cost of sky tv is going up again... soooo...

[NikNak]

Hi guys 'n gals....

I suspect like some of you guys, we got a letter from sky yesterday to say the monthly cost is going up again.... :evil: so have decided its time to make changes...

A very quick search has thrown up that sky also do their own version of 'freesat'... ok, so i'll lose the channels i love, Discovery, Nat Geo etc...

I think i'm right in saying that we'll also lose the ability to record pause rewind etc.... can anyone confirm this please..? If so, would it be worth going and buying a freesat box from e.g. Currys for one that will record..?

Am i also right in thinking that if we do go and buy a box we can still use the sky dish and cables and just plug & play as it were, as i've read this somewhere else...?

Anyway.... has anyone already gone through this process..?


Then.... after we get that 'working', we'll be looking to move over to possibly Plusnet for phone and broadband. Again any thoughts on this one please...

As always... cheers in advance... (homer)


Nick

 

[whiskywill]

1. I used to have a Sky package but stopped it when they charged me £75 for a call out to tell me that water had found its way into the cable, which they had installed, and corroded the plug which goes in the back of the box. About three years later I bought a new LNB (http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/NEW-SKY-MK4-Q ... 574wt_1089) and some cable, fixed it to the old Sky dish, and I was on Freesat. You should be able to use the Sky dish as it is.
2. I am on Plusnet broadband and telephone and, after nearly a year, I have had no problems at all. I am currently still on the introductory dicount for the broadband but, even at full price I would be paying less than I used to pay BT for calls alone. All UK land line calls are free at any time. They send me an e-mail every month with advance notice of what the direct debit amount will be so I call tell my wife off about calling people on their mobile 'phones, which obviously costs extra. :evil:

 

[Richard T]

Yup, we are still using the Sky dish and box 10 years plus after I stopped paying for any of their stuff.
Can't say I miss any of it.

 

[Reggie]

The recording section of sky+ is part of the subscription, if you don't pay the subscription, you don't get to record anything anymore. For the time being your sky card will continue to work and give you all of the free to air channels but you might also find that they go dead when sky update their cards, at which point you can either buy a 'freesat by sky' card (one off payment) which will give you all of the free to air channels back. Or you could just buy a freesat box instead.

 

[nev]

Get yourself a Humax freesat hdr. works with existing sky dish etc, super reliable, super picture, sensible and easy to use setup etc. not cheap but you get what you pay for.

only issue i have with plusnet is that when you report a fault it gets passed to the faults dept who will then contact you sometime in the next 72hrs :shock: then if an engineer is required they then contact openreach and arrange an appointment, usually 2 or 3 days later, so its a week before anything is looked at. and if thats not annoying enough, if your fault re-occurs soon after the engineers left - they start the same process over again!! #-o
so you can add another week

and another


and another....

 

[Glynne]

It might also be worthwhile looking at the cable options (Virgin, Talktalk etc.)?

As well as the price increase, my neighbour has a chuffing big tree directly in line with the Astra2 satelitte which causes no end of problems in windy weather and so I'm going to have to do something. Our telly does have a built in Freeview so we might try and live with that for a while but I will miss Sky Sports.

 

[Random Orbital Bob]

nice....thanks all

 

[brianhabby]

Nick,

Definitely give Sky the boot. We did it last year when they put their prices up in the same month they announced record profits!

We bought a Samsung freesat hard disk recorder and it can do everything that we used to do with the Sky box only for free, of course we don't get their premium channels but you soon get used to not having them & we don't miss them at all. Nev mentioned the Humax box which would also be a good choice.

Sky weren't happy with us leaving though, when I phoned them the woman kept asking questions to try to persuade us to stay - it took about half an hour on the phone before she would confirm the cancellation of the account and only then because I lost my rag and was deliberately rude to her and raised my voice somewhat. - They won't stop pestering you either, just be prepared to hang up on them.

my neighbour has a chuffing big tree directly in line with the Astra2 satelitte which causes no end of problems in windy weather and so I'm going to have to do something. Our telly does have a built in Freeview so we might try and live with that for a while but I will miss Sky Sports.

We have a birch tree too near the fence and in the summer it usually starts to block our neighbours' signal but once we were made aware of the problem we were able to do something about it. We just keep it trimmed back where necessary and have told them to let us know if they get any more problems and we will trim it again. Communication is the key - talk to your neighbour and you will probably be able to sort it out.

regards

Brian

 

[Glynne]

Thanks Brian,

You are obviously a very reasonable and considerate neighbour. Unfortunately my neighbour isn't!
As well as blocking my Sky signal, his tree cuts out all of the morning light of my next door neighbours very small garden.
I know he desperately wants to get rid of the tree but even when we offered to go thirds of the cost to have the tree taken down he wasn't interested!
I had a huge battle to get him to repair his fence (paid 50% in the end and organised the contractor) so I've just about given up.

That having said, I could well be better off by quite a lot of money by simply losing a few channels and hence I think I'll try and see how much it matters. A lot of the cable companies offer Sky Sports (my interest) as an additional extra so nothing lost in the long run.

 

[treeturner123]

Dear All

Why are you watching television and not in your workshops??!!!!!!

Phil (Sat on my laptop watching TV, BUT going through my work emails as well!)

 

[Glynne]

I think it is called quality time with you wife - especially if it's her programmes you are watching.

 

[monkeybiter]

I think it is called quality time with you wife - especially if it's her programmes you are watching.

That describes 90% of my viewing too.

 

[graduate_owner]

We decided we'd had enough of Sky about three years ago. We bought a Humax set top box which plugged straight into the existing cables, using the existing dish - easy. The loading of the eproms was automatic, and we were up and running in no time. We get pause, replay etc just like Sky+, and it receives HD. Some of the channels are not available although we can switch to a different 'system? via menu options (non free-sat mode) which allows access to other channels but we can't record these so easily - the recording doesn't stop at the end of the programme, it just keeps on going.

If you stop your Sky subscription (recommended) you will lose the Sky+ extras, including any existing recordings, and lose the extra channels.

Go for Humax, if I remember rightly the cost is about £200, and from then on it's totally free so you very soon recoup your outlay.

K

 

[Phil Pascoe]

Thinking about the tree blocking the signal reminded me of my grandmother about 45yrs ago She lived in a valley that was notorious for bad reception in bad weather, but when a neighbour had one of those huge "H" shaped aerials put up, every time her reception faded it was because "that thieving bitch next door had stolen her signal".

 

[Baldhead]

Kick sky out and go for Humax freesat, same connections so simple to install, I've not had any problems.

BH

 

[JustBen]

How old is your tv? If its a digital one, it should have either freeview or freesat built in.
Both provide a lot of channel(signal depending) and other than the fact one runs off a satellite dish and the other is done via an antenna, the only difference is a couple of channel variations.

90% of stuff on tv is crap or repeats.

If you want to record, you can get freesat boxes with a hdd built in or you could get a dvr box.

Personally I wouldn't waste hard drive space recording the drivel that they pump out.

Use freeview and spend the money you were going to spend on workshop stuff. Count the missed program's due to not being able to record as a blessing in disguise.

Workshop time could earn you money and hone/learn new skills. Can tv do that?

Just my thoughts..

 

[llangatwgnedd]

Get yourself a Humax freesat hdr. works with existing sky dish etc, super reliable, super picture, sensible and easy to use setup etc. not cheap but you get what you pay for.

You will never regret buying a Humax box, especially the latest pvr.

Uses the same transponders as $ky, so so simple to convert, and saves bags of dosh for your tools and workshop.

 

[paulm]

Not really clear what channels that are unique to Sky that I would lose if I clancelled them and which are available on freesat, other than sky news and sky one of course and any obvious ones like that (don't bother with sky sports or films).

Guess I probably just need to make a note of those channels we tend to watch and then have a look at freesat and see !

Cheers, Paul

 

[Harbo]

We've had a Humax PVR for many years - upgraded to a 1TB HD version last year when our area went fully digital.
Great machines - very rarely watch live TV anymore and no adverts!

Rod

 

[JustBen]

Have a look on google for a freesat/freeview channel list. There are a good few channels to be had and some alternatives to sky.

Quest channel is similar to discovery.
You do get a lot of news channels and iirc, you get sky news too.