can i cancel my sky subscription but still use my sky+ box?

[cragswinter]

for reasons that are probably quite apparent today i'm determined to get rid of the murdoch pension fund that sits under my telly.

however it is a handy piece of kit! if i cancel my sky subscription can i still receive the freeview channels (including the HD ones) & use my sky planner?

[Truckosaurus]

"Freesat from Sky" and "Freesat" is what you need to research.

[jagracer]

You wont be able to record anything and after a few days you wont be able to watch anything you've already recorded. Apart from that you will still be able to use it for the free to air channels although the only HD ones you can watch will be BBC1HD, ITV1HD, Ch4 and 5HD, and possibly E4HD.

Edited by jagracer on Friday 29th July 15:16

[Puggit]

Truckosaurus said:

"Freesat from Sky" and "Freesat" is what you need to research.

Just rip out your Sky box and replace it with a Humax Freesat box, no fiddling required, it uses the same cables and same satellite - it costs a lot less than a year's payment in to Murdoch's empire.

If you have Sky+ with 2 cables, you can even get HD for BBC, BBC1, ITV and C4

[davepoth]

Yes, it still works fine. A friend of mine cancelled his subscription to Sky about 4 years ago and his Sky+ box still records, pauses and so on, and has the full EPG.

[gowmonster]

well if it does stop working, remember there is a perfectly good sata hard disk in there that you can re-use.

[croyde]

davepoth said:

Yes, it still works fine. A friend of mine cancelled his subscription to Sky about 4 years ago and his Sky+ box still records, pauses and so on, and has the full EPG.

That's good, especially as the record features are supposed to stop when you cancel the payments.

Rumour has it that if you remove card before canceling and wait at least 3 months before putting it back in, it will miss the 'kill' signal and you'll have a Freesat+ box.

Maybe a myth as I could not wait so put the card back after 6 weeks and it worked for a day then became a non recording Freesat box.

[RedWhiteMonkey]

davepoth said:

Yes, it still works fine. A friend of mine cancelled his subscription to Sky about 4 years ago and his Sky+ box still records, pauses and so on, and has the full EPG.

Really?

[davepoth]

RedWhiteMonkey said:

Really?

Yep, I go round his house to watch the F1 most weekends and we usually pause it at the beginning and make lunch so we can fast forward some of the more boring bits before the race and then be "live". He is still using the original sky subscription card he had back then, just without a subscription so he doesn't get any subscriber channels.

Now whether this is because his system is very old I don't know. I'll check with him what he did.

Edited by davepoth on Saturday 30th July 13:07

[Strachan]

davepoth said:

Yep, I go round his house to watch the F1 most weekends and we usually pause it at the beginning and make lunch so we can fast forward some of the more boring bits before the race and then be "live". He is still using the original sky subscription card he had back then, just without a subscription so he doesn't get any subscriber channels.

Now whether this is because his system is very old I don't know. I'll check with him what he did.

Edited by davepoth on Saturday 30th July 13:07

What? The build up is great!

[mr2aw11]

davepoth said:

Yes, it still works fine. A friend of mine cancelled his subscription to Sky about 4 years ago and his Sky+ box still records, pauses and so on, and has the full EPG.

My old Sky+ box essentially acts just like a freeway receiver now - ie., no pause/record capability at all, unable to play anything that was recorded pre-cancellation No one I know can access any of the "+" functions since cancelling their subscription.

[Ian_S]

mr2aw11 said:

My old Sky+ box essentially acts just like a freeway receiver now - ie., no pause/record capability at all, unable to play anything that was recorded pre-cancellation No one I know can access any of the "+" functions since cancelling their subscription.

Mine does the same, but my dads continued to record after cancellation, then when he moved i got his old box so i could use it to record, but the whole box died on me

[Obi Wan]

You can keep the sky plus features (rewind and pause) even if you cancel your main tv sub but you have to pay sky a tenner a month.

[Strachan]

That's odd, we pay nothing extra and it still works.

[Obi Wan]

Do you have a old box? With recent boxes you have to pay them £10 if you dont have a active tv sub if you wnat pause and rewind. Not sure about the leaving the card out for three months and then putting it back in like someone else said.

[CT63]

mr2aw11 said:

My old Sky+ box essentially acts just like a freeway receiver now - ie., no pause/record capability at all, unable to play anything that was recorded pre-cancellation No one I know can access any of the "+" functions since cancelling their subscription.

Can you get all the freeview channels?

[mr2aw11]

CT63 said:

Can you get all the freeview channels?

Sorry, my post was poorly written. The channel lineup will be as per Sky, but anything in the sky bundles will be unavailable. So for example whilst some areas may get Dave/Dave-ja-vu on terrestrial freeview, it'll still be scrambled on a sky freesat receiver (which is essentially what your sky box becomes- there's a difference between Sky freesat and Freesat). Still get the standard stuff, BBC, ITV and all it's +1s, c4/e4/More4 all the c5 variations, Film-four... Probably some I've missed.

[NoVetec]

mr2aw11 said:

CT63 said:

Can you get all the freeview channels?

Sorry, my post was poorly written. The channel lineup will be as per Sky, but anything in the sky bundles will be unavailable. So for example whilst some areas may get Dave/Dave-ja-vu on terrestrial freeview, it'll still be scrambled on a sky freesat receiver (which is essentially what your sky box becomes- there's a difference between Sky freesat and Freesat). Still get the standard stuff, BBC, ITV and all it's +1s, c4/e4/More4 all the c5 variations, Film-four... Probably some I've missed.

I cancelled mine about 2 years ago now, it's basically like freeview but minus a few channels and plus a few channels. You get the CBS channels, Food Network, CNN, Sky News and Zone Movies. I may have missed some.

I don't get the extra C5 channels, just 5 itself, but this varies per area as far as I know. The recording/pause features do not work on mine, they stopped roughly a week or so after I cancelled the subscription.