Sky Sports

hardtimes

SeduLOUs wrote: »

It's not even a straight HD upgrade - it's a bundle upgrade to buy a whole pile of other kids and music channels that I'll never watch, just to be able to see the F1 that we've already paid a fortune for in decent quality.

It's 2015. When is 'HD' going to become standard?

We are out of minimum term now which is why we are considering getting rid. We can afford to pay for it, but it's such an extortionate amount of money we have to seriously consider that the money could be put to far better use.

I get BT Sport from Plusnet and to get the HD channels it is only £1.49 extra on a 30 day contract.

Sky take note

timbstoke

I'm a little confused. Sky provide three options for Sky Sports: Nothing, SD or HD, all at different prices. You've selected the SD option, and your opinion is that they shouldn't offer that service and it should be HD or nothing.

You realise you still have those two options, right? You can cancel your SD Sky Sports and have nothing, or pay extra and have HD. The reason they have both SD and HD channels is because a lot of people, including you, subscribe to the SD channels.

SeduLOUs

timbstoke wrote: »

I'm a little confused. Sky provide three options for Sky Sports: Nothing, SD or HD, all at different prices. You've selected the SD option, and your opinion is that they shouldn't offer that service and it should be HD or nothing.

No, they don't.

They offer two options: Sky Sports or no Sky Sports.

If you want to watch Sky Sports in HD you can't 'just' upgrade to Sky Sports HD - it doesn't exist. You have to upgrade your overall TV bundle to the most expensive 'family' option as well as paying for the Sky Sports bundle.

If you want to watch one single Sports channel in HD and have no interest in anything else on Sky, it will cost roughly £60 per month (unless you are on a retention or intro deal), as you are forced to pay for every single channel available in order to be able to watch anything other than freeview in HD.

Gavin83

SeduLOUs wrote: »

If you want to watch one single Sports channel in HD and have no interest in anything else on Sky, it will cost roughly £60 per month (unless you are on a retention or intro deal), as you are forced to pay for every single channel available in order to be able to watch anything other than freeview in HD.

Then why aren't you? I get sports in HD as well as all the other stuff, a phone line and fibre broadband for less than that a month. I managed it so anyone can get the same deal.

Also people need to understand how picture quality works. SD is a poor picture, it always has been. However you haven't noticed it before because a) you were used to it and b) the TV was smaller. The bigger the TV gets the more you'll notice a drop in picture quality for any definition. One of the reasons 4k was invented was because HD is no longer considered good enough for extremely large screens. Also people seem to buy cheap TVs and expect a miracle, they're cheap for a reason. Upscaling ability is one of the biggest differences between cheap and expensive TVs. I have a 55" TV and SD is actually extremely watchable although I rarely bother as I've got the HD channels.

People rarely bother to set their TV's up for the best picture quality either, have any of you adjusted the TV settings or just left it as is out of the box? This makes a massive difference.

I do agree that sky should offer HD on just the sports package but the fact is they're a business and people with bags of experience have clearly worked out this is the most profitable way of selling. I also assume they think anyone who wants HD for sports will want HD for everything else as well.

SeduLOUs

The broadband from Sky in our area is abysmal, although that's a different story. We had a fantastic connection from O2 that flopped overnight when Sky took it over despite no equipment changes. After spending 6 months arguing about the awful speeds (them telling us we had a 'perfect' 17MB down connection that turned to 0.5MB through a 5 metre Cat6 ethernet cable directly to a laptop and nothing else connected) we were advised to only connect one device at a time to the router and voted with our feet. Everything is great again with BT but again at additional cost.

We've played with all of the TV settings. We're big gamers and have both our TVs next to each other in the front room. As you pointed out it's probably the fact we've upped to 40" that has made it far more noticeable, as previously we were on 32" which I suspect doesn't make a lot of difference from SD to HD as the screen is pretty small to begin with.

We only really watch Game of Thrones and F1 and are rapidly realising that it's an extortionate amount of money to throw away. Even with a retention deal (the best they will offer at the moment equates to about £20 off for 3 months, and ties us in for another year), it's just too much cost for two channels, so I think unfortunately it's time to move on. First world problems I guess...

geerex

jaydeeuk1 wrote: »

Sky sports SD has used same bitrate for ever, some TVs are just awful at upscaling SD content - looks even worse on most 4k TVs I've seen, I'm guessing yours is a sub £600 budget panny?

I realise you're talking about Sky Sports specifically, but there's an interesting thread on avforums about how Sky deliberately lowered the nitrate/resolution of some of their SD channels upon the introduction of HD. The cynical amongst us may assume that was to.entice us to upgrade for what was at the time £10/month...

jem16

SeduLOUs wrote: »

We only really watch Game of Thrones and F1 and are rapidly realising that it's an extortionate amount of money to throw away. Even with a retention deal (the best they will offer at the moment equates to about £20 off for 3 months, and ties us in for another year), it's just too much cost for two channels, so I think unfortunately it's time to move on. First world problems I guess...

£20 a month off for 3 months is not decent retention deal. I assume you haven't actually cancelled? If you cancel you should be able to get 50% off the whole TV package for 12 months and quite likely to get a credit thrown in.

You need to be serious though and actually cancel.

JReacher1

SeduLOUs wrote: »

We only really watch Game of Thrones and F1 and are rapidly realising that it's an extortionate amount of money to throw away. Even with a retention deal (the best they will offer at the moment equates to about £20 off for 3 months, and ties us in for another year), it's just too much cost for two channels, so I think unfortunately it's time to move on. First world problems I guess...

Have you thought about switching to "Now TV". You can get the entertainment pack for around £6 a month I think which will cover your Game of thrones usage (and any other entertainment programs you want to watch). You can then also hand pick which F1 races you want to watch and buy a sports pass to watch them.

It would work out a lot cheaper than £60 a month (especially when GOT is only on for 10 weeks a year)