Well according to a thread on the avforums it looks as though the Pace and Samsung SkyHD boxes are finally now being installed. Only a couple of thousand at the moment but apparently the official roll out will be w/c 8th September with the Thomson boxes being phased out by the end of the year.

Looks like i'll be upgrading to HD towards the end of the year then.

Here's the thread..... samsung sky+ hd box - AVForums[/url]

There are some pictures of the new Samsung box here....... Index of /images

Cheers

Dave.

from what I remember, that looks pretty much identical to our HD box and I wouldn't get too excited by a new manufacturer as there's always been talk of this box being better than that box etc and you'll find "proof" that every box is actually better the others

from what I remember, that looks pretty much identical to our HD box and I wouldn't get too excited by a new manufacturer as there's always been talk of this box being better than that box etc and you'll find "proof" that every box is actually better the others

Your right it does look identical to the Thomson box.... It's supposed to. Sky dictate what the box looks like.

The fact is that there are a very high rate of problems with the Thomson HD boxes. I have friends and family who have the Thomson box and have nothing but problems with it. Things range from having to hard reset the box at least once or twice a week to choppy image whilst ff/rew and very noisy fans / HDD. That's not to say all the HD boxes have problems though. But it is why i haven't bothered going for HD till there are a choice of manufacturers for the box.

Now i work for an international company which actually owns Thomson and i can get Thomson items at staff prices etc.... And a good few years ago i had a couple of items that were / are still great but these HD boxes just don't seem up to standard in my own opinion.

Hopefully things will improve with the two new arrivals.

Cheers

Dave.

Hopefully, but my 13 month old thomson is still going strong. Also as I posted in that thread the samsung boxes are already failing, there is already one listed on ebay which is broken.

Yeah i saw that...... I'll be looking more at the Pace boxes myself.

Cheers

Dave.

so if a product fails then its obviously useless? i'd expect failed boxes but since there has only been one make of HDbox then obviously its going to look bad on thomson :confused:

I thought they were all made to the same spec (Skys own design), and all they do get is get different firms to build them?

So they'll have exactly the same design of board etc etc.

so if a product fails then its obviously useless? i'd expect failed boxes but since there has only been one make of HDbox then obviously its going to look bad on thomson :confused:

I'm not saying Thomson are useless but the HD boxes they have manufactured for Sky seem to have some issues inc. build quality. On the AVforums and DigitalSpy there are satallite installation engineers who also show concerns over the amount of problems with the Thomson boxes. I recently had an RF feed run down to the new plasma so as to get it's freeview up & running and was talking to the chap, (he owns his own sat / aerial install business and lives down the road from us), while he was installing it and he also had concerns with the Thomson boxes and said he knew of numerous problems. When i said i'd been waiting for sky to get the boxes manufactured by the likes of Pace and A.N.Other to come into the system he said he didn't blame me for waiting!!!

Cheers

Dave.

I thought they were all made to the same spec (Skys own design), and all they do get is get different firms to build them?

So they'll have exactly the same design of board etc etc.

I believe they are made to the same spec but am sure the different manufacturers use difeerent suppliers for the actual parts..... Hence some being more reliable than others. I'm pretty sure that in the past things like HD's have been different in different suppliers Sky+ boxes....

Obviously the Sky digibox and Sky+ boxes even look different depending on which company made them. (That's the other way to tell who made it other than the name on the back).

Cheers

Dave.

I'm not saying Thomson are useless but the HD boxes they have manufactured for Sky seem to have some issues inc. build quality. On the AVforums and DigitalSpy there are satallite installation engineers who also show concerns over the amount of problems with the Thomson boxes. I recently had an RF feed run down to the new plasma so as to get it's freeview up & running and was talking to the chap, (he owns his own sat / aerial install business and lives down the road from us), while he was installing it and he also had concerns with the Thomson boxes and said he knew of numerous problems. When i said i'd been waiting for sky to get the boxes manufactured by the likes of Pace and A.N.Other to come into the system he said he didn't blame me for waiting!!!

Cheers

Dave.

but when I was looking at those same sites when I was looking into Sky+ boxes for upstairs I found half of them swear by a certain (sky+) box as those built by other companies are so bad and unreliable etc yet others can only sing the praises of those so called dodgy boxes and you'd have installation engineers on both sides