Sky Q - Anyone Got It?

[MikeFish]

What if I'm watching a programme in the living room, then the missus tries to watch the same program later but I only got half way through it? Does it start at the beginning for her or start where I left off? If she watches it all, then the next day I go to continue watching it, do I have to try and remember how far I got through or can I still recall my original position even though the wife watched it all in another room?

Also, if the other boxes are only connected via wifi then you may have a full signal in the bedroom now because you are right next to your box but surely the speed is slow becuase the box must have a weak signal back to the main router?

[doodlebug]

Doesn't it use LAN over mains?

[MikeFish]

Does it? I hadn't read that anywhere. That'll explain the better signal. Won't work very well in parts of my house then.
You also need to have sky broadband to use the boxes as hotspots don't you?

[doodlebug]

How it all works without the Sky router is somewhat unclear. Possibly by design.

[Brooner]

question on fitting i believe it comes with a new LMB did they replace the complete dish or just the LMB as my dish is about 20 ft on the gable end of the house was yours at hight or at ground level
as i know some of the fitter can have mild vertigo and require scafolding i if so i would fit the LMB myself

[doodlebug]

They replace the LNB and add the additional feeds, there's new cable to run to the main box.

EDIT, there's no additional feeds. New LNB splits the horizontal and vertical frequencies so one cable for each to feed the six tuners. I'd assumed one feed per tuner which is no longer correct.

[Brooner]

the cable would be a pain as my walls have solid insulation and i do not want a cable ruining down the wall
i have a mate getting it to replace his existing sky box so il see if they tell him he needs new cables
would they not use the same coaxial as the HD system?

[MikeFish]

I have 3 dishes on my chimney, each with 4 wires going straight into a hard to reach part of the loft. They will love me when they come to install!!!

[doodlebug]

That's the bonus with sky q, just need one pair of feeds for the six tuners.

Sky don't do lofts....you'll need indy for that.

[MikeFish]

Won't need to go into loft, will just need to work out which of the 12 wires goes to the living room; I guess it's a case of disconnect one are a time until the signal is lost. But it's way up high at the top of the chimney, I'd be surprised if they go that high.

[doodlebug]

Their ladder work is pretty constrained. There's details on the website somewhere.

The new LNB won't be compatible with the old. So if you've got another box connected it'll need to be fed from elsewhere.

[kent_andy]

So they add something to he dish, no new cables run, intact the ones at my old had boxes were disconnected and thrown away as they are wireless, there is an adapt or on the main box, but it's tiny and unnoticeable.

Regarding program. You can watch in kitchen, then the wife goes to the lounge, she can carry in watching it where you were, or click to start from the beginning and fast forward through. Basically it's independent on each box.

[FaisalJ]

Sky Q installed yesterday, and first impressions are good!

Installation:

- The Sky technician took down the old sky dish and put up a new one, but kept the existing cabling from the dish into the house
- The main sky Q box lives in our living room, and can be connected to the router by wifi or ethernet cable
- The mini boxes connect by wifi (seems to be on their own wifi network), so the only cables they need are power and a HDMI
- I put one mini box behind the TV in the kitchen, and another mini box behind the TV in our bedroom
- I've now been able to ditch a whole mess of Ir sender/receivers, cat5 cables, cat5/HDMI converters, HDMI splitters etc etc
- I can confirm the mini boxes are small enough to stick on the back of a TV. I used 4 strips of double sided foam tape. Ignore the wiring on the other side of the TV, that is no longer needed:

Wouldn't know it's there from the front. The TV will go a bit flatter against the wall, but I needed to tidy up some of the cables pinching on the arm of the wall mount:

Use:

- The menus are a lot nicer to use than virgin. Navigation between them doesn't have the same lag my tivo boxes had.
- The touch remote seems like a bit of a gimmick at the moment, might see the benefit after more use
- A problem I had with virgin was that the remotes were not very responsive, because one box was inside a cabinet with a glass front, and the other was in a cupboard upstairs (so using IR sender/receivers). The sky remotes use bluetooth, so this is no longer an issue for my boxes downstairs. (The one upstairs seems not to like it's position behind the TV, might just need new batteries in the remote.
- It's pretty easy to program the remotes to a TV (and if needed, a soundbar). I couldn't previously get the virgin remote working with my yamaha soundbar. So now, I just have one remote in each room, and the main TV/soundbar remotes can all go in the man-drawer, for occosianal use when a setting needs altering.


All in all, I'm pleased. The only significant problem I've had was that the virgin router packed in while we were messing around with connections, and when it came back to life the internet speed has been a lot slower than usual! No idea why. I had 150Mb before we messed with the router, and now have 20-40Mb. Virgin coming out on Thursday to have a look.

[MikeFish]

Interesting that they use their own network. So the 2 boxes need to be within wifi range of each other to work and will not piggy back my own wifi network? I'm assuming if they have ethernet sockets then they will use an existing network rather than needing their own dedicated network?

[FaisalJ]

Interesting that they use their own network. So the 2 boxes need to be within wifi range of each other to work and will not piggy back my own wifi network? I'm assuming if they have ethernet sockets then they will use an existing network rather than needing their own dedicated network?

They create a mesh network, similar to how sonos works I believe.

I think the ethernet ports on the minis are not intended to be used unless there is a wifi range issue -the ports on the minis are covered with a message on the cover to go online for further instructions if you plan to use the ethernet socket. I've seen some mention about powerline functionality being built into them too? There seem to be some ways round it if the boxes are out of wifi range - probably worth asking sky.

Did some more reading on my remote control issue; turns out the remotes for the mini boxes are IR-only, and not bluetooth as I thought. Bugger. I think I've got my kitchen tv remote working by complete fluke then; the front of the mini box faces the adjacent glass doors, and the IR must be bouncing off the glass! To get the bedroom one working I'll have to either:

- Reinstate IR sender/receivers
- See if I can get an extra bluetooth remote off sky (only the touch remote for the main box is BT), or
- Pair the (BT enabled) touch remote with the upstairs mini box, and use the normal IR remote downstairs in the living room