Single hen

[Lesley]

Does anyone have one?

 

I want to ditch Sky+ - I'm fed up with paying for a poor and unreliable service, being told we have to pay for an engineer to call out and not being able to have a new box, just a reconditioned one. The box we have now is over 4 years old and keeps failing. We pay for the whole package so it's costing us a fortune every month.

 

I've been looking at the Bush Freesat HD digital box and Humax HD Freesat - so far I've only looked in the Argos catalogue.

 

.....and can we use our existing Sky+ dish (which we provided ourselves when we moved here) or will we need another one.

[Omletina Kyckling]

Hi,

 

Silly question here, but can't you get Freeview with your normal TV aerial? I know you can't in some areas (can't at our house ooop north)

 

Freeview boxes are down to about £15 now and some TVs have built in digital tuners which don't need the boxes...

 

If not, I'm totally useless to you, for I nothing about dishes (apart from ones filled with creamy desserts of course, then I'm an expert!)

[Paola]

We get freeview through our aerial, not sure if you can use a dish.

[Omletina Kyckling]

We get freeview through our aerial, not sure if you can use a dish.

 

I think there's a new service called Freesat which uses a dish, for people who can't get Freeview through their aerial....

[Tessa the Duchess]

I bought a Sony Freeview box it was £100 The reason I bought this one was because I read all the reviews of them on Amazon and the Sony one was highly reviewed and apparently "would get a good signal even if used with a wire coat hanger stuck in the back of the tv" which is true. We do have an outside aerial but it needs re-positioning and DH, who never watches tv, refuses to risk his neck on the roof to provide a service he will never use

 

Tessa

[Lesley]

Yes, we do get freeview on our TV - but these new boxes do all the things Sky+ does - live pause, records etc.

 

I rarely get time to watch TV live so I need the Sky+ facilities......but not from Sky

[Old Speckled Hen]

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

One off payment of £50 for a digibox or £100 for HD

[Geoid]

I rarely get time to watch TV live so I need the Sky+ facilities......but not from Sky

 

FreeSat is a Sky Company...

A FreeSat Box WILL NOT record, pause etc, it will be like a normal Sky Box.

(some will record - but only for watching later)

[Omletina Kyckling]

You can tune your usual video/DVD recorder to your digibox or digital TV on an AV channel and record any programmes you want - the only problem is that you can't then watch a different channel on your tv/digibox....before I bought a freeview DVD recorder, I used to record things using this method....

 

Not sure that I'm actually helping here as I'm not answering your actual question just suggesting other ways around....

[..lay a little egg for me]

I am waiting for the FreeSat PVR to come out. I want to change to FreeSat from the BBC/ITV (I am currently with the free Sky service) but want HD and to be able to record programmes. The box was due from Humax this Autumn, but when it will be released I don't know.

[deejmum]

We have a freesat box as we wanted the HD part of it without the sky HD box and Sky HD subs!

 

The engineer told us that more HD channels will keep being added to it. I have not yet parted with sky plus though, however we may well do when the freesat pvr comes out (with the pausing, recording etc). The engineer told us that this will be before the end of the year.

 

I thought Freesat were owned by bbc/itv, not sky.

[Lesley]

I thought Freesat were owned by bbc/itv, not sky.

I thought that as well?

It is - I just checked.

 

 

FreeSat is a Sky Company...

A FreeSat Box WILL NOT record, pause etc, it will be like a normal Sky Box.

(some will record - but only for watching later)

I was getting mixed up - I think it was Top up TV+ I was thinking of - but that has a monthly charge

- and I was also looking at a Sagem digital TV recorder with HDMI which can record stuff and pause live TV - all for a one off payment,

 

Our TV has freeview already............

 

Everything in my Sky+ planner is recorded from the five main channels anyway We're paying a small fortune for all the stuff we thought we'd have time to watch - but then we bought a smallholding

[..lay a little egg for me]

There are TWO FreeSats...one is owned by BBC/ITV and one is from Sky. Freesat from Sky gets you the box, dish and viewing card and all the free to view channels; Freesat from the BBC/ITV gets you a slightly different range of free channels, but you need a different box to the Sky one, and the option to have an HD box or an ordinary one and, soon, a box equivalent to Sky+ which will allow you to record, pause etc. If you already have a dish you can just buy the box, or you can buy the box and the dish. The Sky version became available about 3 years ago; the BBC version was just released this year.

 

 

Hope this clears up the confusion.

[Milly]

We have a humax which is great - it's very easy to record things. My only gripe is that the programme menu only goes one week ahead, so you can't always record programmes if you are away. But I suppose programming often changes, so there's no point setting something to record then finding it's not what you expected.

 

You can also pause programmes and catch up later if the phone rings or you need to go and do something else urgently (well, DH can, I'm never sure which button to press).

 

It does other things too, but the above are the functions we use most often. We have had it for a couple of years and had no problems. It has also done some automatic self-updates which is good.

 

Milly

[Olly]

I've got a Sony HDD which I've had for about two years - it has two Freeview tuners, and will record about 70 hours of tv. I actually don't watch a lot of TV, but find it ideal because I can record the things I do want to watch really easily.

 

It lets you pause live TV, or rewind something you've just missed and you can start watching something you're recording, before it's finished. I'm really pleased with it - my only occasional regret is that I didn't get one that records onto DVD as well, but it would have cost more and it's fairly rare that I think something is so good I want to keep it for ever.

 

I've never had Sky - I babysat for some friends a couple of weeks ago, and after the initial thrill of skimming through their Sky channels, I realised that despite the scores of things on offer there was nothing on that I wanted to watch! I expect if you watch sport it's worth it, but I find the Freeview channels enough for me.

[Lesley]

Ah! thank you all - that has cleared up som eof the confusion

 

I can see that there are few ways round it and I just need to sort out what I really want out of it.

 

I have become so used to using Sky+ - and it is brilliant when it works - but I can't put up with the arrogant attitude from Sky anymore. The last straw for me is the new advert using celebrities and stating something like "let's speak to some people who are happy with Sky".........why not speak to those who aren't happy? - they may find out a lot more

 

We had the full package because I wanted the sports channels (but Tour de France is back on ITV) and Carl wanted Movies (but doesn't have time to watch any films now) so it may be that we just change the package to a basic one and buy a new box ourselves - Sky will help with the setting up, I just need to phone and they will link it ( so the last person I spoke to said) but I'd like to change and show Sky that they can't afford to sit back and think they have it all........

 

I'm going to have a good look at it all......but any contributions to the chat are very welcome

[..lay a little egg for me]

I've just found that the new Humax FreeSat PVR is due to be launched in November. I'm definitely going to go that route myself as I also object to Sky's attitude and I refuse to pay £100s a year just to have a load more rubbishy programmes and repeats. Although we do miss some of the sports events that are only shown on Sky.