So last Saturday I moved into my new “Diet House”, temporary accommodation while myself & Sarah desperately try and find a house worth purchasing. “Diet House” already had a Sky dish, but only with a single LNB, so ringing up Sky they quiet happily move my account to the new address, and slap on a �40 charge to upgrade the dish. This is clearly unacceptable, so a quick bout off “I’m not paying that I’d like to cancel my account”, and the charge is waived. Yesterday the engineer came round and replaced the entire dish and LNB with a shiny new one, suitable for all my Sky+ Requirements!.
Sky Broadband however is a different kettle of fish, being a new service i get the impression they don’t deal with many house moves. So after several conversations the procedure is as follows!.
- You tell Sky broadband your moving
- They cancel your broadband account
- Despite you just receiving the Free Equipment and the 12 month contract
- You can then resubmit you broadband application ( AFTER 1 Month! )
1 Month is slight craziness, but I thank Sky for my Free Netgear Wifi Access Point, ( and ADSL router if I re flash it ). So i have ordered a BT home hub ( mainly because it looks sexy ). So I should be back on-line again next Wednesday!
Hoorah Im back on the internet, with 2 days of downtime which was quite a nightmare. Recieved the Sky broadband router this morning. During the two days down time I had long conversations with the people at sky.
First I spoke to the “Tech” support center in India, they were as you’d expect rubbish, not technical people at all and just reading off a script. The fact I was using a Non wireless laptop really confused them. When they are confused they just go back to the previous line in thier script and repeat. Good Patients trying stuff.
Any way i discovered the following
- The Sky Broadband router is a rebranded Netgear DG834gt
- The router runs modified firmware
- The ADSL login and password are preconfigured and not accessable from the admin pages of the router
- The default login for the admin pages is:
- Username: admin
- Password: sky
- If you want to find out your ADSL login and password you can do so by the following method ( courtesy of Jose Cardoso )
- access the router with the following URL (assuming your router is 192.168.0.1)
- then the following URL will download the netgear.cfg file you just created containing the username and password
- Best of all I got the UK Tech Support number for Sky Broadband
SKY Broadband UK tech Support
08702435000
After reading my own highly informative post on the costs of the new Sky Broadband offering.� I have thinking about my own broadband situation, I’m currently with plus.net who so far have been excellent for these reasons:
- I ordered Broadband from them and they supplied (nice of them)
- They are fairly quick to respond to email queries
But now thinking of defecting to Sky I asked plus.net the following:
“What is plusnet doing to discourage its users from Leaving and going over to the much cheaper service SKY is about to roll out?
I appreciate the services provided differ slightly ( i.e. no static ip etc etc ) however to get a 8mb unlimited connection for �17/mnth is vastly different to the plus.net offering.
Obviously I would like to stay with plus.net , but will find it difficult to justify the extra cost.”
The response I got,� really got on my nerves, as its clearly a totally standard reply.�
Dear Mr Lloyd,
Here are some comparisons between ourselfs and Sky.
- Coverage: Our prices aren�t based on the exchange you are connected to, or where you live. Sky will charge you �17 if you�re not on one of the exchanges where their equipment is fitted. Currently, Sky equipment is only in 28% of the UK�s exchanges.
- UK based support: Our Support Team is based entirely in Sheffield, whereas Sky is using outsourced technical support in India. We feel ours offers more personal and localised support.
- Flexible contract periods: We offer a variety of contracts, from monthly and annual, to our “you stay, we pay” offer (where your cancellation fee is reduced the longer you stay as a customer). Sky only offers a 12 month contract - this also extends your contract for Sky TV by an additional 12 months.
- “Hard” usage allowances: We only limit usage allowances during peak times (4pm to midnight). There is no limit on how much traffic you use during off-peak times. Sky�s 2 lower products have fixed data usage allowances, with no difference between peak and off-peak times.
- Referral based: We have always based our signups on referrals and don’t spend large amounts of money on advertising. If we get new customers, it’s usually because of our current customers telling friends and family about the good service they receive. Sky are throwing large amounts of money at advertising to try and tempt customers, without any thought of word of mouth.
- New customers only?: Many companies, Sky included, often offer great deals to new customers only. All of our special offers are available to both existing and new customers.
- Home Phone: Our new Home Phone service lets you to pay us, instead of BT for your phone calls and line rental. This also gives you the convenience of only getting one monthly bill for both your Home Phone and broadband. For more information visit http://www.plus.net/residential/phonecalls/home/index.shtml?wlr=homephonelink_phonecallspage
- Simple requirements: All you need to get PlusNet broadband is a BT telephone line. However, with Sky you must subscribe to one of their, often expensive, television packages.
We hope this information is useful, and that it helps you to decide whether you still want to move your broadband service.
Regards,
Gary Beardshaw
Their points are clear and consice, and could be easy summed up by, ” We have no really benefit into you staying here and paying over double for the equivalent offer “.� I’ll be canceling my Plus.net account as soon as Sky say my broadband account is active. plus.net clearly have no interest in keeping loyal customers ( 5 years now ).
I have another rant re mobile phones I need to get off my chest, but Ill leave that one for another night.
Tags: Penguins hate turnips so dont give them any, Sky broadband
Got this in the mail today free wireless router and Free 2mb broadband (assuming you already have sky, but then why wouldn’t you ?)
Tags: Sky +, Sky Plus, Sky HD, Sky SATA
The register have just posted the first review of Sky HD it can be found here
Tags: SKY HD, SKY +, HD TV, HD 1080i
EXCLUSIVE: Sky changes mind and announces 1080i for all its HD broadcasts
So whos bought a 720p only tele then? 
"Having originally stated that it would likely use a combination of 720p and 1080i high definition formats on its new HD platform, Sky has just exclusively revealed to us that it’s now intending to broadcast all of its Sky HD channels in the 1080i format from launch.
It will be interesting to see how this surprising decision works out when it comes to showing sports footage, which is widely thought to look better in 720p because of its high motion content. The 1080i decision also lends a little - though it really is only a little - more credibility to the scare story run in the Daily Mail a few weeks back suggesting that the 720/768-line TVs that currently make up the vast majority of the TV market aren’t completely ideal for getting the best from the available (1080i) HD signals.
Another interesting fact we discovered during our discussions with Sky is that the Sky HD receiver will apparently let you adjust the signal output from the box so that, say, even though a broadcast is in 1080i, the box can output it in 720p."
That last paragragh should read "the receiver can fudge the picture to fit your already Obsolete TV, and make the picture poor quality".
Original post Here
more sky HD news here
Tags: Sky +, Sky Plus, Sky HD, High Definition
“HDTVUK - blogging in high def
Sky has announced a May launch for its HD service. Its rather rather annoying HD website not only has the details of pricing but also says that installations for the service will begin in May. It seems very unlikely that Sky would begin installations without having launched the service.
It seems quite possible too that the announcement has been sparked by the BBC which yesterday confirmed that it would offer a trial HD transmission of the World Cup, Wimbledon and much else via both satellite and cable.
Sky has also announced the prices for the service. If you are an existing subscriber youll pay 299 for the HD box and 10 a month on top of your existing subscription. Viewers get installation and a Sky+ subscription if they havent already got one free. Theres no mention of viewers getting any upgrade benefits to swap current SD boxes for HD ones. Theres also no mention of the size of the hard drive of the box which will almost certainly be either 160 or 300 Gigabytes.
New customers pay the same but they also get half price subscription to the main Sky channels for 3 months.
Viewers also have to put down a 30 deposit.”
From the register original article
Tags: Sky +, Sky Plus, Sky HD, Sky SATA
Just found on digital spy in thier forums a Power point presentation for the installation engineers. Which show the back of the new box, which is complete with SATA connector and an RJ45 which are said to be “reserved for future use”. Broad Band tinternet on my Sky box, easy expanability of the SKY + hard drives. Gimme Gimme!
Power point presentation here
google referer
