So today is the day for Sky Hdi

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780 posts

Ultimate Geek
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#152928 31-Jul-2008 10:54

cyril7:
Does that mean no tinkering with the satellite?? That would be good for people in the North Island as there hopefully wont be delays because the way the weather looks atm the Sky technicians wont go anywhere near the roof.

Yep for now I understand the new LNBs have not landed, and as the new satellite that the new LNB allows simultaneous sight of is not even in service there is currently no need up change anything on the dish. As I said HDi customers will be visted next month when LNBs do become available, I also understand there will be a gradual upgrade of all multi tuner installations if you have a sky installer visit for whatever reason, just as the last LNB upgrade has done.

Cyril

Why do we need new LNB's?

One thing I was wondering, I thought this MySky hdi had 4 internal tuners. But, I can only view 2 channels simultaneously. Is the new LNB going to allow the extra tuners to be used?

gumboot

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#152937 31-Jul-2008 11:11

James Bond:
gumboot: Got HDi yesterday

Had problems with the live pause, skipping on playpack. Paused the Simpsons on Prime for the kids went to play and evry 10 secs or so it would skip forward 5 secs (yup right over the couch bit!)

Tried on a few other channels and did the same on discovery. Did the power off/on and it seems to be ok now.

Managed to kill it later in the night by trying out the interactive games & after about 3 mins it hung, It kept showing the frozen game and I could see the ibanner and change that but no picture or sound, so another reboot.

hopefully I haven't got a dud one!

If it keeps doing that, try doing a reboot from the front panel, press back and the select buttons together.

See if that makes any difference.

There is a little red reset button beside the smartcard. would that do the same thing?

Cheers

richgamer

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#152944 31-Jul-2008 11:23

what is all this about dual core cable and new LNB's? what advantages or new features will these bring?

stuzzo

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#152953 31-Jul-2008 11:44

richgamer: what is all this about dual core cable and new LNB's? what advantages or new features will these bring?

The additional LNBs are for expansion of capacity through the use of additional satelite/s, the proposed new one isn't in the air yet.

Don't know why they would want a four LNB setup, maybe some plan in mind with another satelite or they want to bring different band ranges through seperate LNBs.

cyril7

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#152954 31-Jul-2008 11:46

Hi, the HDi has 4tuners, however only 2 of the connectors on the rear will ultimately be connected, only one is currently. Between those 4inputs and the 4tuners is a multi switch which can distribute any polarity and orbit location to any tuner. Currently only 2tuners are enabled, a firmware upgrade is reported to occur sometime in the future to enable the 3rd tuner so you can record 2things and watch another live, or record 3 programs and watch a 4th of disc thats previously recorded. The 4th tuner, I presume will be used for Ondemand downloads, well this is what Foxtel is using it for.

Currently only 160E Optus D1Hpol is used, future expansion of Sky will also continue on D1 (there is enough room for 20 odd SD channels or 10 or so HD channels togo). Beyond that I suspect Sky will be expanding on capacity at 156E on D3, which is currently not due to launch till early next year. All other capacity at 156E on C1 is full with Foxtel, not to say Foxtel and Sky may start sharing transmission, in particular Ondemand stuff, this is all just guessing.

I suspect (guessing) that once D3 is in place Sky will start expanding HD channels on D3, as that way they only need to upgrade the LNB of HDi customers, any SD expansion will be for the next couple of years on the current D1 (again just guessing) so current SD subs dont need LNBs upgrading immediatly.

Thus there is a new LNB with upto 4outputs, although only 2 outputs are needed, one that can see 160E D1Hpol and one that can see 156E D3Hpol (and possibly C1Hpol, dunno). Therefore two feeds are needed from the new LNB to an HDi, a 3rd output can be used to feed a SD MySky or standard STB although I guess you can still get away with 2feeds and split the D1 feed. I understand from next month the new LNBs will begin to be fitted and current HDi subs will be revisited. To ease cabling a dual coax simease cable will be used.

Just a note on D3, I am pretty sure it will be a low band satellite, C1 currently has the same 12250-12750 transponder range as D1, D3 will be 11700-12250, hence the reason the LNB LO changed to 10750. This means 156E will have a full 11700-12750 coverage using to birds C1 and D3.

Cyril

motogpnz

112 posts

Master Geek

#153034 31-Jul-2008 15:27

cyril7: Currently only 2tuners are enabled, a firmware upgrade is reported to occur sometime in the future...

Cyril

I'm wondering aloud about this 4 tuner thing. It would seem to be relatively straightforward to enable four tuners via firmware so is there a deeper problem preventing the 4 tuners from being rolled out to users? Like maybe disc access issues. I think the worst case scenario is recording two HD channels while watching a third HD one on chaseplay. That, plus any push content would equal about 8MB/sec of disc activity. (A quick google search suggests that even top line PCs can get down to 10MB/sec when the drive is highly fragmented.) And is there any sort of defragmentation system in the box? I'm figuring maybe that sort of read/write activity on a highly fragmented hard drive would need some serious push behind it. I've got two programmes recording at the moment in the background and the read/write heads are rattling away pretty much constantly, on a two day old system.

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allstarnz

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#153036 31-Jul-2008 15:32

mine in today, is quite nice. The installer had already done a few by the time he got to me, he didn't touch any of the dish stuff, we already have a dual LNB. He said something about needing to do that LNB stuff later to get more than 2 tuners going, not sure if that's accurate or not.

Am pleased with it so far, the cricket looked quite nice.

cyril7

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#153038 31-Jul-2008 15:35

You are probably correct, have you ever tried using a program that attempts to stream two different files at once of a CD or DVD, one I can think of is itunes, tell it to rip a disc and playback another track on the CD at the sametime, you can physically hear the worm drive on the laser assembly stripping its thread.

Cyril

pjamieson

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#153117 31-Jul-2008 20:17

So is anyone able to confirm that TV3 is in HD when the HD ticket is not purchased? But I guess most on this thread won't have an HDTV with HDI and without the ticket???

I get HDI on 12th August in AKL CBD, don't have Movies or Sport, but will be getting an HD TV late this year/early next year so am keen to know.

sbiddle

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#153123 31-Jul-2008 20:39

So can anybody confirm that these boxes definately don't allow HD via component and that it's HDMI only?

I am also assuming that the box does output HD in the native res of the content - ie it will be outputting 720p or 1080i depending on the content and it isn't a fixed output?

stuzzo

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#153127 31-Jul-2008 21:04

pjamieson: So is anyone able to confirm that TV3 is in HD when the HD ticket is not purchased? But I guess most on this thread won't have an HDTV with HDI and without the ticket???

I get HDI on 12th August in AKL CBD, don't have Movies or Sport, but will be getting an HD TV late this year/early next year so am keen to know.

"Less surprising about the new service is the inclusion of TV3’s HD signal. MySky HDi subscribers will be able to watch TV3HD without having to pay the monthly $10 HD Ticket fee (which will also be wiped if subscribers keep their original MySky as a second “multi-room” decoder).
At one stage it looked as if Sky wanted to include TV3HD as part of the movies and sports bundle, which TV3 opposed."

That's according to this article that was introduced in another thread.

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timbosan

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#153128 31-Jul-2008 21:04

Hey all, not sure if this has been brought up, I had a quick look through the thread but saw nothing, just wanted to say that got MySky HDi installed today and have only had a chance for a quick play, but I did notice one thing, under the flag where the smart card lives there are both USB and eSATA ports! This must mean the unit has the capability of copying and/or recording programs to an external disk, even if that functionality doesn't exist in the current firmware.

Does anyone know more about this? Have anyone tried hooking up anything to those ports?

stuzzo

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#153129 31-Jul-2008 21:25

timbosan: Hey all, not sure if this has been brought up, I had a quick look through the thread but saw nothing, just wanted to say that got MySky HDi installed today and have only had a chance for a quick play, but I did notice one thing, under the flag where the smart card lives there are both USB and eSATA ports! This must mean the unit has the capability of copying and/or recording programs to an external disk, even if that functionality doesn't exist in the current firmware.

Does anyone know more about this? Have anyone tried hooking up anything to those ports?

The Foxtel Promo of the Australian box suggested that eSata might be used for possible (user) hard drive storage expansion but ,as you say, not enabled yet..

The original My Sky had USB that hasn't been enabled so don't get your hopes up.

AncestralGeek

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#153149 31-Jul-2008 23:21

My units are still on the other side of a washed out access road, installers not mine. One unit will be connected to a HDTV and the other to a HD capable?? CRT. Will update on Component connection limitations once the Weather Gods co-operate.

So much to learn, so little time.

xboxnz

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Wannabe Geek

#153160 1-Aug-2008 00:15

I have had the new HD decoder installed, and am happy with it. I decided to keep my other old mysky as well.

The problem I have is that both decoders are in a central located cupboard, and I use ir senders in each room to send the remote signal back to the decoders. Both remotes and decoders run on the same frequencey, and sky have said there is no fix.

DOES ANYONE HAVE A WAY ROUND THIS, or the same problem?

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