The 'Variety' sub I pay Sky to use the Sky+ box for their satellite signal has gone through another price increase and is now near enough £30/month. To say the least, I've had enough of that and want to boot Sky out and switch to using their box with the Free-Sat service.

I gather it's possible to get bog standard reception, but there's a problem that you can't record or use catch-up.

So what's the solution? Get a new TV with the built in box perhaps? Just wonder if anyone else has been through the same loop.

Cheers!

Hi,

Firstly, have tried to cancel with Sky? They have a good retentions team who may offer a discount for you to stay.

You could buy a Freeview+ box that has an EPG and catch up services or there are satellite receivers that do the same. This is far cheaper than buying a new TV although there are some smart TV's out there where you just add a external hard drive or a USB stick for the recordings.

The retentions team are comission based. They will do anything and everything to get you to stay, so persevere and thell drop it way down. They wont drop it too far as the sales rep on the phone will want you to stay. he wont want to give you all his comission in savings, so they start off with tiny amounts then increase them as they get desperate. Mainly because if you do actually cancel, they get a mark on their record for that day. Too many marks and they get pulled up about it.

if you have an HDMI socket

then for

Thanks very much to y'all getting back about this - I haven't contacted Sky yet but should I decide to cut my losses completely at this point, I guess I may as well kiss goodbye to the Sky+ box now!

I have heard that cancellation threats will encourage Sky to offer an alternative sub of around £10.00-ish /month to continue using the box to record and access catch-up and which may .... just ..... be justifiable for a few more months until the existing telly packs up. That would at least save £250 pa on the existing deal! Otherwise, options like Amazon Prime and Fire TV also deserve exploring but which I'd overlooked before posting the thread.

When this current, rather old TV does pack up, the most obvious answer at that point would be to scrap the box anyway in favour of a replacement smart TV with built in Freestat receiver, also with the advantages of extra bells n'whistles and far superior picture quality. So I guess I may as well bite the bullet now to do that anyway!

Interesting thing is that Sky's quote to upgrade to the new Q box of around £50/month is exactly what led to me completely reassessing the value in the first place!

Cheers!

How good is your internet?

Could you consider YouView (+/- NowTV if you are wedded to some of the sky channels or movies)?

A YouView box might be an option that allows you to use your existing TV until it is time to upgrade .....

We dropped Sky when they refused to replace our faulty 6 year old Sky+ box even though we'd been with them for more than 10 years. We bought a FreeSat box (Humax) for less than Sky wanted for a new box and less than half the annual subscription costs. 2 years on I can't believe we kept paying them for so long, especially as the Humax box is actually 10x better than the Sky box.