Sky Q problems

After having the box for less than a year, as of Monday I was unable to access any of my recordings, use the Catch Up service or pause/rewind owing to a problem with the Hard Disk Drive. Now, if this was an old box such an issue wouldn't come as much of a surprise, but, as mentioned, we haven't even had this for 12 months.

Anyway, we contacted the support teams and, eventually, the only option was to reset the entire thing, removing all recordings. This included films that I had recorded from ITV and Channel 4 (Four Lions, for instance); bearing in mind that this was before Christmas and most of my films are no longer available without purchasing them.

So, the point of this thread: well, firstly, for anyone who has just purchased a Sky Q box thinking it's wonderful, make sure you aren't too attached to any films/programmes that you have recorded; and, more importantly, should I go wangling for a voucher, or some sort of discount, to enable me to re-download the films I had that have now been deleted because my box couldn't even last for a year without failing?

Sounds to me like the hard drive has failed, which obviously you don’t want to happen so soon, but unfortunately can happen to any device that has a hard drive. My original Virgin TiVo for example only lasted a couple of years before the hard drive went - in comparison the replacement I’ve had has lasted five years.

So, I suppose it's a case of the luck of the draw?

What irritates me is that they wouldn't offer any sort of goodwill gesture in response to this. Vouchers to purchase at least one film that was removed from my box would have been at least something! As you say, such a fault can happen to anyone's box, but a new (and, dare I say it, top of the range) box should be reliable for more than a year.

Strictly speaking - very strictly speaking - aren't you only legally entitled to record broadcasts to "reasonably" watch them at a more convenient time? I don't think any PVR maker advertises them as being permanent storage solutions, possibly for this and also technical reasons (they can't guarantee a faultless experience with the drive, even if it doesn't experience a true hardware failure).

Obviously no-one polices such a thing, nor am I saying they should, just that it's not really in Sky's power or remit to provide you with a permanent storage device.

As others have said Sky Q isn’t designed or sold as a permanent storage device, convenient as it may be to use it as one. Like so many bits of technology it may have uses beyond what it was designed for but they aren’t supported by the manufacturer / supplier of that device so if you’re using it for one of those you’ve not really got any grounds for compensation.

I do think you should be entitled to a small gesture for the inconvenience / annoyance of paying for a product that has (temporarily) failed, but you’ve no right to demand the cost of reaquriring the films / programmes that you’d recorded. You could perhaps argue that you want the box swapped out because you don’t want the risk of the same thing happening again.

We’ve had Sky Q for well over a year and aside from needing the odd reset it’s been flawless. We’ve a lot of programmes / films recorded that won’t still be on the catchup services and it would be annoying if we lost them but that’s the nature of these devices. Most of them would be available again via another source if we did loose them though. At least with Sky renting the Q equipment you know it’ll be replaced if it fails.

If a programme is unlikely to be available elsewhere or shown again and it’s that important to you keeping it recorded on a PVR isn’t a good idea. You’d want it either on a physical disc (if it’s available that way) with a backup / ripped copy or as a digital file on some kind of NAS with RAID. Even then you should have a cloud, physically separate and ideally away from your home backup. How far you go, like with any personal data, depends on how important these things are to you.

I think with the advent of On-Demand and the whole "watch what you want, when you want and where you want" thing on computers, tablets, phones, etc the legality around being able to "timeshift" a broadcast went out the window years ago. PC Plod was never going to come and bash your door down just because you happened to keep a copy of an episode of Coronation Street for longer than is "reasonable". Indeed thanks to YouTube those recordings are now useful

But yes, DVRs are not long-term storage devices neither have they AFAIK been advertised as such; They're effectively just digital video recorders. At least with VHS recorders if your machine breaks it doesn't write off everything you've ever recorded. With Sky if your drive or main box fails the entire recording archive is at risk. So you shouldn't really keep anything important on them. Copy off (or maybe think about buying) the film favourites you've found.

Thanks for the replies, folks. It's just a huge surprise that such a fault has occurred with a relatively new box, although, as VMPhil pointed out, it can happen to anyone at any time.

I concede that I've overreacted with reference to the films as they'll most probably be repeated somewhere at some point...I'll take your advice, UKnews, on things that I really want to keep.

It does get worse, however: I've just remembered that I had a radio recording from Heart, featuring a birthday message from Emma Bunton and Jamie Theakston... Bloody technology!

You could try writing to Global for a copy as most shows seem to keep their output (42 days initially for Ofcom and presumably for a long while after if those "we replay what we did this year" type of inserts are anything to go by). Dunno how radio speech works copyright-wise but the worst they can say is "no".

Certainly worth a try!