How do I find out if the software in my Sky box is up to date?
This question crops up regularly on forums, mostly when people buy second-hand boxes off eBay or dust down an old box that’s been in storage for a while.
Most of the time people look for the EPG Version Number displayed on the System Details page and accessed as follows:
Services >> 4. System Setup >> 5. System Details
The latest EPG Version Number for standard Sky boxes (ie not Sky+ or Sky+ HD) is likely to be 3.8.8. If older EPG software is installed (earlier than 3.4.4b) you may find you are unable to access certain channels, especially radio stations. Here are some of the signs: missing channels from 204 – 999, no radio channels, no menu music, losing channels after a few days and occasional lock-ups.
If you’re in this situation the best thing to do is a forced software update, but if the box is old you may find that Sky have stopped transmitting software updates in the forced update stream (Pace 2600C1 boxes, for example, have this problem). In that case, the best solution is just to leave the box plugged in (standby is fine), connected to a satellite feed and eventually it should receive an update. This will probably take several weeks. There are reports of some boxes being unable to update at all because they’ve missed to many interim updates.
What’s with the other numbers?
The numbers on the System Details page can be confusing. You would think Version Number would tell you the software version number, but it actually relates to the hardware version of the box. The first four characters of this identify an exact model of box and the last the hardware revision, eg 9F05xx is a Pace 2500S3. The Model Number is more like a firmware version and it varies between manufacturers and models.
Sky EPG Version History
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