How cool is that?

It’s not very often that I like something that Sky comes up with.

More often than not, I have to refrain from even talking about Sky until after the kids have gone to bed because of the colourful language that’s scattered liberally throughout my rant.

This time though, I have to hold my hands up.

Programming the timer facility on your satellite receiver from a remote location over the Internet isn’t new. OK, so it’s new to Sky+ users, but they too now have that capability (or will have soon). Great, isn’t it? But that’s not what I’m talking about here.

What I’m talking about are the other two components of Sky’s new ‘Remote Record’ initiative.

Now you can program your receiver from your mobile phone. Now that is handy!

OK, so you forgot to program your Sky+. It’s not your fault – you were late for work this morning, and now you’re stuck in an all-day seminar about something stuffy and boring.

Maybe you’re reading the paper on the train and spot something interesting on the telly pages, or your friend recommends a program they saw last week, and it’s on again tonight.

No longer a problem!

Of course, it’s not something that any small-time provider of either programming or hardware can provide, and I’m sure the idea has been bouncing around one or two mahogany-clad boardrooms for quite some time – but congratulations to Sky for implementing it.

Even more kudos for not charging any extra for it. OK, I’m not getting carried away here, we all know they charge more than enough for the Sky+ subscription in the first place, but hey – credit where credit’s due.

Right that’s enough of that. I wonder if my Sky HD box has knackered my Pioneer HDMI port yet?