[TV] Finally broken the SKY TV spell

[spongy]

We moved into our new place nearly 18 months ago.

Usual story of old dead couple so we're doing it up.

The TV aerial doesn't work and the cable for the old sky dish doesn't reach far enough for where we have our tv.

We were using BT You view Entertainment package but since we can't now we binned it and upgraded our fibre broadband and went down the IPTV route for our normal TV, all the sports is a bonus.

We have Netflix and Prime and use the Mrs' family Disney+ account for the kids.

Works out at £45 a month for everything we could possibly need or want.

 

[trueblue]

After 21 years, today I finally said goodbye to SKY TV.

Having chatted to my aerial man and found an easy way to convert the dish to receive Freesat straight into my TV without the need for box, I have saved myself a huge some of money every month/year.

The kids are happy with Disney+ and I just dont see the need to spend a fortune on TV anymore. With current cost of living I am sure many people are following the same route.

Even though its absolutely the right decision, it was still hard to break their spell even up to the last minute where they try to offer stuff to keep you as a customer. For me it just doesn't serve a purpose anymore with so many other options and I really couldn't get them to understand that.

Anyone else made the jump recently? I am sure there probably is another thread on it somewhere but I did a search and could not find one - I am sure a DULLARD will post a link.

If you don't mind revealing, what did it cost to get the satellite dish converted? Thinking of doing the same. Signal isn't good enough for a normal TV aerial so thinking of going the Freesat route with a standalone box for recordings.

 

[nicko31]

Never had Sky and never will, its crap value...

The only sub I've ever paid is Nexflix £5 / month plus the Beeb

 

[AstroSloth]

You wait. Now that youve left you'll be bombarded with even more offers. They wouldn't do me a decent deal after I'd been a customer since day one, but as soon as I'd left they kept offering me deals that were far better that what I'd been asking for. Everything is geared toward new customers, and if they lure you back you count as a new customer.

Yep when our Virgin contract ran out after 12 months and we said we were just going to cancel as their "best offer" of £140 was far too much they suddenly managed to offer £90 instead, £5 more than our original contract but with inflation etc not bad.

Not Sky but I dumped Virgin TV last month when they tried to put my package up from £99 a month to £147. Got rid of all the TV channels and the landline. Upgraded internet to 1Gb and pay for Netflix and Prime instead. Smart TVs allow us to watch all the main channels as well. The 1Gb costs £50 a month.

£50 a month is still a lot.

We were paying £90 a month for 1gig internet and all the channels, two boxes etc. but decided to get rid.

Now I pay £35 a month for 1gig internet through Vodafone.

 

[GOM]

Not Sky but I dumped Virgin TV last month when they tried to put my package up from £99 a month to £147. Got rid of all the TV channels and the landline. Upgraded internet to 1Gb and pay for Netflix and Prime instead. Smart TVs allow us to watch all the main channels as well. The 1Gb costs £50 a month.

Save even more money, you don't need 1Gb. All my streaming needs are covered with the very basic 36Mb.

 

[Westdene Seagull]

Save even more money, you don't need 1Gb. All my streaming needs are covered with the very basic 36Mb.

Up to five people all with laptops/smart TV running and phones attached along with three Sonos and a ring doorbell I'm happy with 1Gb. It's also noticeable how much faster it is with two of us WFH and both regularly on video calls.

 

[Rambo]

If you don't mind revealing, what did it cost to get the satellite dish converted? Thinking of doing the same. Signal isn't good enough for a normal TV aerial so thinking of going the Freesat route with a standalone box for recordings.

About £100 - I am using 'The TV Man' in Worthing - Give Patrick a call - top chap

 

[getreal1]

Full package via BT including all of the sports. It gets used well at ours. Not the worst value for money. I've had my ups and downs with the TV providers over the years, but it's peaceful at the moment although the April increase was nasty.

 

[Tom Hark Preston Park]

Full package via BT including all of the sports. It gets used well at ours. Not the worst value for money. I've had my ups and downs with the TV providers over the years, but it's peaceful at the moment although the April increase was nasty.

This. BT Sport as part of broadband package is pretty good, multi-channels showing Champions League, Aussie No Rules, Baseball etc etc. More sport than you can shake a stick at basically. Can always supplement with a Now TV day pass if there's a match you particularly want to see. Oh, and Amazon Prime have the odd EPL splurge eg over Xmas period where you can watch every game. Particularly good if you can use the free month's subscription. So yup, there is life beyond Sky

 

[Cheeky Monkey]

got a Firestick and pay £45 a year to get all sports and films the lot

With who? Amazing deal.

 

[Cheeky Monkey]

Pay for Netflix and thats it, ‘piggyback’ for free on NOW and Disney plus, and currently doing the monthly free Prime thing, no TV licence fee either as no interest in watching BBC/ITV etc.

 

[Bold Seagull]

Up to five people all with laptops/smart TV running and phones attached along with three Sonos and a ring doorbell I'm happy with 1Gb. It's also noticeable how much faster it is with two of us WFH and both regularly on video calls.

4k video is about 15mb/s, video calls are about 1.5-2mb/s, music streaming is similar to video calls. Your door bell will barely register 1mb/s. Even if you were both on video calls, 3 other people were watching 4K video on TVs, and 2 other people were using Sonos and someone at the door, that would still be under 60mb/s. The quality of the router (if all connected by wifi), and cabling / switches will determine how fast.

The trick is, and you may well have this all sorted so this is not aimed at you, is the quality of your network. I went round a friend's who had 1GB, his network was partically served with 100 base T cat5 cable which I pointed out could only carry 100mb/s and the provider's own wifi router. I convinced him to drop down to 250mb/s per month, saved him £15 pcm, used that to buy a Mesh router, a GB switch and some GB cable - his home network at 250mb/s is now far better than at 1GB/s because of the quality of the network.

Virgin in particular in their marketing strategies push the size of their BB as a sales point for customers, but it really is playing on a misunderstanding of how broadband works on a home network - again not aimed at you as you may well be utilising every mb of your 1gb, but for most people their BB struggles not because 50-100mb isn't enough, it's because the wifi router's and how they handle multiple clients is poor, because of that they can use the poor performance to up-sale more capacity when capacity isn't the issue.

 

[Harley S]

Jumped away from Sky (prior to the recent increase) as we were paying £158 pm for everything apart from Films. They wanted £170 from April .

Found out we were entitled for the social tariff reduced broadband for £12 pm off Vodafone as well. As we live in the sticks, we can only get 24mb speed as we have overhead copper wire.

Bought a Freesat recorder (1Tb) which is basically the same as Sky Q but without the multiroom option. Sports, films and PAYV are sorted separately Apart from the up front costs for the recorder and IPTV box, we now only pay £20 pm for TV, BB and IPTV. We also had SIM only deals with Sky but have a much better deal from Smarty for a lower cost. Finally Sky free after 26 years

It was great fun talking to the retentions department and winding them up with their “special” offers !

 

[dazzer6666]

Ironically just out of contract with Sky.........canceled this morning as can get a better (and faster - currently limited to about 55meg with Sky as using BT copper wires, Virgin will be fibre) package at less than half the price for 18 months with Virgin (yes I know their customer service is shite but it'll save me over a grand a year by moving). Sky were prepared to make a few concessions but couldn't come remotely close to the Virgin deal.

Very surprised after confirming sign up at 11.30am this morning to find the fibre connecting contractors outside the house just now to sort out the cable from the pavement to the house.

 

[phoenix]

Ironically just out of contract with Sky.........canceled this morning as can get a better (and faster - currently limited to about 55meg with Sky as using BT copper wires, Virgin will be fibre) package at less than half the price for 18 months with Virgin (yes I know their customer service is shite but it'll save me over a grand a year by moving). Sky were prepared to make a few concessions but couldn't come remotely close to the Virgin deal.

Very surprised after confirming sign up at 11.30am this morning to find the fibre connecting contractors outside the house just now to sort out the cable from the pavement to the house.

Hi Daz i don't know if this is expensive or what but i'm now using Virgin I get all sports Sky BT all movies and seasons there are some tv channels i don't get but i honestly don't know which ones Phone Landline which i don't require 600 mbs broadband for £68 a month I told them iv'e just been made redundant but seems a decent price to give you a idea how much to push them.For 18 months.

Oh yes and free sim for phone not great but free calls and messages 10 gb data which is slow as f***.

 

[dazzer6666]

Hi Daz i don't know if this is expensive or what but i'm now using Virgin I get all sports Sky BT all movies and seasons there are some tv channels i don't get but i honestly don't know which ones Phone Landline which i don't require 600 mbs broadband for £68 a month I told them iv'e just been made redundant but seems a decent price to give you a idea how much to push them.For 18 months.

Thanks - 18 months @ £80, 1 gb speed, sky and BT Sport HD etc, main box plus 2 minis, phone calls, extra O2 data. Sky equivalent had increased to £174/mth.

 

[phoenix]

Thanks - 18 months @ £80, 1 gb speed, sky and BT Sport HD etc, main box plus 2 minis, phone calls, extra O2 data. Sky equivalent had increases to £174/mth.

Brilliant yes i get minibox in bedroom so thats excellent .

Obviously you are good at this

 

[Weststander]

4k video is about 15mb/s, video calls are about 1.5-2mb/s, music streaming is similar to video calls. Your door bell will barely register 1mb/s. Even if you were both on video calls, 3 other people were watching 4K video on TVs, and 2 other people were using Sonos and someone at the door, that would still be under 60mb/s. The quality of the router (if all connected by wifi), and cabling / switches will determine how fast.

The trick is, and you may well have this all sorted so this is not aimed at you, is the quality of your network. I went round a friend's who had 1GB, his network was partically served with 100 base T cat5 cable which I pointed out could only carry 100mb/s and the provider's own wifi router. I convinced him to drop down to 250mb/s per month, saved him £15 pcm, used that to buy a Mesh router, a GB switch and some GB cable - his home network at 250mb/s is now far better than at 1GB/s because of the quality of the network.

Virgin in particular in their marketing strategies push the size of their BB as a sales point for customers, but it really is playing on a misunderstanding of how broadband works on a home network - again not aimed at you as you may well be utilising every mb of your 1gb, but for most people their BB struggles not because 50-100mb isn't enough, it's because the wifi router's and how they handle multiple clients is poor, because of that they can use the poor performance to up-sale more capacity when capacity isn't the issue.

Tapping your knowledge, does it matter where the router is?

Our long term ISP is Zen, very pleased with them. Like most non-Virgin arrangements their router simply plugs in to the hardware shown above. So about a metre from the front of the house in our lounge, and a long way through thick 1941 solid walls to the rest of the house. The BT cabling into that box has been here an age.

I’ve read sometimes that folk relocate their router to centre of a home.

Not sure by what form of cabling to the BT plate?

Last question, do some people get BT to upgrade the external cabling into the house?

 

[DavidinSouthampton]

Ring BT, they're rolling out cable fibre to everyone at the moment.

We've got a friend in Eastbourne who a couple of weeks ago went over to BT. She is now negotiating to go back to Sky because the quality of the BT stuff was so poor, and their customer service is appalling.

A few years ago we decided to go over to BT. The quality of what they installed was so bad and their standard of customer service SO bad that we went immediately straight back to Sky. When we reported that the picture quality was horrendous, I fully expected them just to say they would get an engineer round to look at it - It was obvious that either something had been badly connected or the equipment was faulty. The Call Centre in India - and this is straight fact, not in ANY WAY intended to be racist - had my wife running up and down the stairs trying different solutions, none of which worked. We very soon told them we were cancelling the whole thing and going back to SKY.

I used to work in Customer Service many years ago, first of all for a Nationalised Industry - Gas - and then subsequently in two sellers of industrial equipment. If I or the people I was working for had treated any customer as we were treated, I would have expected to get a rocket.

 

[boik]

If you don't mind revealing, what did it cost to get the satellite dish converted? Thinking of doing the same. Signal isn't good enough for a normal TV aerial so thinking of going the Freesat route with a standalone box for recordings.

Surely you can just use any old sky box to get freesat. They're cheap as chips once people have upgraded. In fact most people give away their old ones.