finally going to ditch sky what next

Coffeekup

barnaclebill said:

after 30 years of sky have decided to save money and ditch it, im on basic sky at £29 a month, its my dish and my sky hd box so the only thing thats theirs is the card, trying to think what to get, humax or manhattan. I have a firestick and can get amazon prime but rarely do. Dont watch sport, like discovery and history and dont watch many movies. My tv aerial on the roof need replacing as no signal but i can get the basic channels on the firestick.

any suggestions.

When I ditched sky 5-6 years ago, I kept the sky box and used it as a Freeview box and still do.
My TV is relatively new so it has a number of apps installed so I'm finding myself watching the I players/on demand instead of watching through the sky box.

Although nowadays I'm looking at alternatives to get rid of the sky box, as it uses 25-30w per hour, so I'm just looking at bringing my electricity usage down it's one of the 2 big consumption appliances I need to deal with.

Rodders53

barnaclebill said:

My tv aerial on the roof need replacing as no signal but i can get the basic channels on the firestick.

any suggestions.

freesat 4k box will work with the existing dish and lnb for two tuners.

FreeVIEW need that UHF TV aerial fixing to work.  The TV may have a Freeview tuner in and if you record very little then catchup services via the Fire Stick might suffice.

Slowly we (the UK) are moving to an all-streamed TV viewing proposition.  You can pay (subscribe) to stream some services without ads that otherwise pay for them.

Bakey72 said:

We’ve currently got Sky Q but contract ends next month, at the moment I’m just planning on using freesat through the TV, but my TV is less than 2 years old.

I bet the TV wont work with the $ky Q LNB (unless very lucky with an early 6-port hybrid LNB $ky Q install).  Test the cables into the TV asap.  LNB can be swapped to a universal one easily enough though.

Neil_Jones

Sea_Shell said:

Neil_Jones said:

No such thing as a "digital aerial".  An aerial is an aerial.  Even an unfolded coat hanger can be an aerial.

Maybe I've got my terminology wrong, but I seem to remember we had to "upgrade" our aerial as the analogue signal was being turned off and the old one wouldn't work.

https://www.aerialsandtv.com/knowledge/faqs-frequently-asked-questions/faq-digital-freeview-reception-issues-problems - "You do need an aerial for Freeview but there is no such thing as a "digital" aerial and an "analogue" aerial, they are the same thing. Confusion arose over this during the 2008 to 2012 digital switchover when some people needed a different aerial (usually a wideband) to receive all the available digital channels. However, from 2020, almost nobody needs a wideband aerial "upgrade" to receive all the available Freeview digital transmissions, though if your aerial (or cable or distribution system) is faulty you may need to replace it.

Peppa537

Rodders53 said:

Bakey72 said:

We’ve currently got Sky Q but contract ends next month, at the moment I’m just planning on using freesat through the TV, but my TV is less than 2 years old.

I bet the TV wont work with the $ky Q LNB (unless very lucky with an early 6-port hybrid LNB $ky Q install).  Test the cables into the TV asap.  LNB can be swapped to a universal one easily enough though.

We have a hybrid LNB, handily we had to get Sky to install one when we switched to Q as we have a non recordable humax Freesat box upstairs.

Sea_Shell

Neil_Jones said:

Sea_Shell said:

Neil_Jones said:

No such thing as a "digital aerial".  An aerial is an aerial.  Even an unfolded coat hanger can be an aerial.

Maybe I've got my terminology wrong, but I seem to remember we had to "upgrade" our aerial as the analogue signal was being turned off and the old one wouldn't work.

https://www.aerialsandtv.com/knowledge/faqs-frequently-asked-questions/faq-digital-freeview-reception-issues-problems - "You do need an aerial for Freeview but there is no such thing as a "digital" aerial and an "analogue" aerial, they are the same thing. Confusion arose over this during the 2008 to 2012 digital switchover when some people needed a different aerial (usually a wideband) to receive all the available digital channels. However, from 2020, almost nobody needs a wideband aerial "upgrade" to receive all the available Freeview digital transmissions, though if your aerial (or cable or distribution system) is faulty you may need to replace it.

Ah, that'll be us then, as (I think) we had it replaced in 2011.    The original one was pretty old anyway, and would have needed changing anyhow.

So I'm guessing after another 11 years of birds, wind and weather, the chances are the "new" one will need replacing.

We will investigate further beforehand to make sure it's not something more obvious, like a chewed through cable.

Neil_Jones

TV aerials should last best part of 20 years - birds, wind and weather aren't new phenomenons and birds have always sat on TV aerials, but you can get bird spikes which will deter the birds from resting on them.

The cables will usually go before the aerial itself.

Sea_Shell

Would an "expert" have a bit of kit to plug in to the aerial to check it's working ok, whilst they're up there.

Some sort of signal strength checker?

Sounds like it might be a connection/cable issue, rather than an aerial issue.

Sea_Shell

After some more thought, we're probably going to go for a Firestick and get Prime.

We'll just have to get used to streaming rather than recording 😉

macman

Sea_Shell said:

Neil_Jones said:

No such thing as a "digital aerial".  An aerial is an aerial.  Even an unfolded coat hanger can be an aerial.

Maybe I've got my terminology wrong, but I seem to remember we had to "upgrade" our aerial as the analogue signal was being turned off and the old one wouldn't work.

No you didn't. If that was true, every single TV aerial in the UK would have had to be replaced when the analogue signal was turned off. They weren't, although doubtless that some people were conned into thinking they needed to upgrade their aerial as well as having a Freeview box or TV installed.

macman

Coffeekup said:

barnaclebill said:

after 30 years of sky have decided to save money and ditch it, im on basic sky at £29 a month, its my dish and my sky hd box so the only thing thats theirs is the card, trying to think what to get, humax or manhattan. I have a firestick and can get amazon prime but rarely do. Dont watch sport, like discovery and history and dont watch many movies. My tv aerial on the roof need replacing as no signal but i can get the basic channels on the firestick.

any suggestions.

When I ditched sky 5-6 years ago, I kept the sky box and used it as a Freeview box and still do.
My TV is relatively new so it has a number of apps installed so I'm finding myself watching the I players/on demand instead of watching through the sky box.

Although nowadays I'm looking at alternatives to get rid of the sky box, as it uses 25-30w per hour, so I'm just looking at bringing my electricity usage down it's one of the 2 big consumption appliances I need to deal with.

No you don't. you use it as a free-to-air box, once called 'Freesat from Sky' so named to cause maximum confusion.
Freeview is a terrestial service via an aerial, so you can't get it via a sat dish and sky box.
The channel line up is near identical, but it's not Freeview.