Alternatives to Sky

[gambler]

I have been with Sky for 10 years now, 7 with my current HD box and full subscription with broadband. My current box has decided to pack in and needed a software reset every couple of weeks and my broadband has halved in speed lately, so I decided to call customer service to see what could be done. TBH I had been thinking about cancelling as I only watch a couple of hours of TV a week.

Well, they could not have been less helpful. Turns out that my customer profile, despite paying over £1000 a year, only entitled me to a discounted service call and I would have to pony up for a new box if that was what I wanted. They were kind enough to offer me a discount of £4.60 a month if I decided to stay So I have decided to cancel and they seemed more than happy to leave me without a working box for the remainder of my contract.

Has anyone used any of the other services? BT or Virgin? I may just stick with council telly and Netflicks as I will be getting BT Fibre now.

[Doc883]

Have a look at Freesat, use your existing SKY dish and cabling plus a one off payment for the box.
http://www.freesat.co.uk/
My brother has Google Chromecast and swears by it: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Google-Chromeca ... chromecast

[gambler]

Thanks, ill have a look at that. Already have a smart TV which can stream for my PC but the Chromecast is certainly a cheaper alternative to buying another smart telly if I need another in the house

[j2 lot]

Free view HD box - one off payment to buy and no monthly fees

[pete]

Raspberry Pi is a piece to setup and for 30 quid turns any TV smart. Ish.

[robin]

We gave up on freesat when our old sky box (being used as a freesat box as I had long since cancelled the subscription) gave up the ghost.

At home I moved to plusnet when O2 wanted to sell my soul to Sky.

At work we were also on O2 and for now have been forced to continue with Sky's broadband. It sucks by comparison to O2 - we've had to do all sorts of traffic shaping in house in order to be able to make the thing work at all for us.

Meanwhile I wouldn't recommend Virgin Media from my recent experiences of trying to get them to replace the Sky broadband in the office with their 50Mb broadband service.

Whilst I have no time for Sky, for some people it works well - soo... if you're sure you want to cancel, great. If not then I reckon if you went through their customer retention people you would get a free replacement sky box and a discount - tell them you're moving to Virgin Media.

I've never used the Chromecast or the Pi or any of those other TV attached smart devices, but my guess is that unless you're an avid watcher of TV they will gather dust I was thinking of getting one so that we could use Netflix on our big TV but as we only use it for movies and then only once a month, not sure I can be arsed (vs telling one of the children to make it work with a laptop ).

[tut]

Sky are good when it is your first contract, with F&F through our very own Donkey. Several times now for the family I have got a half price deal at £42 instead of £84 including everything, but although they have been very pleasant when it came to renewal it was full price, the most I managed was 10% off.

As a result I cancelled it in Feb 2013, did not bother me too much apart from F1 and some of the series I watch which I could get from Isohunt anyway, but Verian missed it. However you can not rejoin with a special deal until a year after you cancel, but managed to get back on board in August thanks to our friendly VX220 owner with a half price deal again.

tut

[Doc883]

Raspberry Pi is a piece to setup and for 30 quid turns any TV smart. Ish.

Not sure of the benefit of faffing around with Raspberry Pi when the clever chaps at google have already produced Chromecast @ £30 but each to their own I guess

[mxvx]

Roku and/or cable from ipad/laptop to tv to play movies from the likes of noobroom is all you need
Smart tv which you have and an intenal hard drive or an external box for saving programs if you desire.

[scott_e]

As per this thread:
http://www.scottishelises.com/phpbb/vie ... =2&t=38387

NowTV (streaming) is Sky but for £4.99 (soon to be £6.99) you get access to Sky One, Sky Atlantic , Comedy Channel to name a few.
I purchased a Roku3 box and intalled NowTV, Netflix and RokuMedia centre.
Can stream various sky channel, netflix (uk) and browse any content you have on your home network / NAS (although file format support is more limited than I hoped).
Loads of other apps for free cowboy movies etc but mostly crap.

Looked at freeview / freesat a while back. Humex did a Freesat/freeview / network / NAS browsing box / PVR that looked interesting.

Roku box is flawless with good internet access.
Now TV is LIVE TV + Catchup. Supports 4 unique hosts (roku, pc , tablets, phones etc) and 3 concurrent streams from one account.

[Corranga]

If you want to stick with Sky, call them back and tell them you want to cancel. I'm willing to bet that when you tell cancellations that you are leaving because your box is broken, they will find a way to send an engineer out to look at your box, and give you a free replacement if needed...

Exactly this happened to my brother, including them telling him a news box was £100 over the phone. Will probably mean another 12 month tie in too mind..

Chris

[pete]

I've never used the Chromecast or the Pi or any of those other TV attached smart devices, but my guess is that unless you're an avid watcher of TV they will gather dust I was thinking of getting one so that we could use Netflix on our big TV but as we only use it for movies and then only once a month, not sure I can be arsed (vs telling one of the children to make it work with a laptop ).

Chromecast is probably a good call, I didn't think of it. We don't watch much tv but TBH what we do is through the Pi. It gives us iPlayer, 4od and is controlled either through the TV remote or by app on the phones. Very easy to install.

Otherwise we've council telly minus about half of the channels since the aerial fell down 2 years ago. Need to fix that.

[gambler]

Thanks for all the advice guys. There is definitely a world beyond sky!

I did tell them I was going to cancel and they would still not budge on the box.

I believe in a lot better

[graeme]

Have you got a PS3? Netflix and amazon are both on there. Netflix plus Freesat would suit me fine for everything but F1.

[BigD]

I've had Virgin in the office and at home for a good while, had business BT in the past and it was useless. Virgin are by far the best for repairs etc, I've had a few new boxes and they repair the business broadband in hours, same day all at no cost.

I've just upgraded my Virgin to Tivo for less than I was paying and I have to say it works flawlessly, opened up a whole new world of recording TV (that Sky+ have had for years) to me so that I can now record all the MotoGP and F1 and watch them when I want as well as the Indycars, Wheeler Dealers, Fargo, Derek etc that I keep forgetting are on.

Anyway the broadband is about 40Mb and works a treat.