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Thinking about cancelling my sky TV subscription as paying over £400 a year and don’t really watch many of the sky channels.
Looks like I could switch to freesat from Sky by using my existing dish/top box, pay £25 for a new viewing card. The only channels I would really miss are Sky 1 and Eurosport. As the grand tours are now also shown on ITV I’d only really miss the Spring Classics and I could just subscribe to Eurosport player for a few months in March/April to watch these.
My main question is; would I be able to record tv programs using my current Sky+ box as I rarely watch programs when they are actually on?
Anything else I should know/consider?
Thanks,
Jason.
Sky+ is the thing that gives you recording and live pause functionality and you pay a subscription for that. Sky Freesat is just like free Freesat but you pay for it. If you have a TV with a Freesat or Freeview tuner then you are just better off using that. You might get one or two additional channels with Sky, but they wont be decent channels worth paying for.
Also if your TV is fairly new (5yrs or so) then you might have the ability to plug a USB external HDD to it and get the live pause and recording functionality. You wont be able to record one channel and watch another simultaneously unless your TV has twin tuners (unlikely), but that's what catch up TV over the internet is for.
Alternatively you can just substitute your Sky box with a Freesat PVR.
AFAIK you have to pay Sky £10/month to use the record/pause/etc functions of the Sky box. Or cancel/haggle and get a better deal out of them (there is a thread on here about it if you search)... currently paying less than £7/month for HD Family pack subscription!
We bought second hand Humax recorder/free sat box from Gumtree for £55.
Plug into the Sky cables.
Bob is your uncle, no haggling or fees needed, and no daft payments to use Sky digi box.
We dropped our Sky subscription about four years ago as we didn't watch any Sky channels (we'd got Sky as at the previous house there was very poor terrestrial reception). Even though we were on the basic package we recovered the cost of buying a new DVR box within nine months.
Sky will pester you for about a year afterwards though trying to get you to sign up again.
We got a humax freesat box. It is not as good as the sky box (bit slow and the ui is sometimes odd) but it is usable and has the features (hd, program guide, series link, iplayer, netflix).
Anything else - go online - Sky (Now) and Eurosport both offer payg online subscriptions but you need a way to connect to your TV (of which there are hundreds)
As above, a Humax recorder box is probably cheaper in the long term if you want recording etc.. functionality.
Discounted using the freeview on our TV as would mean getting an ariel which is a bit of a PITA.
So does a Humax box simply replace my Sky box? Would I just put the new viewing card in and away I go?
Will have a look for the sky subscription thread as sounds like calling them is the first thing I should be doing, if I got it down to £7 a month I’d stay.
As per previous threads on here, just call Sky and tell them you're cancelling and wait for their offers.
Alternatively, get a humax and stop paying Murdoch anything at all.
Unplug all the cables from the Sky box and then plug them into the Humax box, that's it.
You don't need a viewing card for the Humax or any other non-Sky STB, it's how they (Sky) limit access to their system.
freesat is free - sky are billing you 7 quid or whatever to rent the box.
If you can afford the Humax upfront there is no ongoing cost.
Just unplug dish cables from back of sky box and plug into humax. That easy... The dish is already pointing at the correct satellite.
I've been through this recently. The newest Humax Freesat box with 'Freetime' is a really good recorder. The earlier generation pre-Freetime boxes are a bit shit (we had one for years).
If you've already got a Sky Viewing card I don't think you need to pay £25 - they just downgrade your card permissions when you leave. The £25 admin is the charge for issuing a new card if you've just got a box from somewhere.
Sky will try to get you to stay. Give notice and see what they offer you. When I turned down all of their offers for discounted subscription packages they offered me free broadband for a year (just paying line rental) and free Sky+ (so the box kept recording). They want you to keep using their box rather than going to Humax because you're easier to get back on subscription in future and they can still potentially make money out of you on pay per view movies.
Unplug all the cables from the Sky box and then plug them into the Humax box, that's it.You don't need a viewing card for the Humax or any other non-Sky STB, it's how they (Sky) limit access to their system.
^This.
Cheers, easy to set up then.
Reading again I see my post wasn't clear - they gave me 'freesat from sky' but allowed me to keep using Sky+ features for no charge AND they gave me free broadband
Discounted using the freeview on our TV as would mean getting an ariel which is a bit of a PITA.
To be absolutely clear so you don't balls this up; Freeview (via aerial) and Freesat (via dish) are different things and require different boxes (Humax sell both Freeview and Freesat boxes).
Point of note is that if you lose Sky+ you not only lose the recording feature but the playback feature. Anything recorded that you want to watch, get it viewed before you cancel.
Yeah spotted that Humax freeview and freesat boxes.
I reckon I’ve got at least 25 hrs of recorded stuff to watch so perhaps cancel in the new year so I can watch it all over xmas. Looks like I need to give Sky 31 days notice anyway.
Connectivity good at your place?
I've ditched Sky, bought NowTV (which is Sky's online offering) £6 a month, you don't record anything, you just stream it as/when you want to watch it.
The only downside for me is that you can't record anything 'forever' but you usually get 1-3 months from time of broadcast to watch anything you want.
The Human boxes are good. Does the same as Sky+ and coupled with a Fire Stick or Google Cast should cover most bases.
As @matt says you can just use the sat dish and a freesat box and if you wish buy one with the record functions ? Then it becomes a cost comparison.
Ultimately there is no cost comparison with a Humax box. It's a one-off cost with no recurring costs unlike Sky, so it is only a matter of time before you've broken even. AND you're not lining the pockets of the Murdoch mob.
Do nothing. I just cancelled the DD and that was it. Freesat still happily comes though the dish. Having said that I do wonder if its slightly different. We do get one or two channel's that a mate with a commercial freesat box doesn't get and he gets one or two that we don't. Haven't noticed as they are things like cooking channels.
All I miss is Eurosport for the cycling. Did use Player but it became a pain.
Freesat from Sky =! Freesat in terms of channels. Channels pay a fee to Sky or to Freesat to be in the EPG. Some don't pay for both but are free to air (i.e. Unencrypted) so you could manually tune them if your box allowed it.