Sky Anytime Planner

I've had this on my HD box for a few weeks and it's actually pretty good. Not everything is to everyone's taste, of course, but there's a few interesting programmes I've seen that I might not have noticed hiding in the schedules of the likes of Sky Arts and the History Channel.

Also we've had a few movies on Anytime before the premiere on Sky Movies, and every Sunday night we get Lost without commercial breaks and DOG-free!

Sucks a bit for us lot with older Sky+ boxes (PVR2 here), we pay the same price as everyone else for our Sky+ box and yet miss out on this feature meh - oh well!

Really don't think you're missing out just yet... still nothing I want to watch.

I agree, I got my PVR-2 in May 2005, my mate got his 1 week later and got a PVR-3 and we both paid the same price (£49 with free installation).

Don't see how I'm missing anything though. I look at the sky suggestions they send me every so often and can set it to record while I'm busy drinking tea at work anyway!

We (on the first generation boxes) get to use the full hard drive for our own recordings though.

Yes, but the HD is only 40Gb (IIRC) and the later ones were 80 or 160Gb!

So do the Anytime programmes come from a full selection of channels or is it predominantly stuff from Sky's own offerings?

They are from a selection of either Sky's own channels or ones in which they have a financial interest (eg History Channel).

You won't see anything on there from the main broadcasters (BBC, ITV, C4, Five et al)

Hmm, well that won't get me rushing to take out a Sky+ subscription. Perhaps they intend to arrange some deals with other broadcasters in the future, once they're happy the system works okay. Otherwise it's a pretty unattractive service compared to the equivalent on Virgin - or even Top Up TV.

The only non-Sky related channels so far to appear are the Turner channels (Cartoon Network, Boomerang etc.).

I find it really useful, there's a grey area between programmes you don't want to watch and ones you'd always make sure to record every week, and this is where it fits in. I've watched a few good movies on there that I wouldn't have made a special point of watching or recording when they're shown on Sky Movies HD, but watched them because they were there and there wasn't anything else to watch, and enjoyed them.

I have also seen content from Disney Channel on Anytime TV, which as I understand is part of their contract with BSkyB. I think the VOD agreement in the contract also covers all channels that are carried on it, so it's possible there could be content from abc1, Cinemagic, ESPN Classic and such on it soon.

This feature has only just appeared on my Sky+ box today. It looks like a load of rubbish. The one thing that is bugging me is that the box has been whirring away all day today...even when it is in standby and not recording. It is rather annoying and I hope it doesn't do that forever now!