Warning - SKY £75 Pay Once Watch Forever problems

Gallagher47

I'm looking for a digital TV package with no contract or monthly fees, one off (payment only) had seen this about a year ago in a shop to buy, if anyone has information were this product can be bought i would be very greatful, been reading the posts about SKY trying to charge people!! SKY WILL TRY EVERYTHING TO GET THEIR CHARGES PAID!!

Crabman

Freesat may be what you're thinking of:

http://www.freesat.co.uk/

P.S: Welcome to MSE

NonGeographicalMan

Alternatively the recent poster might also be interested in the new Freesat From Sky HD product at £175 installed as shown at http://www.sky.com/shop/freesat/home/

The main snag with this product is that I have a sneeky suspicion you won't be able to record anything at all on the box unless you also pay Sky their £10 per month recording fee. And if you want to do this they will no doubt try to lure you in to signing up for at least their HD Mix package taking your sub cost up to £20 or so per month for a minimum of 12 months. Unless of course Sky does actually let you record the FTA and FTV channels in the EPG free of charge on this product? On the whole past experience of Sky's marketing methods suggests that this is fairly unlikely.

So on the whole if you want to record in HD and not have to pay any ongoing monthly subs then its far better to go down either the https://www.freesat.co.uk or https://www.freeview.co.uk HD PVR recorder routes.

davemurgatroyd

NonGeographicalMan wrote: »

Alternatively the recent poster might also be interested in the new Freesat From Sky HD product at £175 installed as shown at http://www.sky.com/shop/freesat/home/

The main snag with this product is that I have a sneeky suspicion you won't be able to record anything at all on the box unless you also pay Sky their £10 per month recording fee. And if you want to do this they will no doubt try to lure you in to signing up for at least their HD Mix package taking your sub cost up to £20 or so per month for a minimum of 12 months. Unless of course Sky does actually let you record the FTA and FTV channels in the EPG free of charge on this product? On the whole past experience of Sky's marketing methods suggests that this is fairly unlikely.

So on the whole if you want to record in HD and not have to pay any ongoing monthly subs then its far better to go down either the www.freesat.co.uk or www.freeview.co.uk HD PVR recorder routes.

Totally irrelevant as standard FreesatFromSky boxes under that offer are NOT PVRs (and never have been under previous standard versions of the offer) so do not have the option of recording.

NonGeographicalMan

davemurgatroyd wrote: »

Totally irrelevant as standard FreesatFromSky boxes under that offer are NOT PVRs (and never have been under previous standard versions of the offer) so do not have the option of recording.

You clearly jumped to your own completely wrong conclusions about my post and didn't bother to follow my link to the current Freesat From Sky page to check the product that Sky is now offering.

That clearly shows that the current Freesat From Sky box offering is a standard Sky HD box. All Sky HD boxes contain a hard drive and an EPG that can record programs on to that hard drive. However the ability to use the record function or play back the recordings is normally locked out whenever someone is not at least paying Sky the £10 per month Sky+ recording charge. So the question remains whether that recording function can now be used for free on the FTA and FTV channels receivable on a Sky HD box (whether HD channel or otherwise)

Sky no longer do standard boxes without recording facilities for new customers.

davemurgatroyd

NonGeographicalMan wrote: »

You clearly jumped to your own completely wrong conclusions about my post and didn't bother to follow my link to the current Freesat From Sky page to check the product that Sky is now offering.

That clearly shows that the current Freesat From Sky box offering is a standard Sky HD box. All Sky HD boxes contain a hard drive and an EPG that can record programs on to that hard drive. However the ability to use the record function or play back the recordings is normally locked out whenever someone is not at least paying Sky the £10 per month Sky+ recording charge. So the question remains whether that recording function can now be used for free on the FTA and FTV channels receivable on a Sky HD box (whether HD channel or otherwise)

Sky no longer do standard boxes without recording facilities for new customers.

The Sky box illustrated is the Sky HD box ( a non PVR single tuner DRX595 to be precise) and is not a Sky+HD twin tuner PVR box. It has no HDD or provision for recording. You clearly refer to this product in your explanation of Sky+ recording functionality which is incorrect and only applicable to anyone purchasing a Sky+ or Sky+ HD box and separately obtaining a FreesatFromSky card. There are basically three current Sky HD boxes - the DRX595 single tuner non PVR, the DRX890 a twin tuner PVR with 500GB HDD (250GB for peronal use) and the DRX895 a twin tuner PVR with either 1.5 or 2TB HDD (1TB for personal use) so you are totally incorrect in stating that Sky no longer do boxes without recording facilities for new customers. The DRX595 is the standard install for FreesatFromSky and as the secondary boxes in multiroom installations.

You really do need to check your "facts" although your confusion may be down to Sky originally naming the HD PVR merely as Sky HD which name is now used for the non PVR box and Sky+HD for the PVR.

NonGeographicalMan

davemurgatroyd wrote: »

here are basically three current Sky HD boxes - the DRX595 single tuner non PVR, the DRX890 a twin tuner PVR with 500GB HDD (250GB for peronal use) and the DRX895 a twin tuner PVR with either 1.5 or 2TB HDD (1TB for personal use) The DRX595 is the standard install for FreesatFromSky and as the secondary boxes in multiroom installations.

I was only too well aware that there were two PVR models of the Sky HD box - standard and one with a larger recording capacity (the latter clearly having been increased over time in capacity, presumably to justify its very unreasonable extra cost). I was not aware that they now also did a Sky HD box without any PVR recording facility. Obviously they have decided this is necessary to do so on the basis that they cannot bring themselves to let Freesat viewers have a recording Sky JD PVR without also paying a monthly sub to Sky. On the whole I would have thought they are just shooting themselves in the foot by making more people buy a BBC/ITV freesat.co.uk PVR instead of even considering Sky.

If Sky would let me have a recording Sky HD box without a recording charge that I could also subsribe to Sky with if and when I needed to or wanted to then I would do it. For instance I'm a keen F1 viewer and I might be prepared to pay about £15 per month for a package of Sky Sports 1 HD and say three Mixes but I'm not prepared to pay the £40 to £50 or so a month that they will want to watch and record Sky Sports Formula 1 HD. So the result is they lose my business completely and I stick with the BBC for viewing Sky 1.

Had you phrased your original post in a slightly more helpful manner by saying that I probably didn't know that Sky had only recently launched a non recording version of the Sky HD box as a replacement for the previous SD FreesatFromSky product then I am sure there would have been no misunderstanding between us. But when your approach was to simply try and score points off me being only very slighly out of date on my facts then of course I responded in much the same way.

Regarding the actual hardware for this Sky HD box does it actually contain the connectors that would allow it to record if a hard drive was added by the end user (needless to say this would no doubt invalidate the one year warranty on the box). Of course that doesn't really help if Sky haven't sent through the necessary codes to let it record programs.

Or do these boxes run a completely different version of the Sky firmware on which all recording options have been removed?

davemurgatroyd

NonGeographicalMan wrote: »

I was only too well aware that there were two PVR models of the Sky HD box - standard and one with a larger recording capacity (the latter clearly having been increased over time in capacity, presumably to justify its very unreasonable extra cost). I was not aware that they now also did a Sky HD box without any PVR recording facility. Obviously they have decided this is necessary to do so on the basis that they cannot bring themselves to let Freesat viewers have a recording Sky JD PVR without also paying a monthly sub to Sky. On the whole I would have thought they are just shooting themselves in the foot by making more people buy a BBC/ITV freesat.co.uk PVR instead of even considering Sky.

The Sky HD box was introduced as a multiroom box with an ability to network to a main PVR box (not yet activated in the software. It was only introduced as the FreesatFromSky (FSFS) standard box after manufacture of SD standard boxes was discontinued and stocks ran out of them. So it was only a secondary consideration that it was used for FSFS

If Sky would let me have a recording Sky HD box without a recording charge that I could also subsribe to Sky with if and when I needed to or wanted to then I would do it. For instance I'm a keen F1 viewer and I might be prepared to pay about £15 per month for a package of Sky Sports 1 HD and say three Mixes but I'm not prepared to pay the £40 to £50 or so a month that they will want to watch and record Sky Sports Formula 1 HD. So the result is they lose my business completely and I stick with the BBC for viewing Sky 1.

Sky are primarily a subscription TV service and NOT an equipment supplier. FSFS was originally only introduced after goverment pressure (and probably inducements from them) to replace the Solus cards that the BBC originally supplied but dropped when they went FTA from FTV, channel 4 took over charging £20 + VAT per card but very quickly dropped it when they discovered they were making a significant loss on them, at which point Sky were persuaded to step and apparently still make a loss on them. So why would you expect Sky to be competition for freesat? If they had of allowed subscription free recording of FTA and FTV channels there would no doubt been significant howls of protest from supporters of freesat that Sky were attempting (and probably would have succeeded) in scuppering the launch of the freesat platform.

Had you phrased your original post in a slightly more helpful manner by saying that I probably didn't know that Sky had only recently launched a non recording version of the Sky HD box as a replacement for the previous SD FreesatFromSky product then I am sure there would have been no misunderstanding between us. But when your approach was to simply try and score points off me being only very slighly out of date on my facts then of course I responded in much the same way.

Regarding the actual hardware for this Sky HD box does it actually contain the connectors that would allow it to record if a hard drive was added by the end user (needless to say this would no doubt invalidate the one year warranty on the box). Of course that doesn't really help if Sky haven't sent through the necessary codes to let it record programs.

Or do these boxes run a completely different version of the Sky firmware on which all recording options have been removed?

The box was introduced over a year ago but has no internal or external connections for a HDD and runs a different firmware from the PVR versions although with similar functionality and looks. Being primarily a multiroom subscription box it also does not have the RF modulators and outputs found on the PVRs for running magic eyes etc in other rooms.

NonGeographicalMan

I still have an unused Freesat From Sky pack that is now just over four years old. For various reasons I have never got round to using this at the time.

Are we saying that if I now rang up Sky and insisted on this being installed (I am sure that the front line customer service people would probably try to claim the voucher had expired but a suitable complaint to the CEO would probably override this as the card/voucher in the box for this product has no expiry date) that they should probably install one of these non recording capable Sky HD boxes as well as a satellite dish with a Quad LNB and double cable to the box?

If so I will go ahead although down the road I might replace the Sky HD box with a BBC/ITV Freesat box and then use the non recording Sky HD box elsewhere.

Or do you think they still have refurb standard Sky boxes as well as single LNBs and single cabling kicking around that they will install instead?

davemurgatroyd

NonGeographicalMan wrote: »

I still have an unused Freesat From Sky pack that is now just over four years old. For various reasons I have never got round to using this at the time.

Are we saying that if I now rang up Sky and insisted on this being installed (I am sure that the front line customer service people would probably try to claim the voucher had expired but a suitable complaint to the CEO would probably override this as the card/voucher in the box for this product has no expiry date) that they should probably install one of these non recording capable Sky HD boxes as well as a satellite dish with a Quad LNB and double cable to the box?

If so I will go ahead although down the road I might replace the Sky HD box with a BBC/ITV Freesat box and then use the non recording Sky HD box elsewhere.

Or do you think they still have refurb standard Sky boxes as well as single LNBs and single cabling kicking around that they will install instead?

The current FSFS installation spec is only for a single output lnb and single cable neither of which are obsolete and still stocked in Sky's warehouses. You certainly would not get a refurb box although Sky did recall stocks of all the new SD standard boxes from their agents when the new box was introduced for multiroom so whether they still have stock is unknown.