What do you watch...???

DrDigiSat

Thinking of ditching sky/virgin after 4 years of service.. costing me about £600 per year, and I only really watch the football.. so in reality, Im paying £50 per month to watch about 2 - 3 live Liverpool games each month...

I wnated other options, and spent the last wek reading about other sat systems.. I thought they still cost a fortune, but they are more affodable than I thought...

Anyway.. the missus likes her sky progs, living, dave etc and the ease of use of the sky+.. which I know I wont be able to get elsewhere.. but if I get the right stuff, maybe we can still afford the basic Sky+.. so this keeps her happy

Cost of ownership of the first year.. maybe close or under what we currently pay, but after that it will be laods cheaper...

Motorised dish approx £120
SD or HD Receiver £100 - £250
Digtalb £180
Dish Installaiton £200 (not sure about DIY motorised install...!!)

Anyway, to the point.. other that Football, and the adult stuff.. what other channels/progs are worth a watch..??

I dont want to be spending most evening channel surfing.. or watching things with subtitles.. seriously, for non football/adult content.. is it worth ditching sky for..??


MODS: if there is a more sutiable forum, please move.. I struggled to find an appropriate one...

Channel Hopper

Virgin piggybacks on the content of Sky and usually is at a premium if you don't have the other services bundled in.

First you should tell them you are walking away and see what their cable claw back operatives will offer you in a discount to stay.

Then check is the Sky packages really are worth paying for, go round a friends house for a couple of nights ( you supply the beer/wine).

Then look at the alternatives, a motorised system really will be better for you in the long run, since a lot of the sports are coming back to the sponsored channels. France has recently declared it will be dropping a lot of additional advertising revenue to cut the mundane 13 minutes per hour (including self promotion) on certain channels.

There is also the streaming online services which might be worth looking into.

Good luck in your quest, £600 over 4 years would have got you a very nice motorcycle, the fuel and insurance to run it.

Please report back with your eventual choice though.

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There is a very fine line between "hobby" and "mental illness"

Robbo

Well, if er indoors wants to keep her Sky channels, obviously well advised to let her keep them, on one of the cheaper subs.

I have the Digitalb package for the movies only and I am reasonably happy with it, with all English Audio. I also watch free movies on 7W or 26E as well, if its not raining too much.

A motorised install isn't as hard as you think it might be, and if you can £200 or more I'm sure that would keep her happy.

I'm in a similar situation, I keep a basic TV (non-Sky) subscription for the kids and have the motorised dish for me to play with., I was paying over £20 to Sky, now just paying £1 for the TV element to their competitor. My DigitalB works out at £10 a month,which isn't too bad.

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pgh13

If you are in can get Freeview, may be worth thinking about Top-up TV...think they're still guiving away a 160GB PVR for £9.99 per month subs. That'll still leave plenty for your sat system :-)

DrDigiSat

Top Up Tv looked great until I found out you need a terretrial analogue aerial.. we dont have one, as they dont work well where we live, which is why we had sky/virgin..

I thnk the only option I have is to keep a basi sky+ package.. and maybe look how cheap, without cutting corners, I can get a decent sat setup for...

meditatinghamster

From what I can see, there aren't really any other english channels on other sattellites out there. Freesat looks like an interesting alternative. I get the impression that most people with dishes pointing elsewhere are either:

a) Enthusiasts that enjoy the technology.
b) Are actually bi-lingual so can understand some of the foreign stuff.
c) Watch the adult channels available on other satellites.
d) Any combination of the above

Freesat looks ok. Doesn't have the same 5 million God channels though or 24 million Shop channels that $ky do lol, but if you combine freesat with terrestrial FTA it doesn't look like a bad combination. Might save you some cash.