ATB
Simon
Folks,
Currently have the full Sky package and have thought for a while it's exceptionally poor value - I rarely find anything to watch.
So, what are the alternatives (and I don't mind paying a bit to upgrade a little) - Freeview, freesat etc etc
What are your preferences? Sky pee'd me off this evening so quite keen to cancel.
Cheers all
ATB
Simon
Having had Sky and Virgin (And On Digital, and relatives with telewest) I would say all of the pay tv providers are pretty much the same and if it was
my money I'd just have freeview and get some sort of hard drive recorder and maybe plug in an old computor to get iplayer.
You'll miss it for a while then you'll forget you had any more than freeview after a few months.
I got rid of Sky a couple of years ago and just opted for the Sky Freesat card, you finish with your Sky subscription and pay them £20, (might be more
now?), they send you card which you slot into your Sky box and you never pay anything else again.
Because you are still using your Sky dish you get a good picture and you get 200 odd channels instead of the 90 odd you get with Freeview.
(Admittedly a lot of them are rubbish though, shopping channels etc.)
At first I missed the Sky, mostly the sports but BT seem to be sewing up the football now and as far as TV programmes go when I'm at friends
houses that still have Sky it seems to be same stuff they were showing 2 years ago when I had it so I feel a bit better about it.
I get all the new series on internet catchup TV as well so not missing out here either.
I just have freeview, some big films appear a year after the big screen so we tried 'love film' which had limited stuff on line so gave up
on that.
Sky has never appealed, when at friends houses it just looked like reruns then paying extra to watch current stuff, if you like sport then change your
ISP to BT.
Humax or Samsung both do good HD Freesat boxes with hard drives so you still get to record and pause etc.
Just hook up to your current dish and away you go.
You get all the free HD channels that Sky won't give you unless you subscribe to their HD package, one of the
reasons I sacked them.
An extension of the original question, which freebies give you Sky One/two? I have a feeling none of them do, but since we mainly watch either the Channel 4 channels or Sky One then a similar service that gives access to those would certainly be a bonus for me.
If you have decent unlimited internet connection then Now TV box (free channels + catch up + option of Sky packages) only cost £10 and works well
even on a half decent non-fibre broadband.
The full Rocky boxes are free from being tied to Sky but cost more and Chromecast should be available soon
The Now TV box can side load one app in addition to the standard progs. There's a few available but I'm using Plex media server to stream media to my bedroom from a PC. Not bad for £10.
A Freesat box is a 1-to-1 replacement for the Sky box and gives a reasonable selection of channels. Just as much junk as Sky, but no fee!
Worth getting a HD box - note that Freesat HD is higher definition than Freeview HD. Various hard-disk boxes around, if that's what you want. I
have a Humax box, which works fine, although the menus and remote are a bit naff.
We got a new telly and Humax freesat box with freetime a couple of weeks ago. It's good and easy to use, I have no problem with the menus they seem pretty intuitive to me.
quote:
Originally posted by Peteff
It's good and easy to use, I have no problem with the menus they seem pretty intuitive to me.
I watch almost no TV (circa 1 hour a month) however I have sub'ed my viewing organisation out to BT in the form of a BT Vision box.
Basically as I see it, 4quid a month, for the rent of a twin-tuner freeview hard-disk recorder, with in built iPlayer/4OD/Itv/Five on demand
services.
At which point it does what is says on the tin, can compared to 200 quid for a hard disk recorder that is unlikely to last more than 4 years the price
appears very reasonable.
Daniel
Cheers chaps. As the rest of the family can't seem to be without telly (would be my choice) we're dumping talk talk and sky and getting bt
tv. Even with a few add ons we'll save around £70/month.
ATB
Simon
I would happily ditch Sky but my main channels are the sports for the cricket and discovery/history channels for documentrys. I cant see any other way from getting these channels.
quote:
Originally posted by Simon
Cheers chaps. As the rest of the family can't seem to be without telly (would be my choice) we're dumping talk talk and sky and getting bt tv. Even with a few add ons we'll save around £70/month.
ATB
Simon