SKY HD Box freezes and crashing - anyone else?

S

simonharris

Guest
Hi, I have experienced a few strange crashes on my Sky HD box, each time it eventually came back to life after powering off for a few mins then waiting another few minutes before it would react to being powered up again (red light on despite the SKY button on remote pushed) - I have experienced:

1) on one occasion only blue screen on HD channels - non HD channels OK
2) on one occasion blue screen on all channels
3) on one occassion box stopped reacting to remote, even after reboot twice

Each time I thought it was goodbye HD Box and then it came back to life after a long reboot.
 
I have 2 HD boxes....one of them has recently started to stop responding during fast forward or rewind when playing back a recorded programme. Each time ive had to disconnect power and restart!

Anyone else had this?
 
i would of thought thats in its manufacturers warranty...hardware weakness it sounds like to me

make sure its not getting overheated in this hot weather btw....
 
Mines has been acting strangely over the past 2 weeks as well.
Completely freezing when you try to fast forward and rewind, also Freezing when you try to change channels.
Have to pull power lead from back to get it to work, most annoying.
Called sky technical helpline at local Mental institution, but that didn't help, still exactly the same.

gonna give it a few more days, then call and ask for a replacement.
 
Mine was doing a similar thing. Engineer called and swapped it straight away. New one seems fine ATM.
 
Mine went a bit mental yesterday... was watching something on Nat Geo or Discovery HD (one of them) and the picture started to break up.... this carried on for 20 seconds, then it froze, and then the box powered itself off.

Very odd... I assumed it had perhaps overheated in this weather?

Then, when it finally decided to power back up again (4-5 mins later), I noticed that Nat Geo and Discovery HD were both still breaking up, plus one other (artsworld i think) a couple of other HD channels were blue screen, but any SD channel I tried was fine...

Very odd.... went out soon after, and was ok later on...
 
:mad: Hi there i am now waiting for my 3rd hd box, not very happy as u can imagine, sky tried to tell me it was a power surge, well just put my other normal sky+ box on and it works fine.
first hd box i had to wait 2 weeks for card to pair with box, second one was about 5-7 days, mine have both been thomson boxes.

matt
 
kop1973 said:
I have 2 HD boxes....one of them has recently started to stop responding during fast forward or rewind when playing back a recorded programme. Each time ive had to disconnect power and restart!

Anyone else had this?

Yes, it is probably a bad sector on the hard drive. With my box, it always did that on the first recording on the drive, so in the end I recorded 20 minutes of SD "junk", and didn't delete it. That solved the problem. When I removed the hard drive and replaced it with a 750GB drive, testing the original on a PC revealed a bad sector. The software in the Sky HD box doesn't seem to be able to cope with read errors on the hard drive.
 
Nick_UK said:
Yes, it is probably a bad sector on the hard drive. With my box, it always did that on the first recording on the drive, so in the end I recorded 20 minutes of SD "junk", and didn't delete it. That solved the problem. When I removed the hard drive and replaced it with a 750GB drive, testing the original on a PC revealed a bad sector. The software in the Sky HD box doesn't seem to be able to cope with read errors on the hard drive.

My HD box has been doing similar things which i blame on the hot weather I could fry an egg on top thats how hot the box gets.
So my solution
 

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I am on my third box - and the system froze again a few hours after the engineer delivered the last one. Since then, it has gone again twice - but I have given up calling Sky as a box swap is the only answer they have and I lose everything we have recorded each time they swap the box. I think there may be some firmware/software glitch or something which is not going to get fixed anytime soon so I am going to try and live with it if I can.

The thing that pi**es me is the fact the moron who agreed the design spec on the HD box did not include a reset or off switch, so I have to crawl around on my knees to fish out the power cable every time we get a system freeze and need to reboot - not a pretty sight I can tell you!:eek:

Cheers:hiya:
 
dunsters said:
The thing that pi**es me is the fact the moron who agreed the design spec on the HD box did not include a reset or off switch, so I have to crawl around on my knees to fish out the power cable every time we get a system freeze and need to reboot - not a pretty sight I can tell you!

Thas especially tricky now i cant access the back of my plasma stand! Tho its not quite up there with having to change 0.5m component leads from SkyHD to the dvd player whenever i want to watch a movie on my 436! :(

I've had problems with my sky HD remote. Worked fine for the first month- then worked intermittently- then stopped working altogether. After reset it would work a few minutes, then work intermittenly and then not at all. Then it stopped working completely after reset.

Sky's sending another remote which i hope we finally get today coz sky planners 97% full and we cant delete what we've watched! Gah!! :suicide:
 
I am on my third box - and the system froze again a few hours after the engineer delivered the last one. Since then, it has gone again twice - but I have given up calling Sky as a box swap is the only answer they have and I lose everything we have recorded each time they swap the box. I think there may be some firmware/software glitch or something which is not going to get fixed anytime soon so I am going to try and live with it if I can.

The thing that pi**es me is the fact the moron who agreed the design spec on the HD box did not include a reset or off switch, so I have to crawl around on my knees to fish out the power cable every time we get a system freeze and need to reboot - not a pretty sight I can tell you!:eek:

Cheers:hiya:


:hiya: Realise this is quite an old thread, But have just had sky hd put in for xmas and the box has totally locked twice. set the unit to record Led Zeppelin on arts the other night (which btw was brill) it recorded 340 odd mins for a 30 min programme. when i tried to manually enter into the recording at 100mins the system froze with a blue screen. I was left with no option but to pull the plug as all remote functons were lost. Eventually box came back to life. Again that evening set refused to turn on. a lead pull rectified the fault once again:mad:

Overall the PQ is superb on my 40w2000 although did notice on Nat Geo that the frame rate on panning was terrible, like a PC was trying to play someting the graphics card was not up to. Possible down to the hard drive not delivering quick enough? I would presume everything is written and then played off the hard disk to get the instant rewind feature.
Not noticed it on any other channel so could be a broadcast prob.

I am today recording all the Star Wars, so I am reluctant to complain until i have watched them all, So like you I am going to sit and see what happens, but as you posted in July and it is now Jan I wonder if a software update will ever cure the problem.

:D
 

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