@LP wrote:
@nigea99 Thank you for an informative post. I am back in this dilema once again. I had an order about 18 months ago which had to be cancelled as the engineer on arrival said it was too far from the main BT hub to serve the rest of the house. It was a nightmare to revert back to Sky+ and took nearly 12 months to get the refund!! I am now (with the latest letter warning about no more suport) - thinking about trying again.
We have 3 parts to the house all of which are served by the same BT network - boosted by BT mini disks.
1 x Sky+ in small sitting room with an RF device to the adjacent bedroom (just one of these is in use at a time)
The other Sky+ box is in another part of the house on a multiroom contract.
I would like to add another box / connection into my son's bedroom plus another box into our main sitting room
ie total of 1 master and 4 slaves. What do you think?
Broadband speed - download 425-500Mbps
Really resitant to changing as know I will struggle with any new interface but keen to get the additional boxes.
hi @LP (cc @Rickie )
First of all the lack of Software updates they have mentioned is not necessarily the problem they may be intimating at - SKY + boxes have had no real updates for years.
Thus you are very likely to be OK until your existing boxes fail for other reasons (e.g. disk failure).
There has been a erecent change of policy which means you can no longer pair your card(s) with another box so cannot buy & use Second Hand SKY +/HD boxes to get round a failure
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OK now regarding SKY Q & minis - cut & paste from my initial notes:
There is, usually, an up front, admin charge for each mini although this is often free for the 1st mini.
Even though the 1st mini may not incur an admin charge one is not always sent by default so make sure you get this confirmed.
You can only use a maximum of 2 minis at the same time (only one if you have the non UHD box I mention) although you can have up to 4 on the account
As mentioned above SKY Minis do not support 4K.
SKY Minis get their content from the Main Box and connect to it via wifi or ethernet – they do not connect directly to the Dish
Recordings
Sky Minis do not store the recordings on the mini box – all recordings are stored on the main box & there is no user profile system to separate recordings made from a mini from those made on the main box or by a different user.
Thus, anyone migrating from the old multiscreen with separate boxes may have issues that all the recordings are only stored on the main box and available to all (which can be an advantage)
Some people do get connectivity issues between the main box & minis, although most don't – members here & SKY Technical support can usually help to get these resolved
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Regarding connectivity, should you did get probelms with the minis not talking too well with the main box if your router & discs are all at suitable positions I believe you probably can connect all boxes via ethernet to the discs/router & there may be other options
I have to admit I am a bit surprise by the engineer's comment about your BT router being too far to serve the rest of the house as the Minis don't use your wifi network (although as above you can use ethernet to connect all boxes to your home network)
Broadband speed is not an issue
Important Notice for Sky+/HD users:
Please note that you are no longer able to pair your viewing card to a Sky+/HD box that the card is not already paired to, so if your Sky box fails you cannot replace it with another and you'll need to move to either Sky Q, Sky Glass or Sky Stream to access Sky content