Thanks for that, it's always useful to have a bit of info if you get a moody engineer that just wants to get the job done and fookoff regardless of what the customer wants.

im not an expert, but my dad was an electrician (fixing tvs, hifis etc), for a while and my freeview box did a pop and a blue flash and cut the electrics, turned out a capacitor had blown up like a bomb inside, (the thing was litterally inside out).

best thing to do is ring sky, then ask for a replacement and tell them you want to save the stuff on the box if possible (your recordings).
not sure how sky boxes work, but would think the basics are much like that of a pc and you can swop and change the hard drives within but dont do it yourself due to warranties etc. Knowing sky it will save them money to swap your box and give you a new or what yours will become, a re-furb one. When the bloke/woman comes remind them that you want to save your stuff off the hard drive but dont get fobbed off (unless the drives whats gone).
Hope this helps out a little.

Thanks for that. Expecting fun and games because it's not much more than a year old, supposedly out of warranty sky will tell me. It's a replacement for another one that failed at just over 12 months. We only went onto sky in January 2010 and we're through two boxes already. Fingers crossed we don't get another "friday afternoon" box.

if they tell you its out of warranty open it up and take the hard drive out and keep it, close up the box and give it to the engineer.
Not sure what file format sky boxes use but you can get adaptors that you can plug the hard drive into and plug the usb into your pc and take it off that way.

Obviously that part is up to you, and im not telling you to (for fear of being the naughty kid and getting a telling off) and there will be issues with if thats acceptable, but i think if it was out of warranty you would be allowed, as in one way its considered your property, in another its skys.

You'll need this software to do it - rlhttp://www.skycopyplus.co.uk/rl. It's free and works well.

I've used it when increasing the HD of an old Sky HD box. All the instructions are there on how to use it. The biggest pain is opening up the box to take the HD out and then putting the new one in once you've linked them both up to a PC using a couple of HD caddies. It'll probably take a couple of hours (depending on how much stuff you want to transfer).

Make sure they don't give you a refurbished box which they might have done last time it broke.

if its out of guarantee you can pick up a recond HD box on amazon for about £50. You just need to ring sky then to pair your box and card.

I tried that a couple of years ago with no joy, the stuff from normal channels was ok but sports etc files were
encrypted and impossible to unscramble, but like I said that was a couple of years ago.

I have a good condition sky HD box I am about to list on ebay if you are interested!

Have you checked to see if they are on anytime? Pretty sure the gf was last week, wcc may be too.

gf is there still but not wcc. also you can only have one at once on your planner from the anytime +

Virginmedia - free repairs, always.

Mind, you can't flog the boxes on eBay, they do tend to get a bit narky if you try that.

I quite often download a fea programmes from anytime and store them for later.

I believe that Sky use nagra 3 encryption which is about as 'uncrackable' as it gets.

I still have a now redundant DBox thanks to Virgin switching to nagra 3.

I Believe both Matches are available at reasonable cost on DVD Not quite the same but not a bad alternative.