I recently bought a 50″ LG 50PS3000 true HD TV, and then upgraded to Sky+ HD from my original Sky+ package.
The TV is excellent – what they say about being able to see every blade of grass on football matches (in HD) is true (the state of some of those grounds is shocking – the groundskeepers ought to be ashamed of themselves 😉 ).
One thing I noticed immediately after I’d installed the Sky box was that the newer boxes give a much better picture, even in normal definition. So that’s worth remembering if you get a large/HD TV.
Upgrading the Sky box was extremely quick. I called on a Thursday afternoon to upgrade, was told the box would arrive (for self-install) by the following Tuesday latest… and it arrived at 9am the following morning! That’s excellent service.
Setup was a doddle, just requiring one call to activate the card for HD.
There is one snag, which I only discovered last week. I cannot use Live Rewind or record anything! Sky quickly sent out an engineer (I called Saturday and could have had the engineer Bank Holiday Monday if I’d wanted). It turns out that there is nothing wrong with the box, but this has been a bit of an issue with self-installation.
According to the engineer, the Sky databases have all the information, but the server which sends out the information isn’t working properly. The inital install wipes out the old Sky+ settings from the card, but doesn’t replace them, so you have the receiving package (the “HD” part of the deal) but none of the other bits (the “+” part). Apparently, it doesn’t matter how many times you try to pair the card with the system, the chances are it won’t work. He said that in the past, they took a while to admit (or rather, identify) that there was a fault.
Well, I called Sky about 4 hours after the engineer had gone (you’re supposed to wait up to 24 hours after an update, but it was obvious this wasn’t going to work – the intial HD activation was instantaneous when I called). Sky were very good again: the agent I spoke to didn’t appear to be aware of the problem, but I explained what the engineer had said. She spoke with her manager, who then came on to the line after no more than a minute, and who told me he would escalate it immediately. Another couple of hours later they called back to get some details of my system and are obviously dealing with it now.
I cannot fault Sky on any of this. So they have a problem with a system? It happens. They are dealing with it. Admirably.
Of course, this would be enough for most people to start a website dedicated to how bad Sky are – probably made worse by convincing themselves that the Irish accent is an Indian one (that’s the usual gripe – call centre not in the UK).
If you have this problem, call Sky on 08442 414141. They are helpful.
One more thing: to make your Sky remote control work with the 50PS3000, you need to use the code 1293 to program it. This code will not work on older Sky remotes (and my Sky+ one was one of those).