[IanW99]

Looks like sky are starting to get in touch with customers regarding the new MySKY HDi decoder.

For those of you who have My SKY and multi-room it looks like you will be able to get the second decoder upgraded to My SKY HDi for NZ$49 and as long as you keep multi-room the $10 per month subscription charge will be waived.

So this basically means you keep your original My Sky box and get also get a new My Sky HDi box as well (they take away your old digital decoder).

It also says that the HD service will start at the end of July (was scheduled for the 1st July previously).

Ian

[benandclare]

Looks like sky are starting to get in touch with customers regarding the new MySKY HDi decoder.

For those of you who have My SKY and multi-room it looks like you will be able to get the second decoder upgraded to My SKY HDi for NZ$49 and as long as you keep multi-room the $10 per month subscription charge will be waived.

So this basically means you keep your original My Sky box and get also get a new My Sky HDi box as well (they take away your old digital decoder).

It also says that the HD service will start at the end of July (was scheduled for the 1st July previously).

Ian

To quote an old UK comic, "that'll do for me Tommy" :nice1:nice1

[Questor]

Welll we have no desire for multiroom but we have MySky - wonder if we'll get a similar offer?
Jon

[IanW99]

Welll we have no desire for multiroom but we have MySky - wonder if we'll get a similar offer?
Jon

My guess would be that it will cost the same to upgrade and then there will be a $10 per month HD Ticket as they call it.

Of course if you pay for other premium channels I suspect they may give you a better deal e.g. in the UK if you also had the movie channels they would waive the subscription charge.

Ian

[jubjub]

Our letter we got today said it would cost $49 to upgrade to HD box then the $10 a month subscription that Ian mentioned after that.

i guess they include it with multiroom packages as you are already paying extra anyway...

[IanW99]

Just an update that we are now the 'owners' of a nice shiny new My Sky HDi box (as well as the original My Sky box).

For those that are interested, very little difference currently to the standard box, there are some additional settings for HDMI as expected and a new menu option that takes you to all the HD channels of which there aren't many at the moment. I believe that the storage capacity is increased if you are recording SD content (bigger hard drive).

Currently only records two channels at a time (was originally meant to do 4), apparently this feature will come later with a software update (and LNB change no doubt).

Guess now I've got an excuse to buy a HD TV :exit

Ian

[mgbridges]

For those of you who have My SKY and multi-room it looks like you will be able to get the second decoder upgraded to My SKY HDi for NZ$49 and as long as you keep multi-room the $10 per month subscription charge will be waived.

So this basically means you keep your original My Sky box and get also get a new My Sky HDi box as well (they take away your old digital decoder).


This is exactly the deal we've got and just had installed. We already had a HD TV in the Lounge which is where the new Sky HDi box has gone and I have to say the picture is MUCH better on the channels that transmit in HD even if there aren't many of them at the moment.

The best thing is we now have a MySky box in our bedroom which is where our really big screen & surround sound system are (purchased with the house). Watching Dr Who is going to be soooo much fun now!

Anneliese

[benandclare]

Cheers guys, have to wait till Aug 13 for ours to be installed.

Looking forward to having the extra recording capacity by keeping the My Sky box, especially since arrival of 16 year old :p

[mgbridges]

Cheers guys, have to wait till Aug 13 for ours to be installed.

Looking forward to having the extra recording capacity by keeping the My Sky box, especially since arrival of 16 year old :p

Have to say Sky were very on the ball ref. installation arrangements. Got a letter confirming date, a phone call the night before to re-confirm, the engineer rang in the morning to fix a convenient time and he turned up right when he said he would. In fact it worked out better for me as he came in the morning rather than the afternoon (as per the letter) when I would have had to work around school pick up etc.

The extra recording capacity is great - just set up the box in the lounge with series links for a bunch of kids programs and the one in our bedroom with all our favourites like Dr. Who etc.

Enjoy!
Anneliese

[IanW99]

Have to say Sky were very on the ball ref. installation arrangements. Got a letter confirming date, a phone call the night before to re-confirm, the engineer rang in the morning to fix a convenient time and he turned up right when he said he would....


Same for us, very quick as well.

One more point, apparently the new boxes don't have RF output on them yet (still waiting for the RF modulators to arrive in the country). So if you are using the RF out e.g. for a second TV then they may not be able to set this up for you yet.

Ian

[Billy]

A few Qs: what size of hard disk in the new boxes; how much recording time for SD and HD? Cheers.

[IanW99]

A few Qs: what size of hard disk in the new boxes; how much recording time for SD and HD? Cheers.

Difficult to get definitive answers on these questions.

From what I can tell the new hard disk size is now 320GB compared to original 160GB.

Apparently the amount of space allowed for recording programs has only gone up from 100GB to 160GB (rest of the space is used operating system and for pay per view programming) so not actually twice as much storage capacity than the older version.

Recording on MySky is actually the satellite data stream so it the complexity/quality of the picture content causes a difference in storage capacity i.e. two different 1 hour programs could use significantly different amount of bytes.

Current recoding figures are approx 30 hours for just HD and 90 hours for just SD. But your mileage may vary :)

Ian

[urban78]

Have to say Sky were very on the ball ref. installation arrangements. Got a letter confirming date, a phone call the night before to re-confirm, the engineer rang in the morning to fix a convenient time and he turned up right when he said he would.

Thanks Anneliese, that was very helpful. We're having Sky installed today and at this point, I've had pretty average experiences with their phone customer service agents over the past few weeks when doing research :roll Then OH's sister tells us one of her best friends works there and why don't we do everything through her instead...so from there on we've had no issues as she's been excellent :clap

When I arranged for installation yesterday morning, I was told to expect a call this morning for definite times but the engineer called yesterday afternoon to give a specific timeframe. He was really helpful and even gave his mobile number in case he'd be running late.

We're only getting the standard Skybox at the moment but who knows, if I really get hooked up I might get the HDI one, since our TV needs a bit of a makeover :o So thanks to Ian for the excellent advice on this thread, I'll certainly keep an eye on it.

Jen :)