Sky +
 

I am sure someone has come accross this before, but for some reason my SKY + box has started playing up.

Once the box is warm the picture cuts out for 2 seconds and then just comes back - the green light stays on at the front of the box. It does it again about 20 seconds later and again and again.........

It does the same thing when you play back a recording.

I left the box disconnected last night from the power and it took an hour to start doing it again, but now is doing it regular as clockwork.

I did a Sky + planner re-build with help from the Sky techies, but again it hasn't helped.

I think thw box may be failing on the picture output module.

Anyone got any advice?

Chris

Does it sit somewhere where it's getting hot, like in an enclosed space under the TV? If it sits with something else on top, like a DVD or video player, then you might want to swap them over to allow it to breath a bit more.
The other thing to do is to give it a hoover and suck all the dust out of it. I'm pretty sure they have a fan inside, so it may be that the fan is clogged with dust.
If not then it may well be your hard-disk on the way out. It's not too difficult to change them (although you lose your recorded programs) but take the opportunity to fit a much bigger drive for about £40.
http://www.morlocks.co.uk/sky.htm

I really know nothing about Sky but I was looking on Ebay ages ago at second hand boxes and people were selling information on how to upgrade/fix Sky+ boxes.
From this I assumed there was a known common fault with these which was easliy fixable. But as I say this could be complete rubbish.

Colin,

Just had a long chat with Ant and it would appear that the Sky + box buffers the channel that you are watching through the hard disk. This is so that you can do live pause and start recording a program (from the start) if you are watching it and missed the start.

The hard disk is partitioned into 2 x 80GB sections, half for recording and half for buffering. It looks like I need to re-initialise the box/hard disk and it may well be fixed.

Got to work out how I get the 9 hours of programmes that I want to keep, off the hard disk and onto video now before I re-initialise!