Alternatives to Sky

[Jeremy]

Good evening,

Been with Sky for a while now. Don't watch a lot of TV, mainly sSky sport ,Wheeler Dealers and my partner is into the discovery channel type stuff.

Every year I play the game, phone up, cancel, they ring back with an offer, usually 50% off, and away we go for another year. But I'm fed up playing the game so have been thinking about jumping ship.

You view, Freesat, Now TV, Netflix etc there is such a great selection out there now.

I already get BT Sport and was thinking Now TV Sky Sports day pass might work for the odd occasion that I want to watch the Sky sports channels. But Sky is like a shabby old pair of slippers, do I take that step into the unknown ? What if the alternatives are rubbish ?

So my question to the SE massive is, are there any youview/freesat viewers in our midst ? How do you rate the service ? Anyone who has moved over from Sky and never looked back ?

**edited to add, I'm not in a Virgin cable area so this isn't an option unfortunately.

Regards,

Jeremy

[j2 lot]

Gave up on Sky when our sat box constantly locked up due to poor signal. Moved to Freeview HD which gives most of what we want for the one off cost of the box (£200/£300 depending on model)
We now have Youview / Now TV with all the free channels with no monthly cost and you can buy Sky Movies, entertainment or Sport packages on a month by month basis - normally around £10 for a month for each and there are box sets etc available.There are often starter offers too of day passes / 2 months 1/2 price etc and most offer the option to cancel with no long term commitments. Best offer we had was 6 months of movies for £5, (83p a month) !!

[Jeremy]

Thank you James, it sounds like you have no regrets about leaving Sky then ? Is there anything you had with Sky before or any aspect of the service which you miss at all ?

Regards,

Jeremy

[j2 lot]

cough- Keith here

Sky's menus and systems probably beat most of the others for ease of use but once you get used to them the other systems are ok too. There were a couple of series I missed watching on some of the Sky channels but can now get them on the entertainment package if I want & I don't miss having to pay £x each month.
I nearly went back to Sky when the BBC lost the full F1 coverage but got a friends Sky Go log-in and if I wanted could now pay the monthly sub or buy a day pass.

[renmure]

I also need to do "something" with Sky. I am one of the lazy gits who have the full package of all the channels but haven't bothered to get HD and yet pay £60-something per month.... despite hardly ever really watching anything apart from footie. I recently had a freesat dish installed for a separate area of the house and couldn't really say I would have noticed any difference, apart from no footie. I guess I need to phone them and go through the game of pretending to leave and (hopefully) get a big discount to stay.

As an aside, I live out in the sticks and recently changed broadband provider from AOL (been with them for about 15yrs!!) to BT Broadband. OMG, what a revelation!! I feel like I have joined the 21th Century at last. Up till the change our broadband speed was almost dial-up slooooooooow. We are 4 miles from the exchange (itself in the middle of nowhere) and that our phone line runs along poles and through trees and all that old-fashioned stuff and so we weren't surprised, despite having a fancy smart tv at not really being able to watch simple you-tube clips in anything other than low-res and even then, expecting to get lag and delays as everything played catch-up. Now, we can watch You-tube and online films and all the stuff that I guess everyone else has taken for granted for the last decade!! Whoop whoop.

[Lazydonkey]

Bt throttle the broadband speed of their competitors at peak times. They aren't allowed to do it so they do. As such if you can only get a BT line then anything other than bt broadband will be a frustrating experience. If your exchange has been unbundled then you can get bt out the loop completely but that's not an option for some.

On the sky thing I think the product is great value for money and well worth it


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[Al.]

I am so lazy that I am also with Sky HD no movies, but everything else, and every month when I see £66 or something vanish I ask why, as I hate football and boxing, golf leaves me cold. i.e. I don't watch Sky Sports! I do watch SKY F1HD sometimes. Reminded recently that it is only when one of 2 sons deems us with an honurary brief visit does Sport get watched. I think the basic Sky package for all the vast majority of channels is good value at whatever these days (£18?) and the £10 extra for HD gets them looking good and gives me the Sky F1 (You DO NOT need to have Sky Sport if you have HD). I have also just installed their Wireless On-Demand box as a free offer rather than the normal £30. Having said that had to up my BT Infinity to unlimited because of it though. (I too was AOL for many years up to 2 years ago & agree a big difference)

So like you thinking of reducing my package but I never realised that there was a possibility of leaving threat and keeping the same. As I have been with Sky since it started as BSB and probably older they have made their money out of me.

[renmure]

Yeah, I have also been with Sky from the start. I really can't criticise the product and as someone who can just remember when there were 4 terrestial channels and that was your lot then it is a whole new ball game and even my £60ish bill for endless channels is only about £2/day. However my New Year resolution is to go through the motions to reduce that cost.

The broadband speed thing with BT really has been an eye opener. We watched a movie last night that had been uploaded to YouTube (nothing exciting and it was from 1972!!) and for the whole 90mins it was just like watching something that was on BBC. No chance of super fast broadband or cable or any real high tec stuff out here, but wow.. What a difference.

[Andy]

We added BT TV to our infinity package about a year ago after the BBC lost the MotoGP and BT were able to offer Eurosport for the BSB and WSB as well as Discovery for Wheeler Dealer type stuff. It was an extra £7 for the channels, £3 for HD so was pretty happy that I could watch as much bike racing as my eyes could take for a tenner a month. We don't much TV so for us it's ideal. It does eat into your broadband usage, so if you go heavy on the HD you need to watch your allowance It's effectively freeview with some extra streaming channels bolted on.