System Fault 06-0

[RoystonG]

Had my quite regular Sky+ screen freeze and powered off to reset the system, 

It took some time to initialise the start up and in fact many hours later it is still saying on screen the Search is initialising,

After the programs came back I tried to pause a program and was given an on screen message saying System Fault 06-0 is a blue header with white writing and under in blue text, with a white background, the words Sky+HD playback and recording are unavailable. Please go to ky.com/help

That was about as useful as a umbrella with no covering.

I get the same message on Planner

If i go to  Catch Up TV I get another on screen message For Your Information JMP1 and the words There are no programmes of this type and the same happens on Sky Movies On Demand.

Has anyone any idea of what I can do to correct this fault or will I have to spend an etenity on the phone trying to get sense from an Customer Services Agent who in the end will send out an Engineer and I am likely to lose all of my vital recorded progams on the Planner?

Some have been there years and are an aid in my work as a researcher.

As an after thought is there any way I can possibly save these progams to an external hard drive?

So if the worse happens and the Sky+ box has to be replaced I can at least see the recorded programs on the new Sky box.

Many thanks in anticipation.

[Mark39 · Accepted solution]

Your Sky box hard disk has failed (as all hard disks do eventually) and the box will need to be replaced. As the disk has failed, your recordings are lost and irrecoverable, I'm afraid.

There are no new Sky+ boxes, but there are plenty of used boxes available from the likes of ebay - look for a DRX890 or DRX895 model as they're the most recent, albeit still 7 years old or more. Alternatively now might be the time to upgrade to Sky Q.

[RoystonG]

Many thanks I did have that sneaky suspicion that it had given up the ghost. Iwe have had it a few years now and it's hard drive holds a lot of programs. Looks like I will be searching good old BBC and other channels for downloads or DVD's.

[TimmyBGood]

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@RoystonG wrote:

As an after thought is there any way I can possibly save these progams to an external hard drive?

So if the worse happens and the Sky+ box has to be replaced I can at least see the recorded programs on the new Sky box.

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Content cannot be saved/move/copied to an external drive and then played back though a Sky box (or indeed anything else) because it is encrypted on the original internal disk.

Older Sky+ boxes with SCART output did permit real-time transfer, in poor definition, to external tape or recordable DVD (as long as the recording device had SCART input)

HDMI was specified to make this essentially impossible through the application of HDCP.

[RoystonG]

Mark39 can I just ask if I do get another box, is there anyway TV progams recorded onto the Planner can be downloaded onto a back up hard drive?

I appreciate I have lost the recorded programs and I realise some of them are not available as downlaods or as DVD's, but if I could back up newer recorded progams on another Sky+ Box it would save a lot of information that I use for research.

I am not sure what format progams are even saved as on the Sky+ hard drive!

Many thanks

[Annie+UK]

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@RoystonG wrote:

Mark39 can I just ask if I do get another box, is there anyway TV progams recorded onto the Planner can be downloaded onto a back up hard drive?

I appreciate I have lost the recorded programs and I realise some of them are not available as downlaods or as DVD's, but if I could back up newer recorded progams on another Sky+ Box it would save a lot of information that I use for research.

I am not sure what format progams are even saved as on the Sky+ hard drive!

Many thanks

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Not without breaching Sky's T&C, thus cannot be discussed on these forums

Anyhow most recordings will be encrypted to stop this

[RoystonG]

Many thanks TimmyBGood that answers my question to Mark39. It would have been handy for some of their customers if they had allowed and then when their equipment does fail you do not lose whole collections of useful data.

Luckily I have some on Amazon and they also sell cheap DVD's that I can use to aid my research.

[TimmyBGood]

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@RoystonG wrote:

It would have been handy for some of their customers if they had allowed and then when their equipment does fail you do not lose whole collections of useful data.

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I think Sky would say the hard drive is there for time-shifting to facilitate convenient viewing.  The content rights owners aren't licensing the channels carrying their material to permit permanent retention of it.

[Mark39]

@RoystonG recordings from free to air channels aren't encrypted but they're unlikely to be accessible anyway if the disk has failed, I'm afraid.

[RoystonG]

Yes I agree Annie+UK. this same company that stops it's customer backing up long saved program has recently been allowed by my town to build ruddy big studios and many offices and they still want more.

[RoystonG]

The most annoying thing is I had used 55% of a 2TB disk, so you can imagine how many programs have now been lost. Some Sky, some BBC and some National Geographic and most of the ones I have lost are not available as a download or DVD.

[Annie+UK]

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@RoystonG wrote:

The most annoying thing is I had used 55% of a 2TB disk, so you can imagine how many programs have now been lost. Some Sky, some BBC and some National Geographic and most of the ones I have lost are not available as a download or DVD.

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But how many of those programmes did you own the correct rights to?

Your Sky subscription and TV lecence does not give you archiving rights 😞

[RoystonG]

Copyright can be a long process, I know because I have had unsuccessful attempts to try and say I have copied anothers work in the past when it was a drawing of an existing house, and tey wasted money trying to prove copyright had been infringed.

Besides if it is for private viewing what am I getting out of it but seeing their programs. on a back up drive. Yes it is for research, but that research does not step on any toes. It is a bit like recording records years ago onto tape,, we did it but we hardly went around naking money from it and that is what it is all about in the long run.

You could say you are making money from the research, but if I read a book am I then using the things I learned from that book to make money and that could be said I don't have the rights to that.

Why can I not copy from a Sky+ box to another Sky+ box, what harm is it doing? (we do have another box in the house)

They allow me to record progams onto the hard drive in the first place and then their equipment packs in and I lose it all, yet I get a new box and once more can copy BBC programs, for example, onto a Sky Box and no one person gets upset I am doing that. Do I own the correct rights to any of them?

All I am asking is to be able to recover progams by backing up as I would information downloaded from private companies onto a PC hard drive. or even backing up onto Norton and USB backup drives.

It is petty that a long term Sky customer loses lots of information that way/.

I pay for Sky so why can I not keep progams they show for as long as I need them, instead of losing them when their equipment fails. They must allow me rights to record in the first place and that is all I would be doing by backing up.

Perhaps, like Norton, they could offer a back up service to cloud, so their customers had a chance to keep their progams as long as they need to and then their hard drives could pack in when they do without causing any annoyance.

[Annie+UK]

That's just a typical twisting of things so you can justify your actions, that does not make it right though 😞

You pay for the right to view things as they are broadcast/streamed and/or to record/download programmes temporarily for timeshifting purposes

Just because a harddrive is involved you cannot compare this to a PC backup

[RoystonG]

So you are saying my subscription will not allow me to archive, yet I can keep recorded programs for the life of the Sky Box, is that not archiving? (Some of mine wre on there over 5 years)

And as far as I am aware licensing is only needed from the BBC and they allow their programs to be viewed on Sky where I can download and keep on the box for as long as the box survives.

It does not make any sense