Dead HD Box

[blackmaverick]

Hd my install last monday 22nd, everything working ok except 1 box freeze & delighted with picture quality. Disaster struck at the weekend while I was away. I was away saturday night while Planet Earth was on series link, came back sunday afternoon and the box will no longer come out of stand-by. Rang the HD tech team who ran through loads of fixes and none worked. So now I have lost everything already in my planner plus the things I recorded saturday night. The Sky man says I need a new box!

Has anyone else had this problem and fixed it at all? The box has been disconnected for 12 hours to see if that would help but exactly the same, tried the backup key for software update and nothing. It still sits there with its standby red light but doesnt turn on at all.

Help!!!

 

[blackmaverick]

also has anyone actually had a faulty box changed yet and how long did it take?

 

[audi doody]

try rebooting again (i.e hard reset ...) once its set itself back to stand by leave for a few mins,then uplug "everything" and then just plug the mains wire only back in, wait a few mins hit the power button...once and wait a bit ,i have had mine do this a lot of times and having reloaded the data etc a million times and still had it in standby....try this it worked for me on occassions...just persist,finally get a new boxof sky ,im having another one delivered today,as ive had enough of this current glitchy one.lets hope its performs better....

Just for the record i had problem from the moment it was installed on the 22nd,stayed in stand by for over 2 hrs,unplugged as above mentioned and on it came.got to be the worst peice of kit ive ever had the displeasure of owning,picture is great but the box is a pile of... first post aswell on here ! and not a happy one

as to how long for a new box,,,lost it with sky yesterday and demanded one today....engineer phoned yesterday afternnon ,will arrive with new box this afternnoon...so pretty quick

 

[Deleted member 23753]

Engineer called at 8am.. "be there in half an hour!"

Arrived, swapped SKY+ for HD box, HD Box dead....
Grabbed another... also Dead..
Grabbed his third an final box on the Van.. which worked UNTIL he did the software update.. now also Dead!

(See pics attached)..

Engineer has now gone to get more replacements from a manager.

He spoke to technical who said there had been other cases of the same problem over the weekend, that it is now a KNOWN PROBLEM... and if their usual tricks for resetting etc don't work and there are no more boxes on their Vans they should "Cancel the install". To quote what I overheard on the engineers mobile.. "looks like some boxes are doing this after the software update - some are not - we're trying to isolated the problem but as yet we don't know why it's happening".

Now 11:30 waiting for his return... will update more news when I have it.

Two dead boxes
==========

Three dead boxes
===========

 

[audi doody]

I also had my first box with the same probs on day of install,engineer had a spare which after loading too died (i.e staying in standby),thing is though it hadnt actually died ,after two hours of messing and leaving alone i got it to work(engineer had well gone by then...),granted its faulty but not dead as presumed,this is the box thats being changed today as am fed up with its crashing....box(s)may probably work but you have to persist,and yes it not right but if its a case of no box or a faulty box while you wait for a repalcement,keep hold of the faulty one for now.....it may still work and you will have hd.(for how long is anyones guess ...trust me)

 

[Mattk84]

so the software is corrupt and knackers the box once installed ?

"Rang the HD tech team who ran through loads of fixes and none worked"
theres a surprise! useless bunch they are.Ive never once been helped with a technical problem by them and their half arsed fixes.

Sorry to hear the news of you broken box guys but i hope youre in the tiny minority.mine isnt coming to 12/06 now so i hope all this is resolved by then.

i would imagine sky would not want another big negative news story to further hamper their hd tv roll-out

 

[blackmaverick]

I have now plugged in my old sky+ box and now remember what it was like to have a responsive box. I'm contemplating cancelling the HD as I think this problem isn't gonna just go away quickly without further software updates.

I have rang sky again and they are sending an engineer tomorrow with a new box, that makes two days off work in the last week just for sky engineer visits now!

I will see what difference the new box makes and decide what too do. I'm not happy about losing loads of stuff from my planner though! Should I be due any compensation?

 

[CG121]

One thing to bear in mind is that all these new toys (plasma, HD box, 360 etc etc) are in effect glorified computers...

As anyone will tell you, the quality of the electrical supply is important here.

A friend of mine once called me to his pub because his OMRON till kept going crazy and OMRON were unable to ascertain why this happened..

I surmised that the electrical supply was to balme (cellar equipment) and fitted a filter on the mains supply to the till.

I reprogrammed the entire till again (as OMRON wouldn't do it) using a blagged manual and it remained 100% until it was replaced some 5years later..

My media room, which houses all my AV gear, uses UPS to ensure the electrical supply is a) uninterrupted and b) clean

You can pick up any PC UPS to run your cable/satellite/xbox gear from PC World for no money.

The added benefit is you won't lose recordings during a power failure

 

[blackmaverick]

One thing to bear in mind is that all these new toys (plasma, HD box, 360 etc etc) are in effect glorified computers...

As anyone will tell you, the quality of the electrical supply is important here.

A friend of mine once called me to his pub because his OMRON till kept going crazy and OMRON were unable to ascertain why this happened..

I surmised that the electrical supply was to balme (cellar equipment) and fitted a filter on the mains supply to the till.

I reprogrammed the entire till again (as OMRON wouldn't do it) using a blagged manual and it remained 100% until it was replaced some 5years later..

My media room, which houses all my AV gear, uses UPS to ensure the electrical supply is a) uninterrupted and b) clean

You can pick up any PC UPS to run your cable/satellite/xbox gear from PC World for no money.

The added benefit is you won't lose recordings during a power failure

Do you need an adaptor to switch the cables to 3 pin?

 

[CG121]

My AV gear is rack mounted and so the UPS is 3 pin.

As for using a PC UPS, just buy a kettle lead and a 4way mains extension.
Remove the 3pin plug off the kettle lead and wire it to the 4way extension head. (discarding the original mains lead)

Then you can plug 4 devices into your UPS

 

[alecf1]

i had similar issue tonight with my sky hd box freezing and then not coming out of standby after a power off/on. After the backup button trick the s/w did appear to reload for 10mins but then cut out again. After pressing various keys again it came back to life. fingers crossed it gets through the england game.

 

[ojlewis2000]

Ahh, I just had to unplug my box (to sort out some wires) which was working ok (ie the clock was wrong!!) but nothing major, but as soon as i plugged it back in - stuck in standby!!!!

Has this happened to others and do you think it will regain consciousness before the world cup?? What is the best solution to this particular problem? Forced software update or just wait or phone sky??

 

[Thxfan]

Hi blackmaverick, I had the exact same fault with my HD. Installed 23rd May, worked for 5 days then would not come out of standby.

Rang Sky Tech help and they tried various things including the backup button fix, nothing worked, so they arranged for a new box to be fitted on wednesday. That one has worked OK so far, although it gave me a scare yesterday evening when I couldnt use the EPG, it just said "searching for listings" all the time. So switched it off at the mains for 10 minutes, turned it back on, it would'nt come out of standby

Tried the backup fix and on this machine it worked EPG is back and everything appears to be working normally. The tech guy did say he would make sure I got a new box and not a reconditioned unit as the new stock was more reliable, hope he is right!

 

[Laura]

Got Sky HD installed Friday (16th), spent weekend cooing , oohing and aahing (including LotR RotK last night).

Got back from work today, found the box in an apparent standby, but when I pressed the Sky button, all I got was a very loud ticking noise which I can only assume means the harddisk has failed.

Rang sky went through the usual stuff (power off, power on with backup pressed etc). All to no avail..

Got an engineer coming out Wednesday so hopefully will be a replacement box.

laura.