HD Sky+ Recording Capacity

I understand that the new HD Sky+ box has 160mb of storage space available
for programmes. I believe my current one (standard issue) has 40mb, of which
a certain amount is reserved for Sky's software usage. How much hd media

Jomtien...

Mb? Damn small disks.

Mike Henry...

Indeed!

The regular Sky+ has a 40Gb drive, all of which is devoted to user's
recordings.

Mike Henry...

No that would be 40 Gigabits. I think you meant 40GB.

Jomtien...

Hmm.

Not forgetting that a GB as described on a hard drive's spec isn't a
GB anyway.

Charlie Pearce...

I thought that hard drive manufacturers usually *did* use GBs, which
are usually assumed to be GiBs...

Paul Martin...

No, it's often 1GB(hard drive) = 1,024,000,000 byte.

Charlie Pearce...

Well, that's neither one GB nor one GiB!

My point was that a 50 x 1,024 x 1,024 x 1,024 = 53,687,091,200 byte
hard drive is (in my, limited, experience) most likely to be labelled
as 54GB, which is technically correct since the SI prefix giga means
10^9. However, misuse over the years has led people to expect a 54GB
hard drive to give them 54 x 1,024 x 1,024 x 1,024 bytes of storage
space, which it doesn't.

The PVR3 has a 160Gb drive, half of which is devoted to Sky's own
future uses (probably push PPV).

Mike Henry...

and 160GB here...

The Sky+ 160 has a 160Gb drive, all of which is devoted to user's
recordings.

Rainbow Chaser...

I've had 3 (yes 3) PVR3 Sky+ boxes installed in the last 4 weeks in an
attempt to find one that works and they all have 80GB disks.

Jomtien...

How are you measuring that? The second partition is not visible to the
user, except by pulling the drive and putting it in a PC.

AFAIK even if you fit a larger drive the PV3 will only recognise 80GB.

Box number 3, a Pace seems to work, if they try to slip you an Amstrad make
very sure it works before you accept it.

Mike Henry...

and here :-)

will the new box be able to store compared to the highest quality setting on
my Sky+ box?

Jomtien...

The HD data is broadcast in MPEG4 format. This should require less
space than regular definition MPEG2.

There is no quality setting on any Sky recorder.

I also understand the new lnb's are octo (allowing for upto 4 Sky+ boxes to
be connected to each) does anyone know if Sky engineers are required to
remove old Sky+ box when upgrading to hd or will they allow customers to
keep them as a secondary recording device free of charge and subscription?

Jomtien...

All Sky boxes in your house belong to you from day one. They should
never be removed except by you.

Adrian...

You will only get an octo LNB if more than 4 feeds are needed, they won't be
fitted as standard.
If you have an existing Sky+ box, then it is your property, if the engineer
removed it without permission then it would be theft. You could use it as
part of a multiroom package but there would be a subscription, also all
boxes must be permanently connected to the same phone line.