Thread: Sky tv help

I am in the process of moving house from my parents to my girlfriends, where I am going already has a sky dish fitted, I've got a sky+ box off my mate, just wondered if I rang sky up and said I want multiroom at my parents house and they sent me a sky card out could it work in my girlfriends house?

I want sky which my dad has got but don't wanna pay £40 odd a month when I could get it 4 £10

cheers mike

Ermm I just phoned my mate who did this and he says it didn't work...thought it did ooops.
me bad

Originally Posted by voorhees

Ermm I just phoned my mate who did this and he says it didn't work...thought it did ooops.
me bad

Ohh no worries just thought I could get sky on the cheap, will stick with the freeview 4 now. Thanks anyways

all you need is an other card! try ebay.

It won't work because they use the phone line to upgrade the viewing card i.e.the 2 boxes need to be connected to the same phone line while they do the upgrade. So you just need to ensure you upgrade the sky+ box round at your parents and don't connect it to the phone line at your g/friends. this will work for a short time but sky will start sending snotty letters to your parents until they can see your box back on their landline, if they can't then they will charge your parents for another sub, back dated as well. So there's really no way round it unless you are prepared to keep taking your box back to your parents so it can say hello to "skynet" once a month.

andymac, ive had sky for years and have NEVER plugged it into my phone line mate

Doubt your new viewing card is gonna work then as all subscribers are getting new cards this year. Got mine yesterday.
You're probably off the radar if you've had it that long and haven't ever added or upgraded to your subscription or ordered any pay-per-view. For the last few years it has been a mandatory requirement for all boxes to be on a landline and they regularly check. They first send a letter reminding you, then a snotty one threatening, then a backdated bill if you don't get it hooked in.

Originally Posted by 1wheelonly

andymac, ive had sky for years and have NEVER plugged it into my phone line mate

With multiroom?
It's not an issue for a single box.

I got a snotty letter after having one of my boxes unplugged from the phone for 2 days whilst decorating!

I had sky fitted about 5 months ago when I bought my house, had multiroom fitted in our bedroom and neither the lounge nor bedroom have ever been plugged into a phone line... when I moved in the phone line hadn't been set up, it was shortly after but I haven't bothered to plug the boxes in...

Haven't heard anything from sky...

Originally Posted by leggy

I had sky fitted about 5 months ago when I bought my house, had multiroom fitted in our bedroom and neither the lounge nor bedroom have ever been plugged into a phone line... when I moved in the phone line hadn't been set up, it was shortly after but I haven't bothered to plug the boxes in...

Haven't heard anything from sky...

Lucky you!
I got a snotty letter immediately from them, threatening full subscription charges etc.
Boo!

Yeah, the engineer who fitted my sky said that sky can get funny and try to inforce people to use a phone line, it's there way of keeping track on how many boxes are being used in a house because they lose a lot of money through people running extra boxes, there fighting a losing battle really...all you really miss out on is the interactive Service I think which I don't use anyway...

Originally Posted by AndyMac

Doubt your new viewing card is gonna work then as all subscribers are getting new cards this year.

had my new card a month ago, no problems yet, had no letters or anything for years.

never had to use it so never plugged it in.

Originally Posted by 1wheelonly

had my new card a month ago, no problems yet, had no letters or anything for years.

never had to use it so never plugged it in.

Same here, I had new cards in the last couple of months and they have been fine...

One thing I think I am missing at the moment is the new style tv guide, but from what some people say the older style is better anyway...

Originally Posted by leggy

One thing I think I am missing at the moment is the new style tv guide, but from what some people say the older style is better anyway...

Isn't the new EPG just for HD?
I got the upgrade for my HD box, but the SD box hasn't got it.

Originally Posted by Ess_Three

Isn't the new EPG just for HD?
I got the upgrade for my HD box, but the SD box hasn't got it.

Yeah I think your right actually Ess, I've got the HD box downstairs but not upstairs, I 'think' mine hasn't updated because I haven't plugged the phone line in, I might be wrong though, when chatting to mates it's the explanation I could think of as to why mine hasn't updated. Wasn't sure if the update came through the dish or through the phone line...

Think ill give them a call next week and just say the box i want 4 multiroom is to be placed in a room without a phone hardline and cant afford to get 1 set up, but if they do get funny ill just have to pop home with it and plug it in 4 a while

This is a funny subject given my lengthy experiences with SKY who have to say are thick as 2 ****es, know more about the poxy sky boxes than the engineers installing or doing service calls, you know I had to show the guy what sky + was while he was servicing my systems for faults developed because of there ****e system upgrades, fecking useless, anyway back on cue.

The line connection is compulsory for the all boxes in a multi room connection before & after the initial contract length, small print, but as already advised single boxes arent an issue mostly unless you're in the 1st 12 months of the contract, after that you can argue the contract is up & I dont want it connected anymore, but think small print says must be connected at all times whilst subscribing to sky on all customers but they never used to mind single boxes being unconnected.

The boxes dial up different times of month, so might get caught this way & as advised if they dont see a monthly callback you'll get crappy letters which I did even when the poxy thing was connected & I did forced callbacks with the bangalore/outer mongolia call centers on my cellphone, so make of that what you will, but what you can do is once a month do a force callback through select 01 menus & then it will register the callback with them, but ideally from the original location not from the other house.

But to add my number on the account is my cell, not home & it still calls back from the house with number witheld & shows as callbacks so does make you wonder if sticking withheld in the dial string in menus will work for your scenario aswell cause they dont get network cli (calling line identity passed by telecom network to telecom network exclusively) just the normal cli we use & block from our locations, so worth a go, as long as they see callback & from right sky card/box then might be ok.

But note sky card is paired with box so wont work in another box unless re-paired wth that box & of course valid reason for that needs to be given.

There are other ways round these things if you had 2 phone lines at parents house with multiple line smart box from say Mitel namely the Smart1, but comes down to economics at end of day.

With widespread use of adsl & no doubt every home will have it, in future the boxes will be net connected so this will be obsolete anyway for dialling up & sky will have a serious competition on there hands if the networks are fast enough to stream to so many people & other countries allow us to subcribe to them, at present there's country blocks which is annoying unless you have a proxy in that country.

I HATE SKY but in our area there's no one else & channels 1-5 are just plain crap, so for peace of mind for my brother not whingeing in ear hole, we use.

New epg is purely for hd box users but cause of many bugs the rollout was delayed given thomson boxes were 1st with all boxes then they slowly ironed out bugs & released to other hd box makers units like samsung etc, rollout for samsung seems to be last as still havnt got mine yet, force upgrade to see if its available for your box yet, by removing power, hold down Backup button, plug power in whilst still holding Backup button until tv shows upgrade in progress & front panel on hd box lights up like xmas tree & phone line must be connected for upgrades.

Been many reports of bugs even now on latest incarnation, so you've been warned.

you need the phone line when you first plug in the box, and choose new system install from the setup menu, after that you can disconnect it.
I have sky+ downstairs and now sky+ upstairs also, I had multiroom previously but my upstairs box was a stnadard sky box, I called them and they sent me a new card, which I put in and chose new system install, it performs a callback, then you can disconnect the phoneline.

At last, my HD box has updated to the new EPG. Time to play.

I must have a new box or something. I have Sky+ HD and have only had it a few weeks. I do not have multiroom i just run a cable up the wall outside and watch in the bedroom for free.
However i unplugged the phone line as i do not use any interactive stuff either and moved the box away from the line. Within 10 mins i had an error on the screen saying the the phone line was unplugged, this error would not go away despite what i did.
I spoke to sky about saying that my box was no where near my phone line and they said either buy an extension or watch tv with the error message.
They said people did not listen to the letters so this is the new way they are dealing with it.......

the only reason you have a telephone line to start off with , its easier for you to buy box office with it in place wich makes sky millions, than not having one and not bothering because of that...
for multiroom boxes the reason they want you to have two is that the number matches so your not getting multiroom from your neighbour....
however there is an optional opt out you can get from sky where you pay £25 so they forget about the telephone.
all of the service upgrades and downloads come through the satellite at roughly 2am
unless you do it over the directly with them....

Originally Posted by s4 osh

the only reason you have a telephone line to start off with , its easier for you to buy box office with it in place wich makes sky millions, than not having one and not bothering because of that...
for multiroom boxes the reason they want you to have two is that the number matches so your not getting multiroom from your neighbour....
however there is an optional opt out you can get from sky where you pay £25 so they forget about the telephone.
all of the service upgrades and downloads come through the satellite at roughly 2am
unless you do it over the directly with them....

Exactly!! YOU DO NOT NEED A PHONE LINE FOR SKY TV!!

You simply pay the £25 opt out fee and thats it, new cards are sent regularly and updates are done through the satellite.

Ive had sky for 3 years with no phone line as i paid the £25 opt out fee at the start.

Im not interested in pay per view or the over priced movies so i dont need to be paying an extra £11 per month for nothing.