Help Required Sky box models

aceb

aceb

Specialist Contributor
My Satellite Setup
TBS 6925
1.8m Precision + PLL Bullseye, motorised but probably siezed now.
2 x Sky Zone 2 for 28/19/13°E
My Location
Sussex
Does someone have a list of which models have what storage and features please? I'm pretty sure all DRX890s have modulator outputs but some have 320GB drives and some 500GB sata drives.

I'm not really sure about the 895 models, did they all come with 2TB discs and what about the UHF output or did they do away with it on the 895?

I've now found six 890s in skips and it really is the cheapest way of getting extra storage for the PC but I've seen a few 895s on Scumtree etc for a tenner so worth a punt for a 2 TB drive.
 
All DRX890s have 500GB HDDs, early DRX895s had 1.5 TB (1TB for personal use the so called 1TB box) and later ones had 2 TB (1.5TB for personal use). Early 890s and 895s had RF modulators and used external add on WiFi/ethernet whilst later ones have built in WiFi and used exteernal RF modulators via an io link.

Note that all OE HDDs were AV spec optimised for PVR use and as such can prove unreliable in PC data applications - differing error correction firmware and different caches compared to data specified drives. They may be cheap but also unreliable in PCs. This is also true for virtually every AV recorder/PVR. In the same way PC drives used in PVRs can cause problems and data corruption.

All earlier Sky HD+ boxes (with one exception) used 300 or 320GB HDDs.

All Sky HD+ boxes used SATA drives and SD Sky+ boxes used 80 or 160 GB IDE drives
 
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Thanks Dave and interesting info about the differences in the type of drive, maybe it's my application but I've never noticed any problems with the ones I've used. They are solely for recording IQ WAV files from my SDR radios, each one chews up about 400GB for an hour recording and so far, touch wood I've never had an issue with playback.
 
davemurgtroyd said:
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Note that all OE HDDs were AV spec optimised for PVR use and as such can prove unreliable in PC data applications - differing error correction firmware and different caches compared to data specified drives. They may be cheap but also unreliable in PCs. This is also true for virtually every AV recorder/PVR. In the same way PC drives used in PVRs can cause problems and data corruption.
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FWIW, putting larger HDD's into Sky boxes of various generations was once a "popular" hobby for many (including myself) and it generally worked reasonably well until the Sky HD+ ones came - from then on it was/is a quite risky business as even fitting larger dedicated AV-optimised HDDs often didn't work for more than a few months (as I can confirm from my own experience of fitting 2TB HDDs in 890s :(). So, I think that the 890 (and possibly even the early 1.5TB 895s???) firmware could not deal with anything bigger than the OEM fits, and it was only when the 2TB 895s came along that we had a reliable 2TB Sky HD+ unit (ours has now had more than 4 years of pretty heavy use and still works much as it did when I got it).

But now there are only the Sky Q boxes, and I don't know much more than that I understand that some (all??) have 2TB HDDs.
 
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