Hooking up a Sky+ box

(17-11-2009 12:32 )StanTheMan Wrote:  [

Thanks, vostok. At least until I return and can spend more time getting it hooked up properly, this is exactly what I was planning on doing. As I say in the last post, I just want to try and avoid missing any of Dannie's shows and intend to leave the box switched to 960 the whole time. Do Sky+ boxes let you do manual recordings, or is that only a feature on the HD boxes?

You can set manual recordings with a standard Sky+. But I don't recommend it as it may not work with a single LNB. I recall having problems with manual recording from a single LNB. (Previously one of my two LNB's burnt out on my dish, had to wait a week or so for an engineer to come out to replace it and I remember problems with this.)

Quote:Incidently, it's quite an old Sky+ box so I don't know what size hard drive it has, but from empty about how many hours would I get on?

About 40 hours from the very oldest Sky+.

(17-11-2009 12:52 )vostok 1 Wrote:  You can set manual recordings with a standard Sky+. But I don't recommend it as it may not work with a single LNB. I recall having problems with manual recording from a single LNB. (Previously one of my two LNB's burnt out on my dish, had to wait a week or so for an engineer to come out to replace it and I remember problems with this.)

About 40 hours from the very oldest Sky+.

Thanks again, vostok, you've answered a question I had there, without me having to ask it. I've now got it set up (took about five mintues once I was on the phone to a Sky operator) and tried to do a manual recording earlier, but nothing happened. At least I now know it's not a fault with the box.

As for about 40 hours recording - this seems a lot. As a test I set up a manual recording on 960 starting at 12:00 noon and running right through till 05:30 in the morning (17.5 hours by my reckoning) and when I checked the details from my planner it said that this would take 114%

Any ideas, in that you say I should get about 40?

I'm not sure how many hours you'll get as you haven't mentioned the size of the hard drive (unless I've missed it). However, when you programme a recording, the Sky+ box will always over inflate (quite significantly) the amount of space required.

Note that different channels use different amounts of HD space per minute. I'd estimate that 960 uses around 1.5% of an 80GB HD (i.e. nearly 2GB) per hour. The best thing you can do is to run a real test and to actually record for 10 hours and see what percentage is used.

(18-11-2009 18:25 )skateguy Wrote:  I'm not sure how many hours you'll get as you haven't mentioned the size of the hard drive (unless I've missed it). However, when you programme a recording, the Sky+ box will always over inflate (quite significantly) the amount of space required.

Note that different channels use different amounts of HD space per minute. I'd estimate that 960 uses around 1.5% of an 80GB HD (i.e. nearly 2GB) per hour. The best thing you can do is to run a real test and to actually record for 10 hours and see what percentage is used.

Thank you, skateguy.

I've had the same question up on a Sky+ forum and have just discovered that the likelyhood is that it has a 20 hour capacity. I'm not at home right now, but my google image seaches tell me it's probably an old Pace PVR1. After all that faffing, it doesn't look like I'll be able to do as I intended anyway.

Thanks again. I'll do the real-time test as you suggested - see what I get.

(18-11-2009 18:39 )StanTheMan Wrote:  Thank you, skateguy.

I've had the same question up on a Sky+ forum and have just discovered that the likelyhood is that it has a 20 hour capacity. I'm not at home right now, but my google image seaches tell me it's probably an old Pace PVR1. After all that faffing, it doesn't look like I'll be able to do as I intended anyway.

Thanks again. I'll do the real-time test as you suggested - see what I get.

Oh right, sorry about the over estimation there Stan, my Sky+ is almost 4 years old and can normally squeeze about 40 hrs in. However I have a feeling that manual recordings take up more space for some reason.

No need for apologies, vostok. You've been a great help.