Pictures are sharper, had we not got a free upgrade from sky because of problems with our old box certainly would not have wanted to pay a lot more for it.
I wouldn't be without Sky+. No hassle at all to record things, don't have to watch things at the precise time they're on, you can pause, rewind, fast-forward etc at will, record one thing and watch another, and have access to Anytime + with loads of downloads for things you might have missed.