YouView from Plus worth £5 a month?

Roger1
Roger1 Posts: 1,603 Forumite
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in TV MoneySaving
We just had a mailshot from Plus offering YouView for £5 a month for Unlimited Fibre Broadband customers.

The offer is at https://www.plus.net/tv/ . I'm trying to weigh up pros and cons.

We're a Murdoch-free household so we have no Sky subscription, nor would we want one except for individual channels, though we have a Now TV box for I-player etc.

For the £5 (plus £50 activation), we would get:
  • up to 70 FreeView TV and radio channels - we already get these and more through the air
  • 15 'premium' entertainment channels. but no sport other than Eurosport 1 and 2
  • pause and rewind and the option to upgrade to record
It's the last bit I'd find interesting as we often get home having missed a programme we wanted to see and BBC don't yet have a +1 channel.. What's MSEers' experience? Is that facility worth £5 a month?

We have Hot Bird and Astra dishes and can see F1, tennis and so on on Swiss TV. I'm inclined to ignore the offer as it presumably needs another box, but I could be persuaded.
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Comments

  • wongataa
    wongataa Posts: 2,627 Forumite
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    You can buy a Freeview/Youview recorder yourself and have the pause/rewind/recording for no extra money. A Youview box will also have all the catch up services - iPlayer, Demand 5, ITV Player, whatever the Channel 4 catch up service is. A regular Freeview PVR will have some if not all the catch up services.

    If you have no interest in the services you have to pay for then it isn't really worth it. I bought a second hand TalkTalk Youview box on a popular auction site. It doesn't need a TalkTalk connection to work. I have no interest in the TalkTalk specific services so I mind if they don't work without the subscription.
  • pmduk
    pmduk Posts: 10,655 Forumite
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    For a fiver a month I'd go for it, however only you can judge how much it'd be used and the value you put upon that use.

    I regularly use the Talktalk youview plus service. It's great to fast-forward through the ads on pre-recorded programmes or even to pause at the beginning of a programme to give you a buffer to skip through that programme's ads.
  • skintpaul
    skintpaul Posts: 1,510 Forumite
    First Anniversary First Post Combo Breaker I've been Money Tipped!
    i think nowTV box carries most freeview channels, anyway? only advantage is the recording feature, i think..
    breathe in, breathe out- You're alive! Everything else is a bonus, right? RIGHT??
  • wongataa
    wongataa Posts: 2,627 Forumite
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    pmduk wrote: »
    I regularly use the Talktalk youview plus service. It's great to fast-forward through the ads on pre-recorded programmes or even to pause at the beginning of a programme to give you a buffer to skip through that programme's ads.
    You don't need to pay for those functions though. They are the standard PVR functions of any PVR - Youview or Freeview.
  • Roger1
    Roger1 Posts: 1,603 Forumite
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    Thanks, all, for your helpful advice. :)

    I've decided to recycle (= bin) the Plus offer on the basis that alternatives are available.

    Now if the range of so-called 'premium' channels were different, I might have bitten. But they're not, so I won't.
  • VisionMan
    VisionMan Posts: 1,585 Forumite
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    edited 28 May 2015 at 12:57PM
    I'm on one of the above packages with YouView from BT and was that impressed I went out and bought a retail box from Richer sounds for the main room (£175).If anyone wants to buy a smart Freeview HD recorder this is the PVR of choice because its in roughly the same price range as other Freeview HD recorders. And they don't have half the smarts or apps a YV box does.

    But its as others have said, if your going to use the smarts its well worth the money. If your not, it isn't.
  • blisteringblue
    blisteringblue Posts: 1,140 Forumite
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    I fully expect Plusnet TV to be offering BT Sports before too long. They offer it cheaply on the Sky platform, and as a subsidiary for BT it can't take much considering the amount BT have paid for football.

    The only difference other than BT Sport between Plusnet TV and BT TV is that BT TV also have Gold and Watch as premium channels, Plusnet don't have these?
  • Stompa
    Stompa Posts: 8,348 Forumite
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    VisionMan wrote: »
    I'm on one of the above packages with YouView from BT and was that impressed I went out and bought a retail box from Richer sounds for the main room (£175).
    Or alternatively try eBay, where the going rate for a new box seems to be around £70 (though without a guarantee).
    Stompa
  • VisionMan
    VisionMan Posts: 1,585 Forumite
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    Stompa wrote: »
    Or alternatively try eBay, where the going rate for a new box seems to be around £70 (though without a guarantee).

    Indeed, Stompa. Which is why I went retail and got an RS five year warranty with it. I'd rather have the piece of mind.
  • Stompa
    Stompa Posts: 8,348 Forumite
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    VisionMan wrote: »
    Indeed, Stompa. Which is why I went retail and got an RS five year warranty with it. I'd rather have the piece of mind.

    Fair enough, though I'm not sure I'd pay £100 for the warranty. Fingers crossed that mine doesn't pack up!
    Stompa
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