Yesterday we had Sky+ installed. This wasn’t without a certain amount of trepidation as we’ve been using a Tivo for a couple of years and it’s been 100% reliable. The Sky+ boxes (especially the Amstrad ones) have a bit of a reputation for dodgyness. So why did we change? Partly because we were conscious that the Tivo is getting on in years and so a replacement of some kind would need to be found sooner or later. I did consider building one but discounted this as it works out to be pretty expensive if you want a nice, quiet shuttle PC and I kind of like the idea of being able to get someone else to come and fix the box if it breaks rather than having to do it myself with a homebuild :)So, how is the box so far? Initially we’re very happy with it. We ended up with one of the new Thomson boxes (incidentally the same company that built the Tivo in the UK). Seems okay, though people have reported trouble with the 160GB boxes that Thomson make (maybe this is why you can’t get them anymore!). So, what are the pros and cons for the Sky+ box?

Pros

  • Dual Tuner - Record two channels at once (or record one and watch one). Tivo only had a single tuner
  • Faster channel changing - It’s instant! The Tivo used an IR blaster to control the Sky box so it took a while :)
  • Planner - The Sky+ planner shows the programs you’ve recorded and the ones it’s going to record in one place. On the Tivo it was more fiddly to find out exactly what the Tivo was going to record (and sometimes the Todo list lied :) )
Cons

  • Noiser disk - Though I had modded the Tivo with an ultra quiet 160GB disk so it’s not really the Sky+s’ fault
  • TV Guide - Why or why can’t I search for a program? I can already enter one letter to skip to the part of the guide, it really wouldn’t be difficult to extended this to multiple letters.
  • Series link - Not as clever as the Tivo season pass as it cancels the link if it can’t find a program in the 7 day EPG. (and why 7 days? 14 seems more sensible).

So in the whole, not a lot in it at present. It remains to be seen whether the hardware holds up though :)