If I look at my use of Shy +HD, then it's really limited to watching the occasional Manchester United match and almost daily use of the record facillity, to record ITV3 repeats, for viewing within days. If I look at the impact of my Sky direct debit then I'm finding it increasingly hard to justify an annual cost of almost£900, for such minimal useage.
My natural inclination is to cancel my Sky subscription but will this prevent me from recording non Sky programmes on my Sky HD box?

veedus wrote on Sep 14^th, 2012 at 4:01pm:

Or you could use a Humax (or other) Freesat recorder, as you already have a suitable dish.

The minimum Sky contract for Entertainment package channels being £21.50 a month includes the recording facility for the free channels as well as these subscription channels.

As a Sky customer, you can recommend others and you both get some special offers eg shopping vouchers.

I downgraded every now and then eg Sky Movies 1 and 2 and the HD channels package and refused the Entertainment and Entertainment Extra subscription option enforced when 6 channel groups were switched to 2.

If I got Sky Movies for half price eg a 3-months deal, I'd cancel when that last month approached so as not to be charged even more later.

Many Sky discounts depend on Sky Talk and Sky Broadband but I'd already switched from BT to Virgin Media before these deals came along.

My Virgin Media compromises save me about £10 a month ie including the phone rental and after upgrading to 60 MB Broadband speed.

I'm not sure about your costs including phone rental, but it must make you think about a different satellite receiver with recording options.

In my case, another factor was the free repair/replace service on the VM set top boxes ie the TiVo as well as the V+ HD box I have as an additional player similar to Sky Multiroom getting the primary box's channels, too.

Buying a separate recorder may also offer an extended warranty for longterm cover. Hopefully repairing rather than replacing without returning your recordings intact.

Consider the recent phone call I made to VM on 150. I was going to downgrade the VM services which include 175 channels including 23 HD channels. Phone rental is about £14 a month but all gets discounted with the other services like TV and the TiVo box, as well as the multiroom player V+ box getting the same channels, plus 60 MB Broadband.

I wondered if the £7 a month cost of that V+ HD box was worth it. The customer advisor checked every part of the present contract on the Premier Collection bundle etc.

I was told... If I downgraded and had the V+ box service removed, I would actually lose all the current discounts of £33 a month for the next 12 months. I'd be paying more not less. So the total is £58 per month and personal phone calls are charged separately. The TV Licence being about £144 a year adds £12 per month. Total £70 per month.

If still with Sky, the cost would have been about £100 a year extra as I couldn't qualify for the discounts I got from the VM company. £70 a month equals 2/9 parts per week, approx. £16 per week. If I take away that £14 a month charge for phone calls, the TV and the TiVo and the V+ HD box and Broadband cost £44 a month plus £12 a month for TV, making £56 a month, but that lot was based on an 18-month contract. Remember, no repair maintenance contract and the equipment is only on-loan...

Please note, I was trying to get as many channels as the Sky Entertainment and Entertainment Extra would have got for about £28.50 a month. Instead of all their HD channels included in these 2 groups, VM gets me 23 HD channels. This isn't a real worry, as I mostly view TV on the SD 28" widescreen TV anyway. The HD TV still works well with the V+ HD box but that doesn't record, it's just a player. That's a compromise yet the TiVo offered the 500 GB storage and could record 3 TV shows at the same time.

The TV Licence is a legal requirement that is part of the living allowance that those on benefits receive. The family may share expenses but those living alone can't. This factor, ie living alone, is a financial burden on some that could be mentioned to any company in the phone contact haggling-for-discounts process. Otherwise, try the various cashback deals for new or existing customers.

As I mentioned, I'm getting a £33 a month discount deal ie £400 a year saved which obviously helps me pay the TV Licence. There's nobody else here paying it. Imagine paying £144 a year from the age of 20 to the age of 75.

For this, we used to have just a few channels, but Freeview and Sky and Freesat and VM and Internet access mean thousands of available channels worldwide that for the most part have NOTHING to do with the BBC which has been compelled to make compromises with ongoing Government policies based on genuine public concerns about value for money. Considering the £1000 fine for not paying each year, I can't ever say it's value for money.

No, for 60MB broadband + the XL TV channels + the extra HD box getting the same channels, it's £56 and the phone rental is the extra £14. They total £70 a month.

Sky? Maybe £7.50+ for some broadband... £28.50 for 2 groups... £10 for HD channels about 60 not 23 as for VM, so probably counted as £4 a month instead of £10? Multiroom £10. About £50 a month except VM offers extras like more programme info and access to youtube and Catchup TV. Phone rental about £14 so about £64. There's also the replacement card £20 per set top box which happens about every 3 years. And a maintenance contract per year, if you decide to risk it. Probably a service call charge may actually lead to getting a replacement Sky+ HD box?

But VM has 60MB broadband, so that's helped me decide which I prefer.

BUT that decision was made because I already had a Sky+ HD box and a Sky+ box with my previous Sky subscriptions. That meant even more opportunities because of the pre-installed and updated free channels that VM can't or won't provide. I tested Freesat and gave up on that after manually adding about 200 channels based on the lyngsat.com website frequency guides.

As the cost of Freeview receivers reduce, even to about £10, it's obviously going to be more economic to settle for Freeview, especially as some shows are on Sky then appear on Freeview a few years later. Some free channels like Dave and Dave ja vu also help.

It's just that some of us prefer to pay for what we can get so as to record more shows and films. Some of us then cancel after a Sky's 12-month subscription, keeping the Sky box or the Sky+ box or even the Sky+ HD box.

Freeview isn't as reliable as Sky for reception, Winter and Summer, so I'd recommend Sky to help with the shows you like to watch, that Freeview can't guarantee.

Freeview isn't based on a Freeview receiver costing nothing. The rooftop aerial installation and a signal booster may be required.

If the installation were to be done by the BBC Helpscheme then the aerial and the box would be well worth getting done. I chose Freesat, upgraded to twin cable from the outside Sky-type QUAD LNB dish, thus allowing me to switch to Sky and Sky Multiroom recording. Or maybe a Freesat Recorder as some prefer since they don't pay Sky's £10 a month charge just for free channel recordings stored on their own Sky+ or Sky+ HD box.

I have the Netgem IPlayers as well as the Fetch TV Smartboxes ie the 7000 version and the 8160 and the 8000 version. I record and export copies to the Freecom USB external hard drive. It's faster than a VCR or realtime playbacks for Sky copying to a VCR or DVD Recorders hard drive or just to a DVD disc.

I don't do these things based on the standard costs, but on the overall costs of my home budget eg massive savings on the shopping channels and haggling for Sky or VM discounts. Others get the cashback deals online, thus it's possible that a £60 a month contract gets down to £30 a month instead, plus the equipment is yours if from Sky or on-loan yet no repair costs if from VM.

All I think you're trying to say is that it's silly to pay Sky high prices for more services from Sky yet it's these services that millions have paid for because they want to see their favourite shows, just like sports fans and movie buffs would.

If these millions didn't become subscribers then Sky would probably be forced to offer less and less for the same charges. Likewise, without VM as competition who knows what Sky would charge?

We don't all have HD TVs either, so some may have got the HD channels package just to qualify for getting the Sky+ HD box.

You've got 3D TV, which hopefully pleases you and is considered well worth the money paid, ie a long-term financial investment.

Consider the Sky+ HD box again. I got that by getting the HD pack and paid £10 a month extra for a year. I enjoyed the HD channels I was subscribing to, as well as Sky Movies HD channels, but I soon cancelled Sky Movies to reduce the costs per month. In the process, Sky checked my installation, about 7 years old, then granted me a free installation of a brand new Sky dish with a new QUAD LNB unit.

All I paid was £10 a month for a year, not £120 up front. The old Sky dish and QUAD LNB unit could have been sold on, if I chose to do so.

So there are variations to consider, especially for me over the last 10 years, for Freeview, Sky, VM as well as Freesat. Even the preference of DVD discs, rather than video cassettes and buying the discs in bulk to save on costs.

Others would stay with Freeview and a VCR and video cassettes, but that covers just ONE room and may require extra cables or scart signal senders to get the same picture into another room for a TV there. Upgrades are cheap for Freeview, so enjoy what you can.

Otherwise, try USB TV and Radio dongles or UK Freeview dongles or Freeview TVs, and good luck with Winter conditions, because these have destroyed hundreds of hours of my TV shows and recordings.

I've just seen a VM TV advert this afternoon about the Premier Collection deal for new customers.

It involves subscribing to the Premier Collection deal and must include a phone rental service, too. The deal is that once you've got the TiVo box installed, you also get the V+ player box, too. So that means someone watches 1 channel and another watches a different channel. So as a freebie it's worth about £135 off for the new 18-month contract in difference to what I was quoted, the V+ HD mirrored channels package was £7.50 per month.

http://virginmedia.com or pop in store or phone 0800 183 1000.

http://store.virginmedia.com/bundles/our-collections.html?buspart=Portal_P35

The Premiere Collection is now 179 channels and of these 24 are in HD. The V+ box (player only, same channels) is included with the Tivo 500 GB box. Here, the website info says free installation.

LINK: virginmedia.com/bundles/our-collections-channel-list

The TV advert tells us there's an installation fee involved. If not able to haggle out of it, then consider that the set top boxes each take about 15 minutes to install their updated software before each box gets the latest SD and HD channels into the EPG and that there are other services to match eg youtube and catchup tv.

In my case, I had asked for a cable splitter, so I could get the PC working with the VM Superhub Internet connection, as well as another connection to the Fetch TV Smartbox ethernet connector, alongside the TiVo set top box with its own cable.

Compare this deal with various website discounts eg topcashback, quidco and myvouchercodes.

Usually the deals increase in value according to the services required, but this latest deal is for TV, Broadband and phone rental anyway.

denismartindale wrote on Sep 27^th, 2012 at 1:48pm:


It was (is). But there's a subtle difference between this and taking out expensive subscriptions, as follows:

1. Essentially once you stop paying a subscription, you have nothing to show for it. An outlay on a new TV means you own something tangeable.

2. An initial outlay of equipment means something is bought and paid for. With a subscription, you are prone to influence from increases in subscription rates, making it more difficult to budget etc. Yes, everyone is liable for increases in the TV licence (at the moment on hold) but with an additional subscription, this only increases risks of rising prices.

3. A subscription, is in essence, a hidden debt. You are committed to paying for a period of time. However, outlay for equipment is a one-off (assuming you buy it and pay for it and don't use credit to finance it) and doesn't lock you in to further commitment.

I think most people don't actually use their subscriptions to Sky / Virgin Media to the full. When my friends on subscriptions come around to mine, all their favourite shows are broadcast on Freeview. Some of them mostly use cable for UK Gold, i.e. seeing old BBC series which you could pick up for a tenner in a box set.