Pay £39.99 or we'll collect your box

[jimbo]

Thanks Rolf......2 great causes I would certainly give BSkyB FA and it would be sweet.

Jimbo )(-red

 

[rolfw]

LOL.

 

[digital baby]

40 friggin quid for the box?? )(-red yeah right ITV dig, give me the 95 quid u owe me and then u can have the box back.
By the way sky is showing a new channel called skyone mix a little bird tells me that its unencrypted and maybe available on freeview very soon. Anybody have any info on the matter???

 

[johnappleby]

hi digitalbaby

i hope if it is a new channel it has nothing to do with the ruppies skyone channel which last time i heard was showing reruns of
brookside. well lets face it it would have to be free. no one would pay to watch that . or would they.

regards pip

 

[Ictoanuk]

I could be right, I could be wrong, but didn't someone buy the rights to the boxes or was it just a suggestion that never came to fruition? If they did then presumably the receivers have already had their money.

 

[jimbo]

Interesting article by Barry Fox in the January edition of Wotsat. Apparantly ITV is still using the old and unreliable 64QAM transmission system which was probably the reason for the slowness of channel hopping and occasional freezing on the old On/ITV digi boxes. Freeview has switched to the more robust 16QAM system and promises to reach 20 percent more homes than On dig did. When Freeview launched, there were reports of poor reception for frequencies using 64QAM, which are ITV, Channel 4 and Five. According to Thomson, the new Grundig DTTV receivers (which they now manufacture) can switch much faster because they had the chance to take account of the 64/16QAM split.

Based on this I'd say the old boxes (I have one in the loft) aren't worth Jack Sh*t so mine can go back anytime they can pick it up.

Jimbo

 

[ProDave]

Why is everyone so against paying for their boxes.

They were LOANED to you. That point was CLEAR on your contract. YOU signed a contract, stating you would return the box at the end of the contract (however the contract ended) That's the ONE big reason why I didn't get OnD, I got Sky instead, because with Sky you OWNED the box from day 1, even though it was given to you "free". You did read the contract didn't you.

GT have stated that they WON'T persue people who are OWED money, so if you are owed money, don't worry, you probably won't hear anything.

MANY of the old boxes are STILL GOOD and work just fine on Freeview (e.g my Pace DTR 735), granted some of the old ones may be less than perfect.

Some people complain they won't pay £40 for a tatty knackered second hand box. Well if it's tatty, that's your fault for not looking after it. In the majority of cases you were given a NEW box, if you can't look after it, tough. (I accept that a FEW people may have been given a less than perfect "refurbished" box)

The contractual obligation was that you would RETURN the box at the end of the contract. There was never a mention of the option to buy it. You should be gratefull that you now have the chance to buy it. If you don't want to buy it, stop moaning and return it. They were never obliged to offer you the choice to buy it, they could just have insisted that you return it, i'll bet that would have created MORE complaints.

You might like to consider that a LOT of people are finding freeview worthwhile, and are happy to pay £100 for a box. So much so that demand is outstripping supply at the moment, and most shops are sold out. So if YOU don't want to pay £40 for the box, consider offering the chance to buy it to a friend or relation, before you send it back. Or pay the £40 and sell it on, i'll bet you could easilly get £50 for it.

Consider also what you will do in 6 years time, or less when analogue has been switched off. Will you have a digital adapter for ALL of your televisions? Will you have a VCR with a digital decoder build in? (none are made yet) Will you be happy with just ONE source of digital TV (i.e can't watch two channels at once, or record one / watch another)? Will you be wishing you had kept your OnD box, if only for the video recorder (where speed and functionality is not so important)?

 

[malling]

Just a little point...

The Sky box is not yours to own you have to take out a sub to sky which could be as much as £37 per month and thats over £400 for a year (minimum subscription time) even the cheapest sub is over £150 add box office movies, pay per play games,roulette wheels(avago) and what you have is a rupert murdoch money making machine on top of your TV.

What confuses me is why do people complain about paying a one off £40 for equipment that has been supplied to them when they pay through the nose for Skys services everyday of the year??

We in the UK have some of the best terrestrial TV in the world that we pay just over £100 licence fee for and this is what freeview is all about.

At the end of the day pay £40 for your boxes and if you dont want it sell it in the ad-mag for a profit it will sell as freeview is proving very popular as has been mentioned in an earlier post...

Malling

 

[ProDave]

I beg to differ. The Sky box and dish IS yours from day one.

They give you a "free minidish and digibox" so from day 1 it's yours. You have to pay for the installation, and you have to keep it connected to a phone line for 12 months, but it is still yours. This is such a good offer that it's limited to just one per household.

Re subscriptions. CURRENTLY you have to subscribe to Sky for a minimum of 12 months (The total cost, including install and 12 months contract could be as low as about £160, and your not obliged to spend any money on interactive services or PPV). Before 1st January 2002 you did not, it was possible to get a "free minidish and digibox" without a sky subscription, by paying the full install price of £100. The 12 month phone line thing still applied.

It is rumoured that from 1st Jan 2003, it will once again be possible to pay the £100 install and get a "free" system without needing a Sky contract. We will know in a few days if that rumour is true.

If you fail to honour the phone line thing, then you MAY be asked to repay part of the digibox subsidy. If you fail to subscribe for 12 months, you may be asked to refund the install subsidy. (you pay a lower price for the install as a Sky subscriber, higher cost package = cheaper install, sometimes as low as £1)

If you default on any of the contractual terms, you are obliged to refund whatever subsidy has been applied, there is NO OPTION to return the equipment, whatever happens it's yours. You can't say to Sky after 2 months, "sorry I don't want it any more, take the equipment back". They won't. You must honour the contract or repay the subsidy.

As far as I know the only option of returning the equipment is the 7 or 14 day cooling off period from when you sign the contract.

That's why you see so many Sky boxes for sale on enay. If you have churned out of Sky, it's quite legal to sell your digibox to someone else. Most of the OnDigital boxes for sale were in fact the loan boxes, which the seller would not have had title to.

 

[jimbo]

Some interesting points made by you guys but, as always, there are two sides to the coin. I have a pristine On D box in my loft and the liquidators are welcome to it as per the contract. I don't want what it offers so I wouldn't pay £10 for it let alone £40. I took out an On D subscription specifically for league football, so at £20 per month believe I supported the new venture. It failed through bad management, poor business sense and weak encryption allowing easy ways to see the service for free. It was never value for money though when comapred to Sky. Why does Sky have 6.2 million subscibers and growing when On D had barely a million. Sky is good value for me personally. It carries quite a few channels that I want and costs me £10 per week. It costs me £50 to fill my car with petrol (now that is a rip-off). Sky have just announced a profit for the first time in 4 years so when making all those losses it stuck with its business plan and didn't run away like ON D owing millions. Anyone cracked the Sky encryption yet? People might knock Murdoch but he's got his head screwed on.

It's true about owning the box, so if anyone takes out a Sky subscription for a year, they can then end it after 12 months if they want, get a free BBC card and watch over 30 channels for nothing.

Whether we have good terrestrial TV or not is a matter of opinion but it costs £100 whether you want it or not. In effect we are paying for BBC reception because the others are commercial. With Sky and any other service you can choose to pay for what you want.

Jimbo

 

[malling]

Ok I was a little misguided about the Sky box thing BUT it still has a 12 month contract and if you break a contract we all know it can be a costly matter to sort out.

I will stick with what I said about UK terrestrial TV being some of the best in the world as the 18 or so million that watch the soaps (nearly) everyday cant really be wrong. The BBC is also renowned worldwide for the content it can produce (great drama,comedy,news and documentaries). And what about all the people abroad that strive to get a free BBC viewing card to watch our terrestrial through Sky Digiboxes.

I could say:

Sky = Quantity

Terrestrial TV = Quality!!

Ha Ha Happy Xmas whatever your watchin!!!

Malling.

 

[Ictoanuk]

In the discussion about the ownership of Sky boxes, the one thing that seems to have been overlooked is that if it goes faulty after 12 months, it is your problem and you have to pay for the repair which I think is about £50 minimum for the engineer to call. You cannot, as pointed out, just sign up for another free box etc, you have to pay the full price if you want to replace your equipment.
My objection to paying £40 for the box in my possession is that I don't believe the box 'owners' will be able to offer any back-up service or guarantee, due to the manufacturers turning their backs on these boxes. Philips certainly have.

Merry Xmas everyone!!

 

[rolfw]

Read HERE

Former subscribers to ITV Digital, the pay-television service that collapsed in spectacular fashion last year, are to be gifted their set-top boxes by the service's parent companies.

Nevertheless, the gesture is not entirely altruistic. Viewing figures show that more people in multichannel homes watch the ITV2 digital channel on Freeview than on rival multichannel platforms such as satellite or cable. Freeview customers also have access to the ITV News Channel.

 

[ProDave]

That's a nice outcome. All those who ignored the letter did the right thing. Those that paid up the £39.99 will get their money back.

But what about those who returned their boxes? Will they get their boxes back? I doubt it.

 

[jimbo]

Maybe I'm cynical myself but I see this as a complete cynicism by the two ITV companies. They've realised that the a majority of the viewing public who watch ITV2 do so through Freeview and here's a chance to add to those and increase advertising revenue. They have coughed up £2.8m to Grant Thornton to cover the free isssue of the boxes but let's not forget the companies did a runner owing millions.

By the way I didn't ignore their letter, I just didn't get one otherwise it would have gone back. I will pass my box on to someone who might care to have a digital service.