoid the problem they recommend recording one of those two manually - back to the bad old days and not quite what Sky advertises.

I've kept the My Sky original PVR because the HD version did not have the multi-room capabilty at no extra cost. I also think that the older model is more reliable. When version 2 of the HD My Sky is available then I may switch over.

Can anyone confirm if a remote repeater (extender) works with My sky? We have had all sorts of problems since having our new standard SKY Digital decoder replaced. Also can you record HD content from MY SKY on a DVD/HDD recorder, I was told you couldnt do this.

A SKY sales person told me the $15.00 per month is only payable until the $500.00 cost of the unit is covered.
Works fine with an extender.

We have had the original My Sky since the day it came out and when My Sky HDMI came out we upgraded but as we still have CRT TV'S that were only a couple of years old we chose not to update the TV's to get Hi Def. Yes you can record from my sky to an HD recorder but Sky tell you that you cant and I had to get my stereo specialist to come and set it up for me. The only downside is you cant watch anything else while trasnferring from My Sky to HD recorder as it is done in REAL time so I transfer things during the day when no one is watching TV. We upgraded to My Sky HDMI in October and have had nothing but problems and Sky is not good on customer service and unless you get a good techo from the start you can expect repeated visits from them. Our My Sky HDMI kept freezing and missing recordings.

About to purchase a Sony HDTV (40" W 5500 series with Freeview box embedded).I also have an 'old' Panasonic HDD DVD recorder which I assume will be no good for recording so I was looking at a new DVD recorder and felt that the 'MySky' would fit the bill. But I read that this combo wont dual record and play when the Freeview box is embedded..is this correct? What other limitations are there? Are there other combo's worth consdiering?

WARNING
MySky HDi has blocked TV1, TV2,TV3 and all the sky movie channels from being recorded on a DVD recorder. Some DVD recorders let you record to the hard drive from MySky HDi but you can't make a permanent recording to a DVD if you like to collect highlights of programs.
If was done in a upgrade software load to MySky HDi in Sept 2009,
Apart from that MySky HDi is a great way of always finding a program to watch when you want to watch TV as it has recorded all your favorite programs.