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By default, downloaded files are saved to a folder called, oddly, enough, downloads. This is located off the Kservice folder in Program Files.
Folder contents hiddenBut, to see what's going on inside that folder, you'll need to have enabled the viewing of hidden files and folders, via the Tools menu in Windows Explorer.
Folder Options - Show hidden files and folders
Folder contents visibleAs you can see from the shot above, taken AFTER some files have come down, there's a hidden cache folder in there and a full-size, hidden place-holder for each file that's still being downloaded.
If you don't like the idea of HUGE video files being saved onto your system drive in the program's folder, you can tell the Sky applet to have them downloaded somewhere else - but NOT until after the installation has created that default folder.
Settings drop-downThe rate of downloads can be very variable
The best I've seen - from my Pipex 2Mb broadband connection is 13.59KByte/sec; the worst 5.26KB/sec. The average was 70.81KB/sec for the eight movies for which I still have files (they're 633.5MByte in size on average) and 49.10KB/sec for six sports clips averaging 67MB in size.
Oddly, though, the fastest download was for a sports clip - 113.59KB/sec. The file was 74.1MB and came over in a fraction over 11 minutes. That compares to 102.11KB/sec for our best movie download - of a file that was 705MB in size and took close to two hours to come over. Totalling across both areas, the average download speed was 61.51KB/sec for an average file size of 390.5MB.
Download timingsTo put these figures into some kind of perspective, the best download results I ever get are from Microsoft's site where even quite small files (under 50MB) come over at a rate of 110-113KB/sec. While typing, I just downloaded the Microsoft .NET Framework Version 1.1 Redistributable Package (23.1MB) and this took 3m 32sec at an average speed slightly better than 111MB/sec. So, clearly, the download speeds from Sky by broadband, although not always lighting fast, are not rubbish either - judging by my experience. And that's rather remarkable given that BSkyB is using a peer-to-peer file sharing system rather than ranks and ranks of dedicated high-speed servers.
I'm presuming that there is such divergence in download speeds for different Sky clips simply because peer-to-peer is inherently less consistent than server-based downloads. I should also say that, while I tried to stop anyone else using my network while I was downloading, I wasn't, I think, always successful.
What is a genuine mystery is why some files start to come down almost instantly and others don't start until 10 minutes or more after clicking the download button.
Just one example - with a movie called The Forgotten. I clicked the Download button at 22:13:00 and a placeholder was created about 40 secs later within the folder in which the movie was going to reside (this is a hidden file of the same size as the final file will be). After two minutes, the status was unchanged, likewise after 10 minutes.
What's irritating is that you don't know whether the download status shown is zero per cent because nothing has been downloaded or because less than 99% of the movie has been downloaded. I don't think it's sufficient to have just a percentage readout and an accompanying bar-graph.
The assumption I tend to make is that, because I can't yet see any moving bands on the bar-graph, nothing has come down yet. If that is actually the case, I want to know it for sure and want to be told why there's a delay starting. I also think it's rather silly that the download queue tells you the year in which the movie was released but not the size in MB of the file you're downloading.
About 35mins after trying to start the download for The Forgotten, I went back to the queue and saw that things had started moving. The download status was at six per cent and the download of another movie (for Jersey Girl) I started afterwards was at four per cent. Fifty minutes on from starting the first download, the figures were 15 per cent and 11 per cent. Fifty-five minutes later, the first file was at 18 per cent but the second still at 11 per cent. Go figure.