Sky apparently no longer selling Sky Q to new customers!

WillPS · 4 January at 10:52PM

steven141 said:

I did hear that Humax were developing a Freely recording box but boy sure if anything will come of it.

Little is known, but the consensus is that this will probably only do local recordings from DTT (i.e. Freeview) sourced materials. Confusingly even though Freely is sold as being about 'cutting the cord' and 'streaming through Wifi', it is in fact a hybrid service and to get half the channels you'll need an aerial connected.

Even if it does somehow allow local recording of Freely IP-derived content this will almost definitely be significantly hobbled in some way.

steven141 said:

I'm sure that EE TV allow you to record streaming channels.

They do, but you need EE or BT Broadband AND for certain channels, ITV included, the adverts become unskippable. I don't know if it's happened yet, but they could in theory enforce expiration of recordings and even arbitrarily delete stuff too.

This is the unfortunate consequence of there being no open standard for IPTV; unlike the DVB standards all terrestrial and satellite TV broadcasting has conformed to. Effectively everything you consume is now protected.