Sky HD Alternatives?

We just got a £27 discount on the full Sky+ package for 6 months, select "downgrades" in the menu selections.

What annoys me is that you can't just select what channels you want we don't want primadonna league footy, but do want F1 channel. Who wants bloody shopping, foreign news and god channels, www is the place for porn so that would be loads of channels saved. 

I have just cancelled my Sky HD subscription, which was costing me with the new increase around £80 a month.   They might come back to me in a few months and offer me some sort of contract for a lot less.

To be honest if Newcastle are relegated I dont think I could watch football again, even though I love it. 

I've tried on a couple of occasions to leave Sky HD behind, but always end up going back to it. We don't have Sport or Movies since getting Netflix, and last time I pulled the sub. they contacted me with a very good offer. I've had Humax Freesat & Panasonic Freeview boxes, but SWMBO doesn't get on with their interfaces and in fairness to Sky their control software and apps are works of genius, the others are lousy in comparison. Sky do have this knack of staying ahead of the opposition. At a price of course!

Just swapped to Virgin, though I know it's not available everywhere.

I've tried some of the dubious services available through Amazon fire stick and believe me , it's just not worth the hassle. If you can find anything that does stream, it's usually quite Sh+tty. And I genuinely don't mind paying a reasonable amount for the use I get from something or a 'service'. And while I have no love for SKY or Murdoch, the service and product is a pretty decent one, just getting more and more expensive and you feel like you're getting ripped off and you still have to watch bloody adverts!

Had Virgin internet/phone for 18 years since NTL days and it's usually very good

Ditched SKY 'cos fed up of not being able to watch footy I want yet still paying for it and BT sport is another £25. I too toyed with sticking with freeview/sat and almost went for it (we have a freeview box on upstairs telly which no-one watches and it's fine...) but tbh it's one of life's small pleasures to watch footy/cricket/movies when we want and the kids get a lot out of kids/movies channels too. And I'm sure if we 'saved' the extra £60 a month, someone else in the house would only find something else to spend it on, probably on something I couldn't give a stuff about!

Virgin gave us discounts worth about £240 for 6 months, plus total package will still save us about £20 a month and we now get BT sport included and (even) faster Broadband. Up to 200 mbps apparently...And I presume when year's up I can just negotiate another discount as I still have Sky boxes and can zip 'em back in if needed.

Gripes: On screen interface is lousy compared with SKY. Actually pretty appalling. SD picture quality not as good as SKY either. Also I suspected the (overseas) discounter who I spoke to when originally enquiring about offers was being a bit over enthusiastic with the prices to meet his targets, so I kept a note of everything agreed, so when the email confirmation came through with some differences to what was actually agreed I was able to go back and 'correct' them, which the UK bloke did relatively easily and he gave me another £50 for the trouble I'd had.

However on plus side, 'on demand' is now just that as it's streaming, rather than having to download first. Which is nice.

BigH47 posted:

We just got a £27 discount on the full Sky+ package for 6 months, select "downgrades" in the menu selections.

What annoys me is that you can't just select what channels you want we don't want primadonna league footy, but do want F1 channel. Who wants bloody shopping, foreign news and god channels, www is the place for porn so that would be loads of channels saved. 

You don't need Sky Sports for F1. Just a normal HD package.

Sadly I have two Sky contracts .

Thanks all for the replies. It looks like a call to Sky is in order.

It always amazes me that unlike other companies, the longer you are with Sky the worse deal you get with little or no reward for loyalty. At the end of the day I guess their business plan is primarily about enticing new customers.

Netflix is perhaps worth considering, streaming quality is good and it has 4k content if you're so placed

I appreciate your BB speed will need to be up to muster but the price is reasonable, we're v. pleased

nap-ster posted:

Thanks all for the replies. It looks like a call to Sky is in order.

It always amazes me that unlike other companies, the longer you are with Sky the worse deal you get with little or no reward for loyalty. At the end of the day I guess their business plan is primarily about enticing new customers.

 

The only way for old customers to get a better deal is either threaten to leave, or if they call your bluff actually leave for a bit & then they'll quickly be in touch with a better offer. It really shouldn't be like that, and it's bloody annoying. Sky must be under increasing pressure from other competitors, particularly the on-line streaming stuff.

Regarding internet speed for Netflix, we've got Amazon Fire TV, which is a most excellent box. When we first tried it our Broadband speed was just over 1Mb & I really didn't expect it to be watchable, but apparently there's a buffer inside the device and even at that lowly speed it worked perfectly.

tonym posted:

nap-ster posted:

Thanks all for the replies. It looks like a call to Sky is in order.

It always amazes me that unlike other companies, the longer you are with Sky the worse deal you get with little or no reward for loyalty. At the end of the day I guess their business plan is primarily about enticing new customers.

 

The only way for old customers to get a better deal is either threaten to leave, or if they call your bluff actually leave for a bit & then they'll quickly be in touch with a better offer. It really shouldn't be like that, and it's bloody annoying. Sky must be under increasing pressure from other competitors, particularly the on-line streaming stuff.

 

Regarding internet speed for Netflix, we've got Amazon Fire TV, which is a most excellent box. When we first tried it our Broadband speed was just over 1Mb & I really didn't expect it to be watchable, but apparently there's a buffer inside the device and even at that lowly speed it worked perfectly.

Sky are getting desperate. Look at the recent deal to tie up exclusive rights to the F1 from 2019 - heading off any potential threat from BT Sport (who somehow beat Sky to Champions League Football) but also shafting Channel 4 who've done a good job so far and (not surprisingly) have far more viewers than Sky. Something 2.4m watched the opening race on C4 v 300k Sky subscribers. 

I was in the same boat. I tried Now TV an a pay as you go basis to pick and choose the football matches I wanted but even though we've got fast broadband the picture stuttered terribly. I used to stop and restart Sky Sports to save money and then I got something through the post a few weeks ago offering me Sky Sports for a year for £10 a month-so I've gone with that. So you can  ring to cancel and they'll offer you a much better deal as football season draws to a close....

Sky is no different to other companies, all the special deals are for new customers. As an existing customer you have to chase and threaten to leave to get any discounts or freebies.