90,000 Sky+ HD boxes suffer from glitch

British Sky Broadcasting (BSkyB) must now replace 90,000 Sky+ HD boxes that have reportedly suffered from an assembly flaw that was not caught by manufacturers prior to shipping.  The faulty boxes were created by electronic manufacturer Pace, and affects just one in 10 of Sky HD+ customers.

Subscribers first learned of the fault when some of them received calls warning them of a manufacturing issue that may "impact the long term performance" of the box.

"To be 100% clear, it’s nothing to do with a faulty component; the problem relates to the way that some of the boxes were assembled.  It doesn’t raise a safety risk or prevent them from being used as normal until we exchange them, but in the longer term it could lead to the failure of the box," BSkyB company officials recently said in a forum posting.

The affected boxes have one of the following model numbers: 9F3001, 9F3002, 9F3003 or 9F3004.

"We’re proud our Sky+HD product and we’re not happy about customers having boxes that don’t meet our quality standards. So we want to swap all of the boxes in this batch," the spokesperson said.

Along with replacing the box, Sky also will give each affected subscriber three months free subscription of the necessary £29.25 HD programming package.