Ask Sky+ - a Digital Spy Exclusive

I had the pleasure of meeting the Sky+ development team recently. The discussions were informal and off the record so what you see are not gospel and no dates were confirmed for any future activities.

As mentioned elsewhere the team do read the forums on a regular basis and find it a useful forum in which to see what users think of their product. In the past it has even helped them enhance the product so although you won’t see them posting they are listening.

With all the questions being asked in the forum there weren’t any that they hadn’t thought about but there were a few that they were pleasantly surprised to see asked. Here then is some insight into the future:

The new box? Well I have seen it, picked it up and turned it around. It is about the same size as a standard Digibox (a little deeper but not much). The pictures that have been going around show its new colour scheme – white – but there is no change in functionality and it will start being delivered in the next couple of month as stocks of the old box disappear from the various distribution channels. New software will be installed in all the boxes (new and old) at the same time. There will not be an official launch of the new box as it is just an evolution of the current box taking advantage of the changes in technology in the last 4 years since Sky started developing the original Sky+ box.

When will dual recording appear? The team would only say that dual recording is now in testing within the Sky team itself (ie out of development) and that it is likely to be released “spring / summer???. This next release will also include save live pause to planner and this functionality will be “clever???. It will offer the ability – if the live pause setting is long enough – for the entire programme to be saved to disk. In addition if you have an entire programme in the live pause rewinding into that programme will allow that programme to be saved to planner (ie a portion of the buffer). Also the dual recording function will enhance the functionality with clashes and allow users to optionally select what they want recorded if a clash does occur that can not be dealt with under the dual recording function.

Widescreen switching? There are no current plans to change the way this works – via pin 8. As the folk at Sky understand it there is no S-Video offset voltage standard – the Royal Television Society have a working committee trying to standardise this and if they do then there may well be a future version of the hardware that supported this on the S-Video connection (though this will be a hardware modification and so not available on current boxes). Finally they tell me that line 23 is part of the broadcast area so the Digibox does not and will not insert anything into this area – it is something that the broadcaster could do if they wanted to send this information. This is different to the DTT system where the widescreen flag is in the AFD header of the MPEG data stream and that that is then inserted into the output.

Larger Hard disks and reporting available space? There are no current plans to offer a larger hard disk or an upgrade but the software is being altered to deal with some different hard disks as Sky believe there will be a time when this happens. The calculation of available space always over estimates the used space and the rounding will not be changed. When the new software appears Sky won’t guarantee that it works with all disks but it will pave the way for other options when the market requires it.

Series Links. Series links now cover 80 channels and 3500 series are linked together. Sky are implementing an enhanced support system to help ensure broadcasters systems don’t mess up series links. There will be an enhancement in the next software that will deal more elegantly with the issue of what happens to series links after a clash causes one programme to not top be recorded. The hope Channel 5 will bring in series links soon.

Pricing. The current pricing is £249 and it likely to remain but there are likely to be special offers doing the rounds on occasions. In addition they are currently testing a number of different pricing models on a random sample of current subscribers – they phone you – the offers are not available if people phone in. There is currently no decision on rollout of any of these changes and any offers will be dependant on the feedback from people offered and what other market competition occurs. Sky are very insistent that should there be any switch to another pricing policy that they will not forget the current loyal customer base. There are no current plans to change the £10 a month subscription.

Sky+ in Ireland – hopefully this will be available in a couple of months. There are no technical issues just systems ones – for example the Euro billing system didn’t have Sky+ as an option.

Any side effects of the new Sky Cards. When Sky+ users get the new cards the accompanying letter will let you know that recordings older than 6 months will not be accessible (the letter doesn’t say 6 months but it is fair to guess that things in 2003 will be ok and that recordings from some parts of 2002 will not decrypt – so watch them or copy them to tape before your new card arrives.

Plans for the future include A-Z listing for a full week ahead and the ability to check for a particular programme.

The Sky+ Sky Guide option 0 – ie recorded and to be recorded – will have the ability to sort by A-Z and to see recorded and unrecorded lists separately (the exact details of this were not revealed).

There will be an increase in the number of Favourite channels that can be stored

Other questions that you asked:

Is there going to be a fix for the bug where programme titles / synopsis “magically??? change on recordings / planner recordings? The answer is as soon as they find and swat this it will be fixed.

Will there be any more sophisticated recording options – wish lists etc? NO
A deleted bin or other changes to the way programmes are deleted? NO

Rewind compensate (like TiVo)? NO

Relationship between Sky+ and XTV? There are two separate teams at NDS developing the products in parallel and although each can use functions developed for the other there is no direct requirement for anything in the XTV road map to appear in the Sky+ one.

Changing colours on the TV Guide to indicate scheduled recordings / and reminders? This has been looked at but it was decided it didn’t look good so will not be implemented.

Subtitle short cuts? On the road map – no time scale – this would be for all Sky users.

More than a week in the EPG? Unlikely as the terrestrial broadcasters don’t provide more information.

That was all the time we had for questions but there were a few other things that Sky will be asking for your help with in the forums over the next few weeks so keep an eye on the PVR forum.