Small is Beautiful!

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Out with the white in with the black!

You know me – if it’s ‘tech’, “I love it!”.

Finally after what the Sky installer estimated was at least a 10-year-old piece of kit, our white ‘Sky160-box’ in the bedroom finally gave up (after slowly ‘losing’ most channels one-by-one over the past few weeks). In spite of lots of advice from the techies at Sky, the Sky160 refused to respond to any form of treatment and began to prepare for its next life – in the dustbin! The Installer commented that the box was so old, it wouldn’t even be reconditioned.

In its place, a shiny new black Sky HD box has now has pride of place. It’s got all Sky’s latest whistles and bells, and we also now seem to be getting HD channels UPSTAIRS – I wasn’t expecting that, and equally, I wasn’t expecting to get the really clever features either, like the catch-up services and on-demand facilities, because there’s no nearby internet connection.

Sky’s ‘little black box’

Then, I noticed a that in addition to the new Sky-box, Sky gave me for free, a little black gizmo that plugs into the box and ‘talks’ to the home-network. And as if by magic, this now allows the box to now offer us ALL the catch-up services such as iPlayer, 4OD, ITV Player and Demand5, as well as the on-demand features. 

The little black box about the size of a large box of matches – a sort of miniature router – and that’s all that’s needed!

Result!