Thinking of cancelling Sky

beancounter1968

Hi
Please forgive me if this has been asked before.

I have been with Sky as long as I can remember and I was a little bit miffed (understatement) about the latest price increases to pay for their over inflated bid to carry on Premiership football and line the pockets of overrated overpaid footballers. My wife and I have looked at out viewing habits over the last few and we definitely lean towards BBC channels and the sky arts. The rest is mainly garbage and I guess I have carried on subscribing because it was nice to know the channels were there and if I wanted to watch the occasional game or movie, I could.

I am now looking at cancelling sky altogether and wondering, come the day when I switch the TV on, what would I be able to watch? The TV is digital with no built in box and my only access at the moment is through my sky HD box. I still have a plug in the wall where the Ariel used to go but that hasn't been used for ages. I am aware that I will lose my recordings but that won't ben the end of the world. Any help and pointers on what I need to keep my terestrial channels would be most appreciated.

Thanks for reading

brewerdave

If you carefully remove your viewing card from your HD box ,you will see what channels are available as Freesat from Sky -you will lose the recording facilities and will not be able to watch any previously recorded programmes, but you will still get a number of channels in HD.

Cornucopia

Most likely you'll just need an aerial fly-lead (get from Poundshops) to connect your TV to the aerial socket. The type you want is probably male-to-male (the most common sort). That will allow you to tune in your TV to Freeview, assuming that it has built-in Freeview (which is quite likely unless it is very old). If it doesn't have built-in Freeview, you'll need an external set-top-box - from about £20 for just a receiver, a bit more for HD, and from £75 for a recorder. A decent Freeview recorder that provides most of the features of Sky+ will be about £175.

If you want access to Sky without paying the vast satellite fees, you can get a Now TV box for £10, which allows a Sky Entertainment subscription that costs £6.99 pm. The content is delivered over the Internet, so you would need a reasonable Internet service for this.

beancounter1968

Cornucopia wrote: »

Most likely you'll just need an aerial fly-lead (get from Poundshops) to connect your TV to the aerial socket. The type you want is probably male-to-male (the most common sort). That will allow you to tune in your TV to Freeview, assuming that it has built-in Freeview (which is quite likely unless it is very old). If it doesn't have built-in Freeview, you'll need an external set-top-box - from about £20 for just a receiver, a bit more for HD, and from £75 for a recorder. A decent Freeview recorder that provides most of the features of Sky+ will be about £175.

If you want access to Sky without paying the vast satellite fees, you can get a Now TV box for £10, which allows a Sky Entertainment subscription that costs £6.99 pm. The content is delivered over the Internet, so you would need a reasonable Internet service for this.

Thank you very much for this. I'm not great on Tech but it does sound like I have a solution. I think the TV is old enough not to have a built in freeview box and I don't recall references to it when flicking through the menus.
I would still want to record so the freeview recorder sounds like a good idea. Is there a good model that people usually suggest as its all a bit new to me.
Thanks again

Cornucopia

The big choice on recorders is whether you'll be using Catch-up TV (i.e. iPlayer) now or in the near future.

Humax has a good reputation...

This one: http://www.currys.co.uk/gbuk/tv-dvd-blu-ray/digital-tv-services/freeview/humax-hdr-1800t-freeview-hd-recorder-320-gb-10023037-pdt.html if you aren't too bothered about catch-up

Or this one: http://www.argos.co.uk/static/Product/partNumber/2589378.htm if you are.

beancounter1968

Cornucopia wrote: »

The big choice on recorders is whether you'll be using Catch-up TV (i.e. iPlayer) now or in the near future.

Humax has a good reputation...

This one: http://www.currys.co.uk/gbuk/tv-dvd-blu-ray/digital-tv-services/freeview/humax-hdr-1800t-freeview-hd-recorder-320-gb-10023037-pdt.html if you aren't too bothered about catch-up

Or this one: http://www.argos.co.uk/static/Product/partNumber/2589378.htm if you are.

Thank you very much, I will check these out

jem16

beancounter1968 wrote: »

Thank you very much, I will check these out

Take a look at the refurbished models on Humax Direct - these are always good value.

http://www.humaxdirect.co.uk/refurbished.html

If you don't have a suitable aerial still working, you would be better looking at the Freesat versions as they will simply connect using your existing Sky dish and cabling.