My Sky + was on the blink, usual thing, pause freezing up, etc etc - it's out of warranty. Anyway, I went to PC World yesterday, bought a Samsung 250Gb HD for £80, took it home, swapped it over, ran the housekeeping and it worked straight away, took all of 10 mins to do.

So now I have 120 hours of recording time and no more problems.

Here's how if anybody else wants to do it:

Digital Spy

Mine did exactly the same a couple of years back. Is yours the first generation box Jasper (with the rotating lights on the left hand side rather than in the middle?) If so, it's a known problem that the air flow over the drive (or rather lack of it) causes the hard drives to fail regularly.

Chris

Nope - second generation Thompson box - lights in the middle, there was a Sky upgrade that makes the fan go on all the time.....

Can you use a Sky + box as a stand alone hard isk recorder ?

Glad it worked out, but be careful if you use the wrong hard drives, within a few weeks they can begin to fail. So far ours has been ok, but that was the 200gb. Only certain 250gb work well, due to a couple of problems with the software.

Enjoy it, it gives so much more freedom!!

Made sure I got one that was well recommended by other people ....

Don't know what you mean by stand alone recorder????

If you have no dish , could you still use it via scarts etc as a hard disc recorder?

I've never looked at a Sky + box so could be talkin absolute cobras

Dave - I think you are mate

It comes with all the Sky software, if it doesn't see a signal in doesn't work

You're better off with a DVD recorder. £120 for a half decent one from Richer Sounds. There are ones with HDD's in them.

Failing that, an old PC, Hauppague PVR-350 card, and a copy of Sage TV and you are away.

Chris