Update:
 
When the engineer arrived, the first thing he did was to check the back of the box. He said straight away that it was "goosed." He never tried any of the usual procedures. The first thing I said was that I was unwilling to lose any of the recordings and explained why. His reply to that was that I would have to as he was going to take the box. I argued that the box was (in my opinion) my property and that I didn't think Sky were legally allowed to take it against my wishes. After all, the box was bought by myself, and was about a year-and-a-half old (thus being out of warranty). He phoned his manager and was told to let me keep it. However, the guy insisted that taking the old boxes was procedure.
Anyway, I thought our troubles were over now that we had a new box. I was very much mistaken. I recorded about half-a-dozen programmes on Friday and they were near impossible to watch. The picture kept jumping about and quite a few green streaks flashed across the screen. On Saturday, there wasn't as much jumping, but there was more of the green streaking. Additionally, one of the recorded programmes (which was thirty-minutes in length) came up as being more than 200-minutes in the planner. Have any of you got any ideas as to what can be causing these problems?
 
I am in the process of writing a letter of complaint to Sky. They seriously need to revise their policies, software updates and the quality of the equipment they give to customers. I mean, they were quick enough to want to charge for the call out to fix something they more than likely broke. Yet, they wouldn't let me retain a faulty box. Over the years, this household has given them thousands of pounds, and they were most reluctant to let us keep a piece of equipment I had PAID for!! If the box had been rented, then I'd understand them wanting it back. But, I had bought it outright, so how exactly does that make it Sky's property?