Sky F1 button freezing - New season same problem

Question

Hello All I have been coming here every year since Sky picked up F1 and have problems every year with the red button freezing the box when I try to use it on F1 during race day etc. Normally it usually happens towards the end of the season especially when they are in USA, Brazil and Abu Dhabi - it ALWAYS works perfectly fine on practices and qualifiying, but the problems always occurs on race day. Every year the community staff say they have never heard of this problem before.....sigh. You will find many threads on this each year with promises that Sky will fix it and the season ends with us being promised it will be fixed for the new season. Last year I was advised by one regular contributor that Graeme personally was ensuring it would be fixed for this season and to have faith.....sigh....yet  I am back here again. What is very frustrating, its now started at Australia - I have never had this issue before at this early a stage. The red button has worked completely fine all weekend on the practices and qualifying until it came to the race. I press the red button and  it sits on blue screen for a while, then eventually gets to the black screen with Sky Sports F1 logo and a white outlined box in top left hand corner..........and that is it. If I press 1 I get to the main screen but subsequent pressings of red button or back up button does not take you to the red button menu, but ends up giving you the blue screen. If you try to back out of the whole red button thing, you get continued blue screen but if you are very lucky you may still get sound. Sometimes you can get a picture back by going to the Sky EPG and selecting a different channel that brings back the picture, then return to 407, or it will freeze altogether and you spend the next 20 mins having to do the usual plug out, plug in, wait 2 mins, start box up. I have done a Sky rebuild only as I dont want to spend the whole race messing around with software updates etc and that took 20 mins with no improvement whatsover. I also have cleared out any programmes in my Deleted programme section but I do that everyday anyway.. Through the years of threads, some are saying the software on my box cant handle the sky red button, but this is the box you gave me when I signed up for the HD & sky f1. If this is so, why are you providing hardware that is not fit for purpose? And now you seem to have got rid of Race control on the website I cannot see it online either, even though it it did used to be about half a minute between what was going on live. I got so excited when there was a software update a few weeks ago as I thought Sky were really keeping to their word and eventually fixing their F1 red button.....never mind...... So, for your records: Model: R010.070.58.17PVersion 4f3107

Answer 1

Mmmm I signed up for F1 through the HD pack. After reading other stories on this site as to how people have lost their F1 through Sky offers with little to no smallprint advising of the potential loss, then alleged underhand tactics by the phone customer service team, I did wonder whether the zero acknowledgement to this issue was the latest way to try and enforce a move over to the Sports package.For me that would be pointless as there is no way I can afford the Sports package - also I have absolutely no interest in football, cricket nor golf - I just love my F1. But, to be fair and to counter that, I have had this issue since F1 commenced with Sky in 2012 - a straight 4 years of issues that I had phoned, emailed and raised threads on this forum about. The Sky team previously stated any problem was just down to me and wanted me to fork out for an engineer. I refused this, as the engineer would never find anything unless they were willing to visit during the Sunday race in USA, Brazil or Abu Dhabi........and now Australia. Since this thread has commenced, in addition to rscott (Super user) providing input and confirming same issues, Annie (Sky Mod) has also acknowledged Sky are aware and working on the issues, through private email. I am so grateful to them both for providing a link and updates between the customer and the technicians. Now we have this first real acknowledgement of the problem, I am praying that they will seriously work on getting it fixed, because I would be hugely disappointed if after 4 years and the many threads that both myself, Pete and others have opened and had subsequently locked and quickly archived, they are still unable to resolve it. By the way I had the same issues as Pete that as I became frustrated at the lack of assistance in previous years,  that as well as the thread being locked, I found I couldnt access the community even though I could access other areas of my Sky account.I would be on a complete loop returning to the log in page and sometimes would even see the page saying it was diverting elsewhere and making out as if the Community site was down. Yet 2 minutes later under a new username with a new email address and sometimes using private browsing mode, I could log in easily, so I would question whether some people were "banned" from the site. Anyway, now there is this some progress,....onwards and upwards I say.......and lots of crossed fingers. :-)