With the school term over on Friday afternoon, an Auckland teacher settled in at home to watch his team, the New York Giants, play the San Francisco 49ers.

But something was wrong when the American
ex-pat turned on his Sky decoder.

It was showing a “disconnected message”.

He restarted it.

And that’s when things got wild.

“Thick white smoke started coming out of the right rear of the box – then a spurt of flame,” he told the Herald.

He yanked out the power cord and unscrewed the satellite cable – a process that took about 20 seconds, but felt a lot longer as he held his breath due to “an electrical burning smell”.

He threw the decoder outside.

“Thank God I was at home at the time,” the father of two said.

He then called Sky’s helpdesk. He appeared to be put through to the broadcaster’s new helpdesk in Manila.

He was put out by the fact the Sky support person did not seem interested in any inspection of his flaming decoder, the teacher said in a Saturday morning call to the Herald – although the staffer did offer him a replacement Sky Box (in keeping with the broadcaster’s policy. Even if you make an upfront payment, you don’t own your Sky hardware). And in a follow-up email, Sky did ask him to return the damaged unit.

The Herald asked Sky for comment. Things kicked into gear on Saturday afternoon.

“Sky’s safety officer came to my house late this afternoon and took the box,” the teacher told the Herald later the same day.

“I showed him what happened and what I did. He said he took it very seriously and would have the box examined.

“He also offered to go home and give me a replacement box – which I politely declined. I do not want any special treatment and am happy to wait for the replacement box to arrive. I am now satisfied that someone is taking this seriously.

“My only concern at this point is if there are any other faulty boxes out there.”

Fenz record seven incidents since 2016

There have been other Sky decoder fires. Initially, neither Fire and Emergency NZ (Fenz) nor Sky could find any record of one since a September 2016 incident.

But a Fenz search later turned up seven other callouts. They were, in Fenz’s words:

The original version of this article also prompted a reader to share her experience.

“About two years ago in a Dunedin hotel, the Sky Box overheated,” she said.

It had been inadvertently left on pause for several hours.

“It was scary. The thing was so hot. It didn’t smoke. But the cupboard it was in was hot and the room was overheating,” she said.

“I was terrified. I cut the power fast.”

She did not report the incident, but it changed the way she treated her family’s Sky box.

“Our decoder at home is in a big oak antique cabinet. It gets shut off at night as a result of the Dunedin near-disaster,” she said.

For context, there were around one million decoders installed in Kiwi living rooms in 2016. Today, there are around 515,000 (Sky, after a recent rebound, now has just over one million customers – but these days around half are via its Neon and Sky Sport Now streaming apps.

Dust, animal fur in the frame

“We were sorry to hear that one of our customers experienced an issue with their Sky Box on Friday. We collected the box from the customer on Saturday evening and are carefully assessing it now to understand what happened with it,” Sky communications director Chris Major said.

“This may be a case of the box shorting itself, which can occur on some of our old Pace boxes [if] excess dust or animal fur – for example – gets into them. I understand there can be a brief release of smoke when the box shorts itself. We are doing more work to test if that was the case in this instance.”

If you have dust or fur in an electronic device, the advice is not to use your vacuum cleaner – which can generate static electricity or otherwise damage parts. Instead, unplug it and use a compressed air cleaner (which can be brought cheaply from places like PB Tech).

For its new Sky Box and Sky Pod – which got off to a rocky start, with a number of usability issues – Sky dropped Pace in favour of South Korea’s Kaon Media.

The teacher said: “The only good thing [that came] out of this is that I didn’t have to watch the game.”

The Giants lost 30-12 in what ESPN called a blitz.

Chris Keall is an Auckland-based member of the Herald’s business team. He joined the Herald in 2018 and is the technology editor and a senior business writer.