26 Feb 2006 by Chris     No Comments    Posted under: Other Stuff

Sky+ …too noisy for the bedroom?

Well, we thought so. Full marks to Sky for agreeing to exchange our new Sky+ unit for a coventional Digibox, but really, they should warn you about this in the first place. For a start, the more recent Sky+ 40Mb boxes, made by Thomson, are really noisy compared to the old ones, both in terms of their fans and a real problem with loudly accessing the hard drive almost continually (this latter “feature” is supposedly being cured by a software upgrade soon). That would be bad enough in a living room, but it’s impossible to live with in a bedroom, where you have to sleep a few feet from the box. Why not put the thing into “standby” every bedtime? We tried that. It goes quiet after a few minutes. Bliss. Then in the middle of the night, the thing suddenly comes alive (I reckon it’s phoning home to see if there are any software updates, but that’s just a guess). You want to throw your teddy at the thing for waking you up before the birds are singing, really you do. (And I did.) The conventional Digibox, now safely installed in place of the Sky+, is silent. I don’t half miss Live Pause though.

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