Sky + 160- How many out there

neiljones

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In view of what I consider to be an expensive upgrade, especially the £60 installation charge, it would be interesting to know how many people have actually bought the new system.

Market forces will determine the future cost.

Is it possible for this forum to poll the callers to identify the take up ?
NJ
 
Quite a lot of the people who visit this forum are fairly tech "savvy", and so are more likely to upgrade their own Sky+ boxes by adding a bigger drive, as I have done. After all, why settle for a Sky 160 when you can have a Sky 200 for less money ? :thumbsup:
 
The point I raised was to establish how many people have subscribed to the Sky + 160 - not how many people have upgraded their existing machine.

Perphaps if Sky knew the answer to both issues they would reduce their price considerably.
 
I daresay that Sky have no shortage of people upgrading to Sky+160, but the point I was trying to make was that you probably won't find them here. These forums tend to attract those who are technically slightly more aware, so visitors here are more likely to mod their own boxes than the average Joe Public.
 
That doesn't wash either. I bought a 160 mainly because I wanted the USB ports (I heard they would be used in the future for uploading to mobile devices eg. PDAs). That and I thought that they would have tested the 160 to bits and it would work perfectly with it's drive (ie. no issues like the original 120gb max on the older boxes, or heat and sound issues - mistake on that last one obviously). Also money wasn't an issue. I also thought it would be a more advanced machine, being several years newer etc. Obviously didn't research that one enough... Oh, and I didn't care about the warranty. Never bother with it. If it goes wrong then fix it yourself. Or buy the new model. No biggie.

In hindsight probably shouldn't have got it straight away (check out reviews here for example) because the noise it makes it annoying.

Oh, and my point is that all the above would suggest I am slightly less technically aware than the average. Not at all. I am a computer programmer, have, erm, about 7 PC's in the house, have mucked around changing hard drives in PCs and laptops dozens of times over the years, and as far as I can see the Sky+ box is basically a PC (not a very good one though IMHO). Hell, I'll probably upgrade the HD to half a terrabyte or something if I ever feel the need.

Oh, and I even have a few spare drives hanging around, so could have upgraded with no problems. Out of interest, does anyone know if Sky are going to move with the times and move to a SATA interface? Also RAID 0 would be tops. Could then take my 10k RPM SATA drives out of my current PC and bung into a Sky box. Heh, bit of sound insulating on that one, but major speed access and uploading to other devices. :)

Cheers
 
You bought a Sky+160 box primarily because it had USB ports ? I don't want to appear rude, but the junk yards of Britain are full of Sky box addon sockets that were never used.

As far as a SATA interface goes, I think you can forget that one on the present box. Sky only put things on Sky boxes which are useful to them or are completely necessary to the user. Like the RS-232 interface - very useful for Sky to upload the latest firmware just as the box exits the door of the factory, but completely useless to everyone else.

Still, if money isn't an issue, I suppose you can buy the Sky+160 and impress the neighbours :hiya:
 
If the TW PVR lives up to it's potential then it makes the 3 year old + design of SKY+ look very dated indeed. SKY have not needed to advance the technology (just make further use of the existing platform via OS updates) and it looks like a cable company will grab the bragging rights:(
Hopefully 2005 will see SKY relaise that the time is right not for minor updates (USB ports etc) but a major overhaul bringing the PVR upto date with fully independent video stages, network distribution, realistic hard drive capacity (internal and external with hot swapping etc).
 
Crivens said:
Could then take my 10k RPM SATA drives out of my current PC and bung into a Sky box. Heh, bit of sound insulating on that one, but major speed access and uploading to other devices. :)

Cheers




The 10,000 rpm, is that a Raptor?
Been thinking about building a PC with a pair of them in RAID 1 config but have read they are a little on the loud side:)
 
Starburst said:
Hopefully 2005 will see SKY relaise that the time is right not for minor updates (USB ports etc) but a major overhaul bringing the PVR upto date with fully independent video stages, network distribution, realistic hard drive capacity (internal and external with hot swapping etc).

I don't work in the industry, but I would bet that we won't see anything new (hardware wise) from Sky until 2006 when HDTV comes in. It's only 13 months away.
 
Timescale wise you are probably correct unless NDS and perhaps PACE have something already well into the design stage.
SKY do have the PACE 2.5 (80gig) unit on the roadmap but even if it was launched it would perhaps be meant to be the standard unit replacing the older models.
 
:offtopic: :offtopic: :offtopic:

The original question was how many people have taken up Sky + 160 ?
Can we stick to the point and not go off on a tangent-there are other threads on the forum to raise all the previous raised by various members.

Thank you :offtopic: :offtopic: :offtopic:
 
It is quite common for threads to diverge from their intial subject, the lack of response to your post probably indicates the take up (at least with the users of this forum) is very very small and the your post would have had no "on topic" responses considering that a quick scan of the forum kinda indicates a general contempt for the product.
So to be on topic, it looks like no one has SKY+ 160 :)

Off topic again.......
Simply put only SKY know for sure how many units they have installed and might not even chose to list that outside of the normal SKY+ takeup in reports to the city/shareholders after all it is intended to be a high profit/niche product which lays the ground for future products from Thomson, it is not meant to be a mainstream product in the manner you seem to want.
Pop over to the Digitalspy SKY+ forum, I do know there are some users posting there:)
 
Erm, obviously I bought one from my post.

Fairly obviously there is no way the current boxes will handle SATA, unless they are upgradeable just like a PC (ie. some PCI slots). Just for example when the new machines come out would be good if they have a SATA interface.

Yep, two 10k Raptors. Wouldn't say they are amazingly loud, although with both on at the same time is obviously a little louder than normal. But if you have a half decent graphics card, then it will probably be louder. But a RAID 0 configuration it is amazingly fast. Stuff RAID 1, just back everything to DVD (esp DL DVD now, or perhaps a portable HD). For the sheer speed of RAID 0, it is hard to give it up. Put it this way, my old Windows XP Pro configuration took about 10 - 12 rotations of the good old XP load up cycle on a 7200 Maxtor. The RAID 0 Raptor configuration takes 2 on the same configuration.

Considering there was enough talk on a few forums about the USB's of 160s being used for uploading to mobile devices (such as my PDA for example), and the fact that I wanted the best machine *now* (ok, so I thought the tech would be newer than the old stuff, but hell, I wanted Sky+ before the end of the month), then I don't regret getting the 160. Fair enough I maybe should have waited a little to find the technology is pretty much exactly the same as the old Sky+, but I wanted it when I wanted it. And if they come out with the PDA USB upload option then it should be a hell of a lot easier than the path of extracting to my DVD recorder, shoving onto the PC, running DVD to AVI software, then transferring to my PDA.

You're just jealous because you don't have one of those 1970's tastic "160" logos draped across the side of your unit :)

Cheers
 
Crivens said:
Erm, obviously I bought one from my post.



Must take the time to re-read previous posts when replying to later ones or I look like a burke:)

Thanks for the info on the hard drive, not sure if they are really worth the price but certainly will be a consideration when I finally get round to building the new PC, which will probably be when I've paid off the credit card bill with the xmas shopping on:)
 

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