New Year (almost), new Sky Digibox
On Boxing Day I decided it was time to replace the Sky Digibox in the study.
For some time now the Digibox has been struggling to cope - it’s an old box and technology plus the demands of the Sky Digital service have long since moved beyond what it was actually built to cope with.
The Pace 2200 dates back to when Sky first launched its digital satellite service. In that time much has changed with the service - the number of channels has exploaded and Sky has done a great deal of development on the platform, enhancing and bug fixing the Digibox firmware and adding new features. This development and expansion of the firmware on the box coupled with the volume of channels the box is being asked to manage adds up to more than its old and, by today’s Digibox standards, slow processor can cope with.
So, a quick wander on to eBay and £100 and two days later, we now have a brand new Pace DS430N (the very latest non-Sky+ Digibox) in the study.
And it runs like a sports car compared to the box it replaced.
Of course, this is just our secondary box, we still have the mark two Pace Sky+ box in the lounge with the hacked 160GB hard drive upgrade fitted.
October 12th, 2007 at 11:11 pm
It’s worth mentioning that the 160GB drive died a few months ago in the Sky+ (thankfully it gave us enough warning that it was dying, so we were able to watch/copy off everything we had recorded).
I have since replaced the drive with a 250GB Maxtor unit. Not working as perfectly as the 160GB, but only a very occasional recording and fast-forwarding glitch, nothing to worry about.
Either way - loads of storage space.