Sky+ and Freesat issues

Longpier

Hi

Wondered if you could help. I have read quite a bit of info from this forum, but still in the dark to a certain extent.

I'm thinking of dumping my Sky+. I'm out of contract and no longer want to pay £45 a month. I also have Sky Broadband base which is costing £5 a month.

The questions I have are:
a) If I cancel Sky+, am I right in thinking my box effectively reverts to being a Freesat box, capable of receiving 250 channels?
b) I'm under the impression that if I cancel Sky+, the recording functionality will cease to work - is this correct?
c) If so, and I decide to buy a FreeSat PVR HD box, can I plug the wires from my Sky+ dish straight into that and receive HD channels, or will I need to buy another dish...i.e. one that is capable of receiving the HD channels, or will this current dish suffice?

Many thanks - apologies if this has been covered a thousand times

ryancor

Hi Longpier, I don't know the answer to your first two questions but I can tell you that your Sky+ dish will plug straight into a Freesat box and work. I have done this with a Humax Foxsat HD box. It has two inputs like sky+ so you can record one channel and watch another. The HD is very good on it as well.

dougz_2

a) Roughly correct, but it would not be exactly the same as a freesat box which may additionally have the potential to receive lots of foreign channels, and provide additional hardware features, that the sky box will probably never be enabled to. On the other hand there are some interactive services, and maybe some free to view channels like sky3, that you would only still get on a sky box, but I am not sure of the current situation on the latter, so someone else might be able to provide a more accurate answer.

b) all the PVR functions will be disabled by sky if you do not keep a suitable subscription going, but you can pay much less than £45pcm for that.

almillar

a) If you cancel your Sky sub, you revert to 'Freesat from Sky' - ( https://www.freesatfromsky.com for a list of channels). This is pretty much the channels that you can see if you take the card out (Free to View) plus a few extra that are encrypted (Free to Air) (eg Sky 3 etc).
b) Correct. Only subscribers can record. If you want to record you'll need to pay them £10 per month!
c) Freesat is totally compatible with Sky dishes and cabling. Directly replace the boxes. For HD you can buy a normal HD Freesat box, or the Humax Foxsat HDR 'Freesat+' box, which would be the equivalent of the Sky+ HD box. It requires 2 feeds from the dish, just like Sky+ does, to watch one/record one etc.
HTH

Longpier

Just wanted to say a big thank you to all who responded. Makes my decision an informed one...so thanks again

DebDub

Hello - just another thing that you might like to know - I don't know how long you have been with Sky as I think this has a bearing, but if you call to cancel, they may offer you a reduced package FREE for 4mths.

We have been with them for around 3yrs. We have always had the full package (think the first 6mths were at half price as new customers). I called to cancel (were looking to go the freesat route too) and they have basically given us the VARIETY PACKAGE FREE until August 09. THEN, if we call and say that we would still like to cancel, we can, or we could swap package FREE for another month.
Thereafter, if we still want to cancel, we can - they have not 'started our contract again', and are not holding us to another 'x' amount of mths, purely trying to keep hold of us (or perhaps wean us off?!!)

Hope this helps

rich17217

Hi,

does anyone know if i can buy a sky plus box and use it with freesat in order to record onto the hard drive?

Or is it best to buy a dvd recorder in order to record prog's from my freesat set-up.

I currently receive freesat via a sky dish and use an older sky box but i really want to be able to record from tv to a high quality...ie avoiding using our old video recorder which only works sporadically. Is the only option to buy a dvd recordera dn use discs. Our area is not great for freeview reception and so i think that limits the freeview box route.

Any tips and advice really is gratefully received.

Thanks a million,

Richie

jem16

Answered on you other post.

http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=1838297&page=2

hobgate

You can pay Sky a tenner a month to use the record facility, you dont have to subscribe to any channels