Sky hd can i just swap my sky wires over?

Question

i wish to upgrade to sky hd from sky

can i just buy the hd box myself and then call sky up to to subscribe

i have seen an hd box on ebay and the guy selling says you just need to swap wires from one box to another, dont have problem paying sky but feel i could get bhd box cheaper than £150

Answer 1

you can, sky+ and hd are the same connections, dont need to use the scart just connect by hdmi instead, they both use 2 independent satellite feeds from the dish and doesnt matter which way around you connect them, only thing is you need to ring sky afterwards for them to match your viewing card to the serial number on the hd box and pay extra £10 month if you want the HD subscription.(you can keep the hd box without hd subscription and just receive freeview HD channels and use the recording  and live pause service)

last thing is that if the box breaks down it wont be covered by sky and you would have to pay around £65 for a service call.

Answer 2

If you already have Sky Plus then yes, you can just swap the wires over.

If it's just normal Sky that you have at the moment, then you need to install a new multi-output LNB on the dish (the LNB is the thing on the end of the pole that the cable is attached to) and then run an extra cable between the dish and Sky HD box, so you now actually have two cables going from the dish to the box.

The reason the Sky HD box (and Plus box) have two dish inputs is so you can record one channel onto the hard drive while watching another.

Once installed, you'll need to upgrade your subscription to HD and pair your card to the new box. This can be done over the phone.