Thomson: Sky+ 160

Steve, East Anglia, on November 18th, 2009
If you're willing to have a go at fixing it, then do so... i've had my sky+ box for 6 years now... my hard disk started freezing... the problem was the cooling fan power supply failed and it all over-heated.... i bought a new coolling fan on-line from a spares website... only to find the fan was actually fine, but the power supply had failed to it. If you have some time, find a 12V output from the PCB and wire this to the rear cooling fan.. may be also worth fitting an internal fan to blow air over the hard disk.... I did and the box is now 6 years old... Good luck

vinny, on March 6th, 2009
sky+ box is a waste of time if your thinking of upgrading to any other package and then downgrading after a month or so,as everything you have recorded onto your hard drive on the sky+ box gets wiped when you downgrade,for example,if you have taken out the movie package or the sports package and have recorde loads of movies and or football games but you cant watch them at the time and this is why you have recorded them,then you decide to downgrade and get rid of the movie package and the sport. well dont think you will be able to watch the things you have recorded onto your sky+ because you won't,they will also get wiped aswell,even though you paid for them at the time you had these movies/sports or even any of the 6 packages,you will not be able to watch the things you have recorded unless you upgrade again,this is an ongoing issue with sky and we will be taking this further as its daylight robery,we have spoken to a manager but even she couldnt tell us where in the terms and conditions that it states that sky would wipe all ur recorded programmes if you downgrade a package,i will be curently trying to get my money back for the sky movies,hope this helps sombody else that wants to take out any other package and then decide to downgrade,i would think very carfully b4 you get any other package,i will not be upgrading my sky ever again because of this,thanks for reading ☺

Tam, Scotland, on April 23rd, 2008
I have worked on the Sky Tech line now for 2years and I have to say DONT GO FOR SKY!!! Trust me its not worth the money! If you want the Rec and live pause go for the BT Vision Box! same size of hard drive and you dont get the osm No Sat Sig! All the sky boxes tend to do is break if you start getting a freezing pic it will soon come up with No Sat Sig! And dont even start me with the hard drives! If you start getting failed rec switck the box off at the wall take the dish inputs out leave it for a bit, put them back in and switch it on! if that dont work go for a full system reset but that will get rid of everything on the hard drive! services ,4, then 0,1 select! If that dont work DONT PAY for some third party cowboy to come out and bust it even more! Cancel and get a BT Vision box! do the same and they dont bust!

Freddie S, SE London, on December 6th, 2007
Towards the end of the 1 year Guarantee period, I was bombarded with calls from an Asian call centre telling me I had to buy an extended warrantee. They got quite pushy and I got quite annoyed that I had to repeat time and again that I did not want to even be contacted about this. Well you can guess the rest. After 18 months I started to get all sorts of hard drive problems. The Sky helpdesk have now informed me that the hard drive needs to be replaced. Of course it’s not related or the fact that you have to keep your phone line connected – a similar thing that I need for remote access that I use in my work when administering servers remotely, applying patches and uploading scripts. Just who do they think they are?

Phil, Manchester, on July 24th, 2007
I have had the 160 box 2 years now with lots of trouble. Many times it just switches itself into standby mode. The only way to get it to work again is to unplug and replug at the mains. No the picture started jerking and sound screeched so much so that now all I can get is the message NO SATELLITE SIGNAL BEING RECEIVED on a blue screen.

Norman, Belfast, on May 7th, 2007
I have recently noticed poor sound quality i.e a very annoying hissing from my Thompson Sky+ 160 box the more the volume is increased. Has anyone out there had a similar problem and if so how was it resolved.

Tim, nr Bath, on March 30th, 2007
Not impressed at all by the box. I have had at least one freeze up every week and the EPG is slow, so much so that I keep deleting my saved programmes in error. Finally I experience the SM1, 2, &3 sound issues. Sky+ is fantastic when it works, but this box is too buggy. On demand should be good when I get it though.

Mike, Knutsford, on March 3rd, 2007
The box has worked fine since I got it 8 months ago. The only problem I get is that it stops working on the HDMI output about once every three weeks and needs a complete power off, leave of for a minute and switch back on. Always seems to happen on those rare occasions when there is something good on Sky.

Rhys, Cardiff, on February 15th, 2007
I have Sky HD and Sky plus in the same open cabinet (feeding different TVs in different rooms). The problem being that the Sky plus remote activates both boxes - the sky HD only activates the Sky HD. Anyone know where the infrared receiver is on a sky HD box; or know how to disable a sky plus handset??

Greg, Northern Ireland, on February 10th, 2007
I have been having a problem with a Pace2500 sky box will not come out of the reboot mode. So what is wrong? By the way your web site is great and very informative.

Bob, Wales, on January 27th, 2007
I suffer from the same as Colin's point above also with regard to the amplification on RF2. Does anyone have any hints on how can help rather than buy a PACE box! ????

Mike, Sittingbourne, on January 12th, 2007
Awful - continually freezes. Only option is to reboot at the mains.

Colin, Christchurch, Dorset, on January 12th, 2007
The Thomson SKY+ box is NO GOOD if you wish to use it with a distribution system fed from the RF2 output. The RF modulator/loop through amplifier's performance is really poor resulting in patterning and grainy pictures. It's worst at channel high channels (68 is the default and really bad) but pretty grim all the way down to 21. IF YOU'RE GOING TO FEED A DISTRIBUTION SYSTEM, DON'T GET THOMSON - THE PACE IS MUCH MUCH BETTER!

Steve, Cornwall, on January 10th, 2007
Well I am a sky engineer, have been doing it over a year now, so I know what I am talking about. I have read most of these comments about the sky plus boxes, firstly I agree that trying to get hold of them is at sometimes a joke....and that these sky plus boxes’ are prone to problems.... but I do think, that problems can occur from number or reasons....maybe the engineer could not source the original/right problem.... is the customer, confident enough to actually work it, have they been given a demo on how to use the box..... you have to all remember its a delicate piece of equipment...there are lots of reasons for different problems, it makes you laugh coz the customer thinks there right but there not always...some of the time its the person and not the product, I’ve had my 2 sky plus boxes’ from new 5 years ago before I started working for them, I’ve had one problem... if you do book a service call, ask for a sky engineer, don’t have a sub contractor.

bailey eastbourne, on January 10th, 2007
after exacly a year this box is useless sky say it is not repairable they do not install it now as parts are no longer available avoid it with a bargepole

Martin, Devon, on December 26th, 2006
Well, reading this I wonder how long my new purchase will last. I bought it reconditioned from a local supplier, and they have said it is an early model which has a different firmware from the faulty batch? Umm....lets wait and see! So far working very well - and I am working it hard. I have 12 months warrenty, so will take it as it comes for now!

Q Mayberry, Scotland, on December 4th, 2006
Our Thomson 160 box is exhibiting the same problems everyone else is getting. We are also getting the flashing screen on recordings. i.e. the recorded program goes to a blank screen then back to the recording, it does that about 3 to 5 times at around half second intervals, really irratating.

Rosie, Corby, on August 19th, 2006
Upgraded to Sky+160 Thomson DS16210 in Jan 2006. We thought picture didnt look so sharp right from the start. engineer said as we had kept our other sky + box and moved it into other room he would replace dish to improve picture- it didnt, but his opinion was that existing dish systems just are not designed to run more than one sky+ box.They dont tell you that when you ask about multiroom! It is very noisy, even when its doing nothing! we have also noticed a lot of discrepancy on volume settings particularly on movie channels. Why?! problems have slowly started to appear over the last few months: recordings failing- apparently loss of signal/unknown reason being most common cause, failing to respond to remote and having to be rebooted,( this is starting to happen a lot), but the most recent is beginning to drive us mad- the picture starts to flash, stops and starts and turns black and white for about 20-30 seconds. At first it was only happening on recorded programmes but now it is also occuring on live tv, and just this morning I was reading the news headlines on BBCi when it happened. has anyone else had this problem? I will be contacting Sky once I have watched the recorded material I have, as I know that once they run "housekeeping", I will lose everything. I dont intend to phone them as I am fed up with the waiting. Instead I will send a recorded delivery letter to the CEO of SKY ( just google to find his name) stating that this box is not fit for the purpose for which it was intended- and yes if Sky knew they were selling faulty boxes and the complaints I have read seem to indicate this, you certainly do have six years to claim your money back under the sale of goods act. I was very interested to see the last comment about Sky saying the 160 box doesnt exist any more- I have thought for some time that these boxes were being got rid of quick at Xmas because there was something wrong with them, that and the fact that HD was just around the corner! So people, now is the time to do something- get in touch by letter and/or email with SKY's CEO and show him we are not the mugs he took us for!

Mo Styles, Walton, on August 19th, 2006
Even when brand new, the 160+ box started to play the sound out of sync with the picture, but now after 14 months the box has chosen to end its days in standby, like it seems most of them do. Sky charge £55 for an engineer to fix a box outside of warranty. Maybe they will fix it or maybe I will enjoy more pleasures and frustration!