Page 1 of Help with an odd Sky+ problem

About 6, maybe 8 months ago, I swapped out the 40gb hard drive in my Sky+ box for a 250gb hard drive.

All went well, until last month when my DVD recorder went wrong. Because I'd got it from an on line shop in Scotland, it took about 3 weeks to get it fixed, then returned.

All of my series link stuff meant there were a lot of recordings on the Sky+ box. So, over a period, I used the red button "COPY" to transfer from the Sky+ box overnight, to my DVD recorder hard drive. I slowly managed to clear the sky+ box, edit the recordings, and then transfer to blank discs.
Here's the problem- for some God only knows reason, now, whenever I use the "COPY" red button service, the picture format switches from 16:9 to 4:3 letterbox. If I go into "SERVICES" then "PICTURE" its still shows the picture format as 16:9.
But I can only get the picture format to change back to 16:9 it I press "SAVE NEW SETTINGS" then it will go back to 16:9 again.

If I play a recording without using the copy red button, it stays in the 16:9 format.
If I use the red button copy, the picture format stays in 4:3 letterbox until I press save new settings again.

I've tried a sky planner rebuilt, this didn't help, so when I'd cleared the box, I tried a full system reset- this still didn't put things right. I then tried turning off the box overnight, but I still can't use the red button copy without the picture switching into 4:3 letterbox when using copy.

I phoned Sky's helpline, explained the problem & was told I would need an engineer to look at the box. I have the cover plan, so won't have to pay for the visit. HOWEVER- as I changed the hard drive I thought I'd better put the original 40gb hard drive back before I get a visit from an engineer.
Only one problem there- the bloody thing won't work with the 40gb drive in!

Does anyone have any ideal why the picture format switches to 4:3 letterbox when using copy?

As I've already said, I can play the recording individually & they stay in the right picture format.
The only other option I can think of is to replace the Sky+ box.
Any advice would be much appreciated :)
Sorry it took so long to explain & thanks for reading this.

This is a known problem with Sky+ COPY on certain Sky+ models.

I have a Sky+160 that works fine.

I`m surprised Sky are sending out an engineer as Digital Spy users are also having the same problem.

Its a software glitch that will be sorted.

Only way out at the moment is to transfer stuff one at a time.

This item was edited on Wednesday, 17th October 2007, 21:37

thanks for the info, glad its not something I`ve done.
Now I just have to hope sky fixes this bug... :(