REN & Sky Box

[#1]

Quote from: itsme

From BT website Quote 5 - How many pieces of equipment do you have plugged into the line?. If you have more than 4 telephones or other pieces of equipment plugged in, you may have exceeded your line´s REN. REN stands for Ringing Equivalence Number. Most telephones and faxes have a REN of 1, although some older pieces of equipment can have a REN of 3. REN refers to the electricity supply sent to your telephone from the local exchange. On BT lines, enough current is supplied to power devices up to a total REN of 4.

Yes BT, the same people who used to tell us that we could not get ADSL if we lived x amount of miles from the exchange!

[#2]

Quote from: Sean

Quote from: itsme From BT website Quote 5 - How many pieces of equipment do you have plugged into the line?. If you have more than 4 telephones or other pieces of equipment plugged in, you may have exceeded your line´s REN. REN stands for Ringing Equivalence Number. Most telephones and faxes have a REN of 1, although some older pieces of equipment can have a REN of 3. REN refers to the electricity supply sent to your telephone from the local exchange. On BT lines, enough current is supplied to power devices up to a total REN of 4. Yes BT, the same people who used to tell us that we could not get ADSL if we lived x amount of miles from the exchange!

The above from BT website was in answer to the question regarding ringing problems. You can have as many devices connected to the BT line as they are open circuit to the line and do not affect ADSL connections or load the line. The previous stated 4 devices is all to do with REN. If you have devices that do not ring or monitor the ringing cicuit than they will have a REN value of 0. I would not be surprised that with all your connected devices that they will still be below 4. It dependson whether the Sky boxes and ADSL modem have REN values of 0.

Oh and it's not just BT, Virginmedia also quote the same

Quote

My phone is not ringing/receiving incoming calls. Try the following: Ensure that the ringer switch on the side of your phone is in the 'On' position (it may have accidentally been switched off). Check that the combined REN (Ringer Equivalence Number) value of phones plugged into the circuit (main socket & any extensions) doesn't exceed 4. Check that your telephone handset isn't faulty by trying another one in the socket. If you subscribe to Call Divert check that you haven't activated divert immediately. If you subscribe to Call Barring please ensure that you haven't got incoming Call Barring active. If you have done this and are still experiencing the symptoms then there may be damage to the wiring or phone socket. Call Customer Services on 0845 454 1111 or dial 150 for free from a Virgin Media phone line.

[#3]

From my reading of DigitalSpy it seems that in reality Sky is only concerned with Multiroom,  That they do police quite firmly.

[#4]

Yeah as my parents found out.
So if you're going to drill a hole in the party wall to share the multiroom with a neighbour, then make sure you run the phone line back to the correct property
EDIT: No they didn't do that, more of a problem when getting multiroom the original box wasn't plugged in.
Just find it laughable as to why they enforce it with multiroom.

[#5]

Quote from: lucerne

From my reading of DigitalSpy it seems that in reality Sky is only concerned with Multiroom,  That they do police quite firmly.

And there is a very good reason for this. If all of your multiroom boxes did not have to be connected to the same line what would stop you giving boxe(s) to your friends/family/neighbours to enjoy your full Sky package for £10/month.
When I was an installer I continously was called to homes (by Sky) to investigate multiroom boxes that were not calling back.

[#6]

But as I said in my last post, how is that really going to stop someone sharing multiroom? Just run the phone cable back to the original property. Not that I condone breaking Sky's T&C's of course (that comment was for educational purposes only).
The people that want to get round the system still will, and it just makes it a pain for others who are not breaking any rules. I posted about my parent's problem a while back, but basically they had the single box for about 4 years which had to be connected for a year. It was and my dad disconnected it after the first year. We then had multiroom installed (2 additional boxes, installed on separate days cos Sky messed up the order, but that is a different story) and they connected those boxes to the phone line. This was fine, but neither installer checked the original box, nor informed them that it needed to be connected.
Anyway to cut a long story short; after a few letters and Sky overcharging later, it eventually got sorted. I did tell my dad that the original box needs to be connected as well, and it would have helped if he hadn't ignored the letters, but I do feel that both multiroom installers should have checked this.
I'm impressed that some people get the special treatment of a engineer coming round though - I thought Sky just resorted to snotty letters.
Just glad I don't follow sport or watch that much TV in general, so not having to deal with such a company is an option when I move.

[#7]

Can't exactly run a phone line if for example you are giving a box to your brother 10 miles away. LoL.
They do send letters but if the problem is not resolved and the customer cannot resolve it then Sky will threaten disconnection and force the custommer to order a service call (engineer) to investigate and fix.
If the custommer is out of warrenty it will cost them £65 for the call.

[#8]

Yep that happened to me, wen I had my old SKY box it had a faulty modem on it, so to solv the problem I upgraded  to SKY + in the Bed Room, so now I have SKY + in 2 Rooms.
Can I upgrade the HD in my old SKY + Box?  I think that it is a Pace Box, the HD is on it's way out.
[Edit]
Yep it is a Pace Box it is Pace Sky + V2 has the Interactive card slot on the left with the Led counter in the middle.