Noisy Sky Box

[Easy_Targa]

I have a Sky HD box in the bedroom on a multi room subscription (largely redundant now) and although it's on standby and not recording, you can hear it regularly coming to life, spinning up its hard disk and doing.........well, something or other. It's distracting at night, so is there any setting I can change to stop this and keep in quiet?

[sgrimshaw]

Mine does exactly the same, so following this thread with interest.

So far, all I've come up with is putting the box on a mains timer, but it's far from a good solution.

[mini1380cc]

Maybe it is running updates?

[sgrimshaw]

mini1380cc said:

Maybe it is running updates?

Unlikely, I can't speak for the OP, but mine does it too much to be that.

On another site, it was suggested that it might be anytime data related, ie that there is constant deliveries of anytime data arriving and the drive and fans are noiser than other boxes.

Not got round to turning off anytime to see if it makes a difference.

[LordGrover]

My Humax Foxsat HD is the same. I guess anything with a spinning HDD and cooling fans is not going to be silent.

[Easy_Targa]

I think that updates are certainly part of the issue but this is happening about four or five times a night every single night. Surely Sky are not updating stuff that much?
I had an older box before this one(non HD) and that did the same trick and was noisier but at least it was maybe only once or twice a night.
The modern (2TB) HD box in the front room, comes to life every ten minutes or so just makes quieter whizzy noises for a few minutes then goes off again. I had to sleep in the front room the other night and ended up putting a cushion over the thing.

[GreigM]

Its downloading/recording content for the anytime/showcase service. Somewhere between 25-50% of your hard drive space is reserved for sky to do their own thing on your box. Not much you can do to stop it except cut the power as in the timer use above.

[Easy_Targa]

OK so taking a couple of responses into account.
Is it possible to turn off the "anytime" function/capability? I don't need it upstairs.

[GreigM]

Easy_Targa said:

OK so taking a couple of responses into account.
Is it possible to turn off the "anytime" function/capability? I don't need it upstairs.

Nope.

[sgrimshaw]

GreigM said:

Easy_Targa said:

OK so taking a couple of responses into account.
Is it possible to turn off the "anytime" function/capability? I don't need it upstairs.

Nope.

Qualified "Yup"

When it was called "anytime" you could certainly disable it in the Settings.

It is now called On Demand, and there are options in the settings to Disable "Push On Demand" and Disable "On Demand Downloads"

Might be worth giving that a go, pretty sure that the first is OTA and the second is network traffic.

Another approach might be to remove it from the network, I believe it needs a network connection for on-demand to be active.

[Easy_Targa]

This one is not on the network, it requires a separate box to do that. I took the phone line out as well in case it was dialling out in the dead of night.
Will try the settings for these On Demand features and switch them off, thanks, its got to be worth trying.

[Tycho]

Easy_Targa said:

This one is not on the network, it requires a separate box to do that. I took the phone line out as well in case it was dialling out in the dead of night.
Will try the settings for these On Demand features and switch them off, thanks, its got to be worth trying.

Push on demand is delivered via satellite so will do so even if not connected to the network. Disabling this should do the trick.

[Easy_Targa]

Just to update this for posterity. This worked........ sort of anyway. Box still powers up but less often and its quieter because the hard disk doesn't seem to "chatter" like it did. It's now bearable in the bedroom.

[sgrimshaw]

Easy_Targa said:

Just to update this for posterity. This worked........ sort of anyway. Box still powers up but less often and its quieter because the hard disk doesn't seem to "chatter" like it did. It's now bearable in the bedroom.

I just popped by to post much the same. The box is much quieter now.