Alternative to Sky

David_B_2

sloughflint wrote:

Utterly cheesed off with Sky. So much so have given 30 day notice to cancel.
had sky for years and don't know of any alternatives. Are there any or has this s***ing company got complete monopoly?

I wish I could cancel Sky, but I love my football so pay £36 a month (not very money saver). To be fair their coverage is the best and you can't get it anywhere else apart from sh*tty internet channels. It would cost my more than that to go to one game anyway, wells that's what I tell myself!

sloughflint

Thanks everybody for your contributions.
It will be nice not to pay Sky £42.50 a month. I will try to see if box is a problem. If not will try to get freesat channels via the box.It might be worth paying a small amount to get someone to come out and take a look at the dish just to be able to get free to air channels later through the sat dish. We tried moving it slightly but we don't know what we are doing.
Just one more question: If we get the box and dish working for the freesat channels, can we add channels via topuptv or is that just linked to freeview?
Thanks again for very useful replies to two non techie people.

sloughflint

Sky subscription now finished.
Two things that really annoy me:
1.We bought a sky plus box with 160 Gb which cost a lot at the time. Now the subscription is over, we can't access previously recorded programmes, live pause or record freeview channels. What a con! Why should those facilities be linked to subscription. I would have thought it was a hardware facility.
2. not all freeview channels are available ( haven't got E4, More4 and UK TVHistory). Not overly bothered about that but the principle bugs me.

nickmack

sloughflint wrote:

Thanks everybody for your contributions.
It will be nice not to pay Sky £42.50 a month.

If you are outside of your 12 months contract then you don't need to pay £42.50. Just call up Sky and tell them you're thinking of cancelling. They'll put you through to Customer retentions. Tell them you've seen better deals on other services/you can't afford it etc. but you like all the channels. They'll offer to cut your subscription by 1/3 if you stay for another 12 months. So you'll then be paying about £31/month for all movies and sport. A bit more manageable than £42.50.

sloughflint

No, I've already cancelled my subsciption and my 30 day notice expired yesterday. It's a case of cutting my nose to swipe my face. Was really cheesed off at the time ( various reasons) so felt like telling them to get lost and not have my money( was much more polite in reality). There was no attempt to keep my custom at all. Even if they'd have tried, I'd have probably still dug my heels in and cancelled anyway. I can't stand it when a company has monopoly like this and can do as they please.
Really cheesed off about the skyplusbox though. looked it up. Paid £350 for it at the time. If it is linked to a subsciption and unusable without for recording and pausing purposes then it should have been free like the basic skybox.

computerwoman

:j 1st sky+ has 2 wires coming frome the dish to the box, so there for you can not plug it in to someones sky digital box with only 1 wire 2nd you can plug a digi box into your dish just use the 1 wire to test your signal, 3rd you can use your card in someone else's box be it sky or sky+ as I have already done this, 4th sky+ has a hard drive yes this needs formatting sometimes so go to
Services on your sky+ remote
go to No4 system setup
press 01 and select
press No7
sky+ planner rebuild
this will format your hdd on your sky + box
if you want to just do housekeeping which cleans up the hdd but does not delete any programmes select the housekeeping option 2nd from bottom. and why can't you go up a ladder and turn the ariel yourself you just need to keep the tv on and someone in front of it sayng yes no yes no
also after 3 months sky will ring you and ask you to go back you say make it worth my while and they offer you half-price for 6 months hope this helps T:D

5limJim

David_B wrote:

I wish I could cancel Sky, but I love my football so pay £36 a month (not very money saver). To be fair their coverage is the best and you can't get it anywhere else apart from sh*tty internet channels. It would cost my more than that to go to one game anyway, wells that's what I tell myself!

The games that Sky broadcast in their alloted times where they are the host broadcaster, are indeed top quality. however, as someone mentioned earlier in the thread there are other channels broadcasting from other satellites that would carry the games and many more than sky show as well, for example, BBC has the rights to show highlights first, but the actual transmissions that the BBC pull their highlights from are often shown live on channels broadcasting elsewhere via Satellite.. It is a grey area as to the legality of it, however, there was a local court case recently where a pub landlord successfully defended his right to show these games so it cant be illegal. There's a charge, but its substantially cheaper than £30 per month.... Good luck

skinnerneil

If you have a Sky+ box you should be able to ask Sky to turn off all the pay channels but keep Sky+ functions. We did this and get all the BBC, ITV, CH4 &5 channels but Sky + still works (which we now couldnt live without).
We did this as we decided we hardly ever watched anything other than free channels.

Costs £ 10/ month.

If you have any issues - browse http://forum.digitalspy.co.uk/board/forumdisplay.php?f=35 for help

sloughflint

computerwoman wrote:

:j 1st sky+ has 2 wires coming frome the dish to the box, so there for you can not plug it in to someones sky digital box with only 1 wire 2nd you can plug a digi box into your dish just use the 1 wire to test your signal, 3rd you can use your card in someone else's box be it sky or sky+ as I have already done this, 4th sky+ has a hard drive yes this needs formatting sometimes so go to
Services on your sky+ remote
go to No4 system setup
press 01 and select
press No7
sky+ planner rebuild
this will format your hdd on your sky + box
if you want to just do housekeeping which cleans up the hdd but does not delete any programmes select the housekeeping option 2nd from bottom. and why can't you go up a ladder and turn the ariel yourself you just need to keep the tv on and someone in front of it sayng yes no yes no
also after 3 months sky will ring you and ask you to go back you say make it worth my while and they offer you half-price for 6 months hope this helps T:D

I'm not sure I've understood your post.
Are you giving me recommendations on what to do if I still had a sky subscription a few weeks ago. We did all those things you mentioned ie up a ladder and tweak, services option, rebuild etc. This is by the by now as I am no longer a subscriber. ( the fault was actually to do with cables sitting in water along the flat roof affecting LNB?????)
My recent point was about the skyplus box requiring a subscription just to do recording and live pause. This annoys me as we paid £350 for it.It should not be linked to a subscription.
Thanks all the same skinnerneil, I won't be giving this company £10 a month. They've had too many full monthly fees for many years from this customer. Never again.

computerwoman

:j If you subscribe to a premium package (which I do ) sky movies you get the £10 knocked off. T