A quick post for owners of Sky HD boxes, specifically Amstrad ones.

Have you been noticing the audio drop out at times on recordings, catch up shows or paused live TV?

If so, don’t go calling Sky tech support and have them charge £65 to send an engineer out. The problem is with the latest firmware Sky rolled out, the R010 firmware.

I’ve had audio drop out issues since this update (the one that adds the ‘recommended’ feature to the Guide), and spent ages trying to work out what was causing it, thinking it’s my AV amp, my HDMI cables, or a compatibility issue with the TV. I’d updated the AV amp and TV firmware not that long ago also, and had played about with the cable routing amongst my spaghetti at the back.

Finding the problem still occurs with Sky HD plugged direct into the TV and using the TV speakers, I searched on the net. Seems audio issues are long standing with Sky, so wasn’t sure, but a pile of recent threads on Sky’s community forum is leading to the conclusion that it’s a problem with the R010 firmware, and more specifically with Amstrad boxes, and also possibly just on BBC HD channels and related catch up downloads.

Sky are “looking into it” now, though if you call them they may be unaware of any issue, or try to get you to pay for an engineer. Okay this may solve it if the engineer decides to replace the box with a non Amstrad model though if out of warranty that’ll cost you even more, but it’s unnecessary. Sky just need to either roll back the firmware so people can force and update back to the old version, or roll out a fix.

The threads on the Sky forum keep being closed, but the latest as of writing is here… sound problems with playback