Is YOUVIEW any good?

Lizzie-S

We are just in the process of moving house and we were with Virgin Media; but fancy moving to sky... The price is OK and with the phone and internet, it's about a tenner a month less than we were paying for Virgin Media.

But my other half keeps on about youview. Are they any good? Are their hidden costs and do you have to have 'their' landline?

macman

There are no costs at all (hidden or otherwise) with YouView, apart from the one-off box cost-it's simply an on-demand extension of Freeview.
You can use any broadband service you want as long as it has adequate bandwidth to stream the on-demand content. YouView don't sell landlines, or anything else.
You will not of course get the subscription channels available only on pay TV.

Dan-Dan

sorry to hijack...does this mean though if you go for YOUVIEW and want BT sport , and already have BT broadband , the only way is t watch it over the internet , as in , on your pc/laptop ?

macman

No, the YouView service is viewed on your TV. But the on-demand content is fed via your broadband service, then from the router to the YouView box and TV.

Dan-Dan

macman wrote: »

No, the YouView service is viewed on your TV. But the on-demand content is fed via your broadband service, then from the router to the YouView box and TV.

OK thanks macman

I like the idea of bt vision and need the ability to pause TV etc but we must have BT sport

It`s a bit of a juggle getting prices down but still getting the services that are required (tv for kids etc)

zarf2007

Dan-Dan wrote: »

OK thanks macman

I like the idea of bt vision and need the ability to pause TV etc but we must have BT sport

It`s a bit of a juggle getting prices down but still getting the services that are required (tv for kids etc)

To clarify, you can get youview one of 3 ways:

1) buy your own humax box from John Lewis etc, this just gives you freeview, pvr recording, catchup for all 5 channels (bbc, itv, c4, 5) and ondemand from sky now (some movies). You also get 1-5 in HD.

2) get a tv/broadband package from BT, if you do this opt for the youview box (not the crappy bt vision box), you will then get everything a retail box has plus BT vision catchup app offering on demand content + BT sport when it launches and other IPTV multicast channels (potentially hundreds but initially the same as the BT vision box extra channels - discovery, Comedy Central, in HD and SD etc).

3) get a tv/broadband package from talktalk, they supply a youview box (different to the humax) and have all content the retail box has plus 'boosts' which allow you to view sky channels (movies, sports, discovery etc) through the talktalk player app. This gives more content than BTs offering but the talktalk player app is clunky and you can't record from the sky channels.

Also note if you buy a retail box and have either talktalk or BT broadband you can access their ondemand content for extra cost (talktalk player or bt vision player).

For either talktalk or BT it's advisable to get a fibre connection or at least a 10MBps broadband connection.

For both BT and Talktalk, when further updates are release you will be able to view the potentially unlimited iptv channels natively in the EPG. And then it's game over sky/virgin and they know it.

Dan-Dan

excellent , thank you , so then , if i go for option 2 i will need infinity ?

macman

You do not need FTTC to get the on-demand content. But you do need an ADSL service of 2.5-3MBps minimum. Not 10MBps.
I get less than 7MBps on ADSL and can stream from iPlayer perfectly well on that.
However zarf is correct in that you really don't want BTV over YouView. BTV is just Freeview with some on-demand content.

littleboo

macman wrote: »

You do not need FTTC to get the on-demand content. But you do need an ADSL service of 2.5-3MBps minimum. Not 10MBps.
I get less than 7MBps on ADSL and can stream from iPlayer perfectly well on that.
However zarf is correct in that you really don't want BTV over YouView. BTV is just Freeview with some on-demand content.

That's not correct. BTV also has additional live channels if you have Infinity and I believe if you want Sky Sports 1&2 that currently they are available on the BT Vision platform but not BT YouView.

zarf2007

macman wrote: »

You do not need FTTC to get the on-demand content. But you do need an ADSL service of 2.5-3MBps minimum. Not 10MBps.
I get less than 7MBps on ADSL and can stream from iPlayer perfectly well on that.
However zarf is correct in that you really don't want BTV over YouView. BTV is just Freeview with some on-demand content.

While I agree you can get away with lower bandwidth, if you plan on multiroom (this can be achieved by buying a used talktalk youview box off ebay for £60 to add to the BT supplied Humax box like i did), it is better to have as much bandwidth as you can get/afford...

also be advised that the extra channels (discovery, comedy central etc) offered as part of the BT vision box package are not currently live yet on BT's Youview offering but this is going to happen in the next few weeks/when the sport channels launch..

Midzone

zarf2007 wrote: »

To clarify, you can get youview one of 3 ways:

1) buy your own humax box from John Lewis etc, this just gives you freeview, pvr recording, catchup for all 5 channels (bbc, itv, c4, 5) and ondemand from sky now (some movies). You also get 1-5 in HD.

2) get a tv/broadband package from BT, if you do this opt for the youview box (not the crappy bt vision box), you will then get everything a retail box has plus BT vision catchup app offering on demand content + BT sport when it launches and other IPTV multicast channels (potentially hundreds but initially the same as the BT vision box extra channels - discovery, Comedy Central, in HD and SD etc).

3) get a tv/broadband package from talktalk, they supply a youview box (different to the humax) and have all content the retail box has plus 'boosts' which allow you to view sky channels (movies, sports, discovery etc) through the talktalk player app. This gives more content than BTs offering but the talktalk player app is clunky and you can't record from the sky channels.

Also note if you buy a retail box and have either talktalk or BT broadband you can access their ondemand content for extra cost (talktalk player or bt vision player).

For either talktalk or BT it's advisable to get a fibre connection or at least a 10MBps broadband connection.

For both BT and Talktalk, when further updates are release you will be able to view the potentially unlimited iptv channels natively in the EPG. And then it's game over sky/virgin and they know it.

Just to clarify there are only 4 HD channels on Freeview - Channel 5 HD is not available.