What happens when you cancel Sky TV?

MW1974

We're giving serious thought to cancelling our Sky after goodness knows how many years with them and switching to a competitor. Haven't decided which one yet but obviously appreciate we need to decide this before we go ahead.
The queries I've got are this - what happens to the dish? Do Sky come and get it or does it just stay there as an outside ornament forever more? (Who actually is the legal owner of the dish?)
Do I actually have to let Sky know myself or will my new provider sort all of this out? I've heard they don't make it easy for you and like to drag it out a bit. I can see why but can't be dealing with this hassle if a new provider can just sort it out on our behalf.

TadleyBaggie

You will have to cancel directly with Sky. It's not like broadband where there can only one provider on the phone line.

The dish and box are yours, if you take the card out you can see what channels you can still get. Recording will not be possible after the cancelation period. What I did was to get a Humax Freesat box which allows me to record any free channel.

Robisere

TadleyBaggie wrote: »

You will have to cancel directly with Sky. It's not like broadband where there can only one provider on the phone line.

The dish and box are yours, if you take the card out you can see what channels you can still get. Recording will not be possible after the cancelation period. What I did was to get a Humax Freesat box which allows me to record any free channel.

Exactly what I did. You may be able to receive Freesat through the same LNB on the dish, but that is hit and miss. I bought a new LNB for Freesat and had it fitted. Would have liked to have done it myself, but am disabled.
What Sky box do you have? You need at least 2 cables for Freesat. Please take a look at my "Humax Refurb's" Thread on this TV forum.

Neil_Jones

Robisere wrote: »

Exactly what I did. You may be able to receive Freesat through the same LNB on the dish, but that is hit and miss. I bought a new LNB for Freesat and had it fitted. Would have liked to have done it myself, but am disabled.
What Sky box do you have? You need at least 2 cables for Freesat. Please take a look at my "Humax Refurb's" Thread on this TV forum.

All the signals for Sky and Freesat come from the same satellites in the same part of the sky, so unless your LNB had an issue it normally shouldn't have needed replacing just because you cancelled Sky for Freesat.

All the cables from the dish work and fit in Sky and Freesat boxes and when Sky install new setups they've been dual-cable for the best part of the last 10 years since Sky+HD first came out. Some older communal setups are single-feed only but anything that literally connects to a dish will almost certainly be dual-cable.

nickcc

Not wishing to nitpick but the twin shotgun cable was used for Sky + where you had recording capability. I switched to freesat from Sky but thought it may be useful to have Now tv from Sky just in case I missed some of my favourite programs. I soon got rid and instead bought the Amazon fire sticks as I already had Amazon prime.

teddysmum

TadleyBaggie wrote: »

You will have to cancel directly with Sky. It's not like broadband where there can only one provider on the phone line.

The dish and box are yours, if you take the card out you can see what channels you can still get. Recording will not be possible after the cancelation period. What I did was to get a Humax Freesat box which allows me to record any free channel.

In the case of Q the box is not yours and has to be posted back. Also, have a Q setup,I believe that you can no longer use an old HD+ box to view free channels (but not certain.)

Nick_C

You get a life!

Robisere

Nick_C wrote: »

You get a life!

:beer::rotfl::rotfl::rotfl::T

[Deleted User]

teddysmum wrote: »

I believe that you can no longer use an old HD+ box to view free channels (but not certain.)

They change the LNB on the end of the dish, you can change it back to a Humax/Sky HD+ compatible version or if you're lucky they fitted a hybrid LNB and you can use either box. You would have had to ask for the hybrid LNB when they fitted the Q version (probably).

teddysmum

Nick_C wrote: »

You get a life!

Also:
Save money. Probably watch less tv , as you don't feel obliged to view what you are paying extra for. Realise that you never needed it after all.

nickcc

teddysmum wrote: »

Also:
Save money. Probably watch less tv , as you don't feel obliged to view what you are paying extra for. Realise that you never needed it after all.

Then you can talk to each other, hang on though that'll never happen as we're all on this forum