Replacing Sky with Netflix / Now TV combo?

MrBloater

Afternoon. Am hoping some of the wise heads on here can let me know if my plans to replace my current setup are feasible/stupid/blindly ignoring something totally obvious.

- Am currently paying out £63 a month for Sky Entertainment Extra / Full Movies / Multiroom / HD.

- Phone line / broadband is TalkTalk.

- No terrestrial aerial and no cable coverage in my area.

- Front room currently has a TV connected to a Sky+ HD box (with wireless attachment) and a Sony Blu-Ray player (wireless) with various apps: iPlayer / Demand 5 / Lovefilm / Netflix / Yupp / Muzu / YouTube.

- Back room currently has a TV connected to a Sky+ HD box and PC / Xbox 360 / PS3 / Wii all plugged directly into the router.

So the plan is to get rid of the Sky subscription, which I am assuming will leave me with the FTV channels (as in BBC, ITV, C4/5, CBS and a few of the Chart Show stable Music and Kids channels) in both rooms. I am assuming that all Sky+ functionality will go and any stored programmes will be inaccessible. I am also assuming that the Catchup services on the box will also be disabled?

Am planning on getting a Netflix subscription - using it for the regular UK service in the front room using the Sony box, and using it in the back room via either the PC / Xbox with the added feature of subscribing to a DNS masker (Overplay or something of that ilk?) so that we can access the US / Canadian shows we love watching. Will the one subscription for Netflix allow me to access it on more than device or do I need one for each TV?

Additionally having looked at the latest Now TV package it seems a small price to pay to get one of their boxes for the front room so that the littlies have access to the Disney Channel / Discovery whenever they want it. Would I be able to watch Now TV in the back room via PC / Xbox as well?

Am hoping I can knock down £63 spend to something around the £15 mark. Am prepared to lose F1, movies and Nickelodeon (can't see to find any of their shows on Netflix) for the sake of having an extra £50 a month to chuck at debts.

Any ideas / advice / comments would be more than welcome.

Thanks
Mr B

[Deleted User]

MrBloater wrote: »

the plan is to get rid of the Sky subscription, which I am assuming will leave me with the FTV channels (as in BBC, ITV, C4/5, CBS and a few of the Chart Show stable Music and Kids channels) in both rooms. I am assuming that all Sky+ functionality will go and any stored programmes will be inaccessible. I am also assuming that the Catchup services on the box will also be disabled?

All your assumptions here are correct.

MrBloater wrote: »

Am planning on getting a Netflix subscription - using it for the regular UK service in the front room using the Sony box, and using it in the back room via either the PC / Xbox with the added feature of subscribing to a DNS masker (Overplay or something of that ilk?) so that we can access the US / Canadian shows we love watching. Will the one subscription for Netflix allow me to access it on more than device or do I need one for each TV?

I doubt you'll get UK Netflix AND US Netflix, it'll be one or the other unless you subscribe to both.

Others can correct me on this, though.

[Deleted User]

Your normal Netflix subscription should allow you to stream to both TV's, yep you can view both UK & US by simply doing as you suggested, I have done similar, UK plays through my laptop and the US one is on my Xbox as I've changed the DNS settings to a service in America.

Its a grey area as for the T&C's as Netflix don't appear to act on anyone using the service like this, and it would be pretty easy for them to pick up on it

Moby_Tide

Won't save loads but you could drop multiroom from Sky and then see if you can get a retention deal from them. Then you can use the xbox sky app to mirror your subscription for some of the channels I.e. Kids stuff. No record option but saved us paying for multiroom.

For netflix to get the UK/US split relies on DNS entries normally so would probably be scupper end at the router to be one or the other on both TVs but you can change which would be active on both

Worldgirl

Anecdotally it seems there are loads of people who watch Netflix US content through their UK subscription. Netflix don't really have any incentive to stop you doing that, after all it means you're happier with your subscription! The companies that are losing out are the ones who pay for exclusive movie deals in the UK (e.g. Sky and Blinkbox).

Netflix do limit the number of simultaneous streams you can have from one subscription but I believe their standard subscription supports four devices watching at once, so that will be fine for your two-room set up and you could also be streaming to a mobile, tablet or laptop.

zolablue25

Don't know if it is of interest to you but I noticed yesterday that you can get NowTV with 5 months Sky movies subscription for £35-ish. Thought that was quite a good deal. You do have to remember to cancel the ongoing subscription though.

[Deleted User]

I have the Now TV entertainment package at the moment it's around a fiver as it's a promotional price to around March this year, will be interesting to see how much the package actually costs when the promotion ends

MataNui

What you want is very possible. NowTV movies is about £8 and the entertainment pack which will give you the more popular sky channels (but no childrens ones) is about £4. For netflix you need one subscription to watch on any device (not tried using 2 at the same time though) and the same goes for the NowTV. For NowTV you also have the option of the box for less than a tenner. You can of course watch both US and UK Netflix catalogs if you use a proxy. I use one called unblock-us and it costs $5 per month. Dont forget you can still get the catchup services via the consoles ( xbox, ps3 etc) so you wont lose out much. Total cost should be about £20 to £25 per month (so a lot less than you are paying at the moment.

[Deleted User]

You don't even need a proxy, you can use an American DNS service rather than a proxy