is there any use for my old sky+ box?

[littleguy]

bin it? sell it? reycle it? give it to charity?

what is the best course of action for it?

[Morningside]

Certain ones can be hacked. Else pull hard drive out and bin.

[littleguy]

thanks!

[Corso Marche]

Morningside said:

Certain ones can be hacked. Else pull hard drive out and bin.

I pulled the hard drive out of mine a few months back and binned the rest. I intended using the hard drive as extra storage in an external caddy.
I ran into a small problem though, the hard drive never mounts properly using the caddy and so it won't stay recognised by my machine. It stayed connected once for long enough to allow me select a quick format but the problem is still there. I can't be sure the format was completed.
It's as if the disk still has boot info or something similar on it which is preventing it from mounting properly.
But that's just a pure guess on my part.

Has anybody seen similar before, and been successful in re-tasking a drive from their Sky+ box ?

[Parabola]

Use it as a freeview box in another room? Or give it to a friend/relative who could do the same.
You'll get a decent number of channels on your old viewing card, inc. the BBC ones and 3 & 4 in HD too. Can buy a £25 viewing card if you want more.

The UI is loads nicer than most dedicated freeview boxes too.

[FlossyThePig]

Parabola said:

Use it as a freeview box in another room? Or give it to a friend/relative who could do the same.
You'll get a decent number of channels on your old viewing card, inc. the BBC ones and 3 & 4 in HD too. Can buy a £25 viewing card if you want more.

The UI is loads nicer than most dedicated freeview boxes too.

Freesat not Freeview.

Freesat uses the dish, Freeview uses an aerial.

[Parabola]

FlossyThePig said:

Freesat not Freeview.

Freesat uses the dish, Freeview uses an aerial.

Ahh, yes... this.

[Geebo]

FlossyThePig said:

Freesat not Freeview.

Freesat uses the dish, Freeview uses an aerial.

Can you still receive & record HD channels using a Sky box for Freesat?

[Morningside]

Geebo said:

FlossyThePig said:

Freesat not Freeview.

Freesat uses the dish, Freeview uses an aerial.

Can you still receive & record HD channels using a Sky box for Freesat?

You can get BBC HD channels I am not sure about the others. All recording facilities are switched off by Sky including (IIRC) any that are stored on your HDD.

[garycat]

Morningside said:

Certain ones can be hacked. Else pull hard drive out and bin.

The drive in my Thomson one is a 3.5" 160Gb IDE - not worth saving unfortunately.