just bagged me a freebie SKY+ HD box from the tip

When the local tip was bounteous with its dumped Sky+ boxes, bikes parts and so on, they were easy to reset and sell on.

After quite a drought that even had the staff scratching their heads, I picked up a HD box yesterday.

A few googles on the model got me the hard reset key presses and after about an hour of faffing I have access to my own Sky subscription channels and the free to air HD channels.

So, if you see one of these at the tip and you are allowed to get it, heres a few googled tips:

Amstrad DRX890

Switch the box off at the mains.
Hold down the left and right buttons on the box (not the remote ) as you switch on again at the mains for at least a minute
When the blue circle recording light comes on, release the left and right buttons and press Select on the box.
The blue light circle should rotate in reverse.
After several minutes the box will be left in standby.
Reboot after a further 3 minutes.

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"power reset" - switch off at mains, wait 30 seconds or so and switch back on

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"Sky+ planner rebuild" - "Services" "0" "0" "1" "Select" takes you to the "hidden installers menus" - then under "rebuild" press "down" and then "Select"
Third - try a forced software download - Switch off at mains, press and hold down "backup" button on the box and switch back on at mains, continue holding down "backup" button until you see either onscreen message or four leds light up on box front, go and make a cuppa download can take up to 15 minutes.

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Btw, if you want a standard Sky+ box, I have a few available.

good score! how easy is it to get sky in another room with an additional sky box? got sky+ hd already but would like it in other rooms but obviously dont want to upgrade to multi room if i dont need to...

jamabikes":tmtggth4 said:

good score! how easy is it to get sky in another room with an additional sky box? got sky+ hd already but would like it in other rooms but obviously dont want to upgrade to multi room if i dont need to...

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If you've got sufficient connections on your dish lnb for additional connections, and you put another Sky box in another room using it / them, AND there's no Sky card in the box, you'll just get FTA channels out of your Sky box.

I think they encrypt at least some FTV channels (that you'd normally see on freeview) so don't expect everything that's not normally for pay - but you should be able to get FTA channels.

For anything more, you'd need multi-room, unless you want to pipe the video out from your existing box to another room.

jamabikes":36vn8qpc said:

good score! how easy is it to get sky in another room with an additional sky box? got sky+ hd already but would like it in other rooms but obviously dont want to upgrade to multi room if i dont need to...

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if you want sky+ your dish needs the extra connections as below



1 set goes to your existing set-up and the others are for one or two extra boxes (but only 1 Sky+ box). Sky+ uses two connections.

Most recent installation seem to have a multiple LNB so you'll just need some connectors, cable and a big drill bit to get through the wall...

legrandefromage":1owtw4xr said:

jamabikes":1owtw4xr said:

good score! how easy is it to get sky in another room with an additional sky box? got sky+ hd already but would like it in other rooms but obviously dont want to upgrade to multi room if i dont need to...

Click to expand...

if you want sky+ your dish needs the extra connections as below

1 set goes to your existing set-up and the others are for one or two extra boxes (but only 1 Sky+ box). Sky+ uses two connections.

Most recent installation seem to have a multiple LNB so you'll just need some connectors, cable and a big drill bit to get through the wall...

Click to expand...

Thing is, if you're gonna use a Sky+ box to need two LNB connections, you're gonna have to pay for multi-room - edit: and if you're gonna do that, might as well let the man with the plan... and a van, do the work and take the strain.

If you just want to effectively use it as a FTA viewing box, with no Sky card in, it'll work just peachy with one satellite connection.

cheers guys thanks for the info. all the other tv's have free view any way so probably just get a magic eye thingy.

you dont need a card for Sky+ unless you want extra channels

HD freebies are BBC1,2, ITV1 and channel 5

legrandefromage":dpckj4fe said:

you dont need a card for Sky+ unless you want extra channels

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Yes, and you don't need 2 LNB feeds to it, unless you can record with it - from memory, don't you need a subscription and an active Sky card in to use recording features - that certainly used to be the case, anyways, because at first they charged extra for it.

And even then, it will work perfectly happy on one LNB feed - you just won't have the benefit of more than one tuner.