Three little-known Sky Q hacks revealed to instantly boost your TV box – including trick to unlock extra recording space

THERE are a number of easy hacks to get the most out of your Sky Q box – especially for the much-loved recordings.

The ability to record programmes on the box is one of the compelling features that Sky Q customers love.

Sky

In recent years, Sky has focused a lot of energy on its newer internet-based products Sky Glass and Sky Stream.

However, bosses recently assured fans of Sky Q that it will be “with us for a while” yet.

Sky Glass and Sky Stream rely on an internet connection to beam channels to your TV, instead of traditional satellite.

The pair don’t record programmes on a box locally, instead they are kept in the cloud.

One major advantage to this is that you don’t have any storage limits like Sky Q.

However, a small selection of titles may not be available to record on the cloud due to licensing issues.

Cloud-based recordings also expire, whereas you can keep them for as long as you want on a Sky Q box.

So if you’re sticking with Sky Q for its recording features, here are some little-known hacks to get out of it.

Unlock more space – and speed up downloads

If you find that you’re constantly running out of space on your Sky Q box there is one simple change that will ease the pressure and speed up downloads at the same time.

However, it does come at a sacrifice.

Sky Q downloads are set to HD by default.

But you can lower it to SD if you don’t mind losing out on picture quality.

SD recordings are a lot smaller, meaning you can fit more on your box.

And because they’re smaller, downloads are faster.

To do this go to:

• Settings
• Preferences
• Change HD demand default download format to SD

Downloads not working

Sometimes on-demand downloads can become stuck randomly and leave you wondering what’s going on.

If you’re left waiting too long there is a trick to push them through.

And it’s simply by cancelling the download from the Downloading sub-menu.

Once that’s done, go and try downloading the title a second time and it should hopefully work.

If it doesn’t, there may be a problem with your broadband or Wi-Fi connection.

Restore recordings you’ve deleted

Deleting the wrong recording by accident is bound to happen.

But all is not lost – if you make this mistake, there is a trick to get them back for a limited time.

Go to Recordings, and find Deleted.

Here you’ll see everything you’ve deleted recently with a button to restore them.