Sky Digital 

Sky Digital is the UK's premier broadcaster of UK satellite television it's broadcasts are in DVB-compliant MPEG-2, with the Sky Movies and Sky Box Office channels supporting optional Dolby Digital soundtracks for recent films, currently the Dolby digital is only supported with the Sky+ PVR digiboxes. Additional multimedia interactive services are also provided as well as an extensive EPG which makes use of a proprietary version of the OpenTV system. The sky digital Set-top boxes have built in analogue modems for a return path this enables interactive functionality. Sky News, and several other channels, provides a pseudo video on demand interactive service by broadcasting looping video streams. Sky Digital has recently started broadcasting High Definition digital channels requiring the use of their flagship digibox, the Sky HD digibox. The channel selection at the moment is limited but steadily increasing, with many new channels planned.

Provided a universal Ku band LNB (9.75/10.600GHz) is fitted at the end of the dish and pointed at the correct satellite constellation, most digital receivers will receive the free to air channels. Some broadcasts are free-to-air and unencrypted, some are encrypted but do not require a monthly subscription (known as free-to-view), some are encrypted and require a monthly subscription, and some are pay-per-view services. To view the encrypted content a proprietary NDS Videoguard UK equipped receiver is required this is exclusively dedicated to the Sky Digital service, and cannot be used to decrypt other services. NDS CI modules are issued by a few providers in other countries, however their supply is strictly controlled and to our knowledge they have not been successfully used with official UK sky cards.

Unofficial "Dragon" CAMs are now available to view the service, although use of them constitutes a breach of contract with Sky and invalidates your rights to use the card. The cards supplied by Sky must be paired to an official dedicated Sky digibox, so to use the dragon cam you enter the serial number of the official digibox into the cam and then use the module in a CI receiver.  It has however been reported that this is unstable and that when used cards do not update properly, the advantage for users though is the ability to use a CI receiver with features not normally available on a sky digibox, such as better threshold to receive weak signals or diseqc on a motorised system. 

BSkyB has no veto over the presence of channels on their EPG, with open access being an enforced part of their contract with Ofcom to operate the service. Any channel which can get carriage on a suitable beam of a satellite at 28 East is entitled to access to Sky's EPG for a fee, ranging from £15-100,000. Third-party channels which opt for encryption receive discounts ranging from reduced price to free EPG entries, free carriage on a Sky leased transponder, or actual payment for being carried. However, in this case, Sky does not carry any control over the channels content or carriage issues such as picture quality. Recent years have seen the launch of numerous low-budget channels, some with very poor technical quality.

Due to either limited regional availability of certain channels, or conditions relating to their must-carry status, Sky operate a number of distinct regions for their EPG - with the Republic of Ireland, Northern Ireland and Great Britain having slightly different channel line-ups mainly differing in targeted advertising and local news content, although a few distinctly unique regional programs such as Gaelic language programming for Wales and Scotland are provided.

Additional services such as the Asian channels are operated independently from Sky but carried in the EPG, to get subscription cards for these channels one must contact the operators directly. Recently the EPG has been extensively modified and Sky are continuing to make modifications to the Open-TV software. Some problems have been reported during the modifications but most of the bugs have now been rectified. The latest modifications which are now being rolled out are rumoured to include automatic power saving by turning the box off following extended periods of usage and an onscreen warning message which warns the user that the box will turn off after a set period of time unless the message is acknowledged.

The net result is a high quality offering of a variety of categorised subscription channels, which are listed else where within this site. We can provide digiboxes which are free from contract and obligation to connect to a telephone line, these are often used by subscribers throughout Europe, care must be taken that the correct dish size is obtained to view the programming outside the targeted broadcast area because the footprint of the Astra 2D beam is tightly focussed on the United Kingdom. For people who are using subsidised digiboxes or installers who require to activate digiboxes, or others who seek to avoid paying the administrative fee for ordering PPV events via the call centre when outside the United Kingdom, can connect the digibox using their normal telephone line, we supply digidiallers which are suitable for this purpose. These have been tested with the HDdigibox.

The new style digiboxes have proved to be reliable and it is good news to see that once again Pace are making digiboxes with the latest model being the DS440N. Pace technical material states that the sky plus digiboxes are DiSEqC 1.2 ready, however like the USB port, and Ethernet port on the HD boxes this feature is disabled which is a pity.

** We also supply sky subscription viewing cards **

In our faq pages you can find troubleshooting information. Including information about sky plus.

If you are looking for troubleshooting information click here to go to our Sky faq page.