Leave Sky and go to Freesat - Any good?

prowla

tom083 wrote: »

My question is two-fold having read a lot of forum posts with differing information. We have just cancelled Sky in favour of accessing super-fast broadband and streaming a mixture of Netflix, Amazon Prime and BT Sport through Chromecast/Smart TV. What these options don't give us is live HD channels or the facility to record. Therefore, the two questions I have are:

1) will my Sky box continue to work with freeview channels including free to air HD channels? If so, which ones?

2) will the facility to record these channels and other freeview channels on the Sky box remain?

Many thanks - if the answer to both of these is 'no', perhaps somebody could advise on the best freesat box that works with ou existing Sky dish!

You can see which channels you'll get by running your Sky box without the viewing card in it. Just switch it off, take the car out, switch it on, and see what you get.

You won't be able to record, nor watch already recorded programmes. Sky do offer a card which allows you to record, for a fee (is it £10/month?), but I don't really get the point of that.

davidsuffolk

Just cancelled Sky and bought a Humax. Have to say so far very impressed. Installing took maybe 2 minutes as it was just a case of removing the Sky box and putting the wires into the Humax box. Setup equally quick. Even the power cable was the same so no need to burrow to find the socket (Humax do have a voltage dropper but the old Sky cable fits that).

I don't know if my imagination or wishful thinking but the picture seems brighter and sharper too!

So far a happy bunny.

[Deleted User]

The SD picture is better on the humax than on a sky box.

[Deleted User]

davidsuffolk wrote: »

I don't know if my imagination or wishful thinking but the picture seems brighter and sharper too!

It receives the same signal from the same satellite so make of that what you will...

Deleted_User wrote: »

The SD picture is better on the humax than on a sky box.

Who watches in standard definition?

Mister_G

It could be that the Humax has a better quality codec. I can imagine that the Sky box is more likely to be built down to a price.

The cynic in me suggests that perhaps Sky would deliberately make the SD not as good as it could be in order to get people to subscribe to their HD services!

[Deleted User]

Mister_G wrote: »

It could be that the Humax has a better quality codec. I can imagine that the Sky box is more likely to be built down to a price.

To be fair, Sky rely on customers paying a large subscription each month in order to survive. It would be counter productive, surely, to have a substandard decoder providing poor quality picture?

Mister_G wrote: »

The cynic in me suggests that perhaps Sky would deliberately make the SD not as good as it could be in order to get people to subscribe to their HD services!

The far more likely result is that most would simply cancel Sky altogether.

VisionMan

The picture quailty of Skys SD channels is very poor. They are broadcast via DVB-S using MPEG2 at an average bitrate of 3.0Mbps and a max of 5(ish) and poor resolution of/in 576i. Skys HD channels on the other hand transmit via DVB-S2 in MPEG4 at an average bitrate of 12.1Mbps and a max of 20 of/in 1080i. Quite a chasm. Though unsurprisingly via satellite (Freesat) ITV SD is even worse, averaging 2.3Mbps and max of 4.6.

http://www.digitalbitrate.com/dtv.php?live=69&mux=10847&liste=2&lang=en

System

davidsuffolk wrote: »

Just cancelled Sky and bought a Humax. Have to say so far very impressed. Installing took maybe 2 minutes as it was just a case of removing the Sky box and putting the wires into the Humax box. Setup equally quick. Even the power cable was the same so no need to burrow to find the socket (Humax do have a voltage dropper but the old Sky cable fits that).

I don't know if my imagination or wishful thinking but the picture seems brighter and sharper too!

So far a happy bunny.

I'm 3 weeks in and quite enjoying the HDR 1000s. I like the interface and how easy it is to find something to watch/record in the Showcase section. So far it has been quite reliable.

There is definitely a difference in the picture quality between this and the Sky STB. It is probably down to default picture settings the two STBs come with.

pickleiamin

Hi

I am looking at alternatives from the Sky package that we currently have. We currently pay £97 per month.

We currently have our Phone, Broadband and Sky+ HD. With our Sky package we get the Variety & Sports package.

We arent bothered about the films on Sky hence why we dont have them. I have netfilx and use that a bit too.

We watch the odd football game during the season but I mostly get the sport for the Rugby League and the Cycling.

I have looked at NowTV but I cant get the cycling on there. I could get Eurosport Player at £4.99p/m during the season but not sure how to record races to watch back. Some more research really.

We have called Sky up this evening to see if we can get our costs down and they can only drop it by £17 a month but in a month or so thats going up by £5 anyway so it would be £12 a month

Does anyone know any alternatives?

mije1983

Whats your budget?

The first thing I'd say is CANCEL! £97 a month is far more than you should be paying. Check out the haggling thread for some idea of the kind of deal you can get if you want to stay with Sky (50% off is a minimum really).

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/2652651