Be Excellent To Each Other

Sky anytime + is now available to all sky customers even without sky broadband. For anyone who doesn't know, it's basically a much more comprehensive collection of picks and highlights of recent programming on sky and includes most of the major channels as well as itv player. Watched a few things on it (my guilty pleasure is The Biggest Loser and I had missed a few episodes so have managed to get caught up with that There were the last three or four episodes available on anytime+.)

To set it up, you just need to connect your sky box to your router and call sky to ask them to add on anytime plus. It's free and the call only takes a couple of minutes. Well worth it.

Anyway, tonight I sat down with a glass of wine and started flicking through the available programmes and noticed that Game Change was on there. I had seen it advertised on a programme I had recorded but I didn't watch the recording 'til after Game Change was aired. It's an HBO drama starring Julianne Moore as Sarah Palin, Woody Harrelson as Steve Schmidt and Ed Harris as John McCain. It's about the 2008 presidential campaign and in particular, the choice of Sarah Palin as the vice presidential candidate. It uses archive footage very well, showing Julianne Moore as Sarah Palin in a debate with Joe Biden, using some sort of Cgi magic. They also use footage of Obama and the news coverage at the time and it really does feel like you're watching a fly on the wall documentary within the McCain/Palin campaign. I really enjoyed it, it made me feel a bit sorry for Sarah Palin and was quite fascinating rewatching the horrible errors she made, along with the love she got from some of the grassroots. I'd really recommend it to anyone with even the slightest bit of interest in american politics.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1848902/

Might go for something a little less respectable now...'I woke up gay' is starting on BBC3 in 10 minutes

I saw the title for that too and couldn't help but turn on. The channel, that is, not, y'know...

Funnily enough the guy was on Radio 4 this morning. Seemed happy to be a bender but had completely lost/ditched all his old friends for a new life as a gay. Still, I can't stand this obsession with documenting the weird and wonderful. Who is watching, say, the Undatables to learn about the conditions on display or is it just sensationalistic tat for the population to snigger under their breath LOOKATTHEFREAKKKSSS!

Yeah, I didn't watch it, I wrote that post and immediately forgot it was on. Just tried to put it on and my sky box is recording two things so I can't watch live TV. One of the two things is The undateables.
I like to listen to Radio 4, I read a lot of books, I take an active interest in politics and science but man do I watch a lot of crap on telly. Any programs about big fat folk losing weight and I'm there.

Is there anyway to get this working wirelessly without the sky adapter, would homeplugs work at a guess?

My SKY box isn't connected to a phone line, but I can still get anytime. is this any different to the one I have?

Yes, i think so. This has a much bigger selection, but it needs to be connected to broadband. You can opt in for 'free' at sky.com.

There is a guide on the sky website about setting it up, I think there is mention there of making it work wirelessly but I didn't look into it. The link should be this one:http://www.sky.com/shop/tv/anytime-plus/get-it-now/

MaliA, this is different from what you have right now. Instead of being a list of about 3 pages worth of programs, this is a pretty comprehensive collection. There are loads of movies, categorised by genre, plus collections of tv series, usually including the last three or four episodes. It covers all the main channels like Sky Atlantic, Sky1, Living etc as well as having other sections where they bundle together comedy, drama, docs. It's really good, and as I said in the first post, worth getting even if it is just to see the brilliant Game Change that was on SKy Atlantic.

That sounds like about the amount of Sky I get on the xbox (without being a Sky customer) - think it's called Sky Go. Game Change sounds good!

It's a lot like the Xbox version actually, I should have said that from the start Just more betterer because now it's on my downstairs tv and it included sky store so I can rent movies that are not long out. I think sky store is like box office only with even newer films. I'm not really sure.
So if anyone else catches something good on this, let us know so we can check it out!

Incidentally, Game Change is repeated (on regular old
broadcast Sky) tonight -- HD, too -- and again next weekend.

I made the mistake of mentioning this to mrsA last night, and now she wants it. The problem that was have is that the only phone point in the house (which is designed for ease of use only if you use the back door as the main entrance, like all Northerners do) is in the dining room ("Back room") and in the library ("front room") is where the box and XBox and TV are. Is it possible to use those homeplug things to send the information into the SKY box from the phone line? MrsA would really like to know as then she can watch Sky Box Office films as well (we can't at present due to this lack of phone line). Running an exension lead seemingly doesn't work (although I wasn't really trying) and isn't a long term elegant solution.

Sky Anytime+ needs an Ethernet connection to the box, Mali, not a phone one. And yes, you can use powerline adaptors (or wireless bridges) to get that Ethernet connection to it.

Cheers. These'll do, aye?

Would I still need the phone connection for Box Office?

EDIT: AhA! No, I won't, as SKY Store exists. Awesome. Thems'll do the job. And XBOX will get connect. Everyone's a winnah, baby!

EDIT2: Boo! I don't have the latest black sky+ box

EDIT3: I might have to pay for new box. Do you think if I call up and whinge enough, then cancel subscrition, then reinstate it the next day they'll send me a new box? Does my current box have an ethernet thingymadoodad?

EDIT 4: Elation to disappointment in seconds, tehre.

I spoke to SKY. To get the box that'd work with this, they want £15 and then £10.25 a month for a year. It seems new customers get the box anyway, so I might look into the unsub/resub side of things.

Set this up yesterday. It's alright, but I can see why it's free -- it's a catch-up service with mostly just one episode of each show, rather than a streaming service like Netflix with back catalog content.

It integrates interestingly with the box. You select programs and they start to download, at which point they appear in the normal Recorded Programs section of the planner. With some extra clicks, you can watch them as they download, if your Internet is fast enough.

Bitrates are quite low -- around 1 GB for a two-hour movie.

Also, it lets you download movies even if you don't have the Movie pack on your subscription, but then throws an error when you try to play it back instead. That's a poor UI decision.

Still, y'know. It is free and all.