Just pulled the plug on SKY+ - alternatives?

[Ken Figenus]

I was basically paying £400 pa to watch free to air channels.

BT is pushing me their BT TV for £200 pa - looks like most of that fee is for BT Sport which I'll never watch. This also comes with a (YouView?) PVR but needs a Freeview aerial - I have only the quad LNB dish. They also dont state how many tuners its got/how many recordings at once. I also wonder if this broadband connected box just passes Netflix and Prime programmes 'as produced' without dropping or repeating frames for US or cinema framerates like my Firestick annoyingly does?

I have a dusty 4 yr old Freesat Humax box but wondered if this will be as good as SKY+ - which was one of the key reasons I kept paying the SKY sub? Good software!

Any thoughts/experiences welcome. Thanks.

[outnumbered]

If you only want to watch free to air channels, then plug your Humax box into a standard TV aerial & off you go, nothing to pay. No point at all in paying BT for anything if you only want FTA.

If you want a better recorder, buy one after Xmas in the sales.

[alorotom]

The planner and interface with sky is pretty much the beat in the market - we pulled the plug on Sky for about 18mths, we went to NowTV and Freeview HD

We moved recently and have reverted back to sky and have really missed it and do think it’s worth the cost

[megaphone]

If your existing Freesat doesn't have recording then get a better one, the refurb ones are ok. That said you'd be better off going the Freeview route, get an aerial fitted, Freeview Play is a good platform, or Youview platform is ok. Both will plug into the internet for catch-up and on demand. Some are WiFi enabled, others need a wired ethernet connection.

https://www.humaxdirect.co.uk/refurbished.html?gcl...

To add BT TV boxes are made by Humax and are basically a Youview Freeview box, loads available on eBay etc from ex subscribers, they work perfectly even without a BT subscription, I have two.

eg. https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/BT-YouView-T2100-500GB-...f:0

[zedx19]

Be careful with Youview boxes, there are different varieties and some are painfully slow! If you get the UHD Youview box, it has a more powerful processor and the navigation is much much slicker. We had a normal Youview box upstairs and UHD one downstairs up until recently. Don't get a normal Youview box though after Sky, you'll get frustrated with the speed, get a UHD Youview box and you'll be fine. Whatever you do, don't get the Humax 5000T box, it's painfully slow, we sent ours back before going for Sky Q. I have to say though, Sky Q is very very good, we have one box recording everything and a minibox upstairs that can access it, there's been no hickups, the menu navigation is slick on both boxes and the picture quality is superb.

[AJB88]

Freesat HD menus etc are clunky compared to SKY. I have a Humax Freesat HD box hardly gets used.

[anonymous-user]

I've tried lots of 'boxes' and as said above most are slooooow, the day passes you can purchase sometimes work/don't work thus get fed up, I use a fast laptop and stream from time to time but when there is a 'premier' sporting event not to be missed, I go down the pub

[Ken Figenus]

I do rate the SKY+ box and software even though its about 4 years old now (and I have popped a 1Tb HDD in it for huge storage). Have my old Humax 1000 freesat PVR redundant underneath it. Think I'll flatten that and give it a restart to see how it copes resurrected - they were never as slick as SKY mind...

Niche question...is there a way to get the new series of Games of Thrones via Prime or any Firestick apps - or even the Humax Freesat PVR - when the next series starts (April?). BT TV say you can buy the series for about £20 day after SKY premiere...

Thanks for the advice guys.

[Deep Thought]

Why not just keep the Sky box running for the FTA channels?

We did that and then we just use the players for anything we want to watch - iPlayer etc, plus the basic NowTV subscription @ £7.99 a month and Netflix which we watch through our smart TV anyway.

[Ken Figenus]

I have a 9 yr old Kuro plasma (still think its stunning pic daily...) but nothing 'smart' about it and no dumb auto contrast or smeary interpolation either - yuk!

Another option I just found is buying the BT Youview box for about £100 (not UHD) and no monthly sub. Has Netflix and Prime apps and Catch Up for the FTA channels and I think you can buy GoT via a BT pay per view streaming account. No WiFi so needs hardwiring PLUS a DTV aerial.

Might be worth a call to BT TV to see if I can get a deal on the UHD box where the minimum term sub is not much more than the hardware cost?

[juggsy]

I ditched sky over a year ago and bought a Humax Freesat HDR-1100S box, as we too don’t have an aerial, just the dish.

I’m really unimpressed with it, it’s slow to startup and use (and seems to get slower by the day), menus are clunky, recording sorting is unintuitive, recordings fail more often than on Sky. The thing is we watch most things via catch up, Netflix etc so despite the pains of the box it’s really hard to justify going back to Sky as we simply didn’t watch the additional content on there. If a deal came my way though I’d consider it as I’m ready to throw the Humax out the window it’s so painful to use.

[WonkeyDonkey]

You can use your sky box for Sky Freesat, which has a few additional channels over regular Freesat. Keeping the EPG and all that.

You used to have to pay to enable recording facilities, not sure if that's still the case though.

[gareth_r]

Ken Figenus said:

...Niche question...is there a way to get the new series of Games of Thrones via Prime or any Firestick apps - or even the Humax Freesat PVR - when the next series starts (April?). BT TV say you can buy the series for about £20 day after SKY premiere...

NowTV Stick + 2 month Entertainment Pass £19.99. 14 day free trial & 2 month gift card £10 if you already have something that runs the app.

Edited by gareth_r on Thursday 13th December 03:36

[AJB88]

juggsy said:

I ditched sky over a year ago and bought a Humax Freesat HDR-1100S box, as we too don’t have an aerial, just the dish.

I’m really unimpressed with it, it’s slow to startup and use (and seems to get slower by the day), menus are clunky, recording sorting is unintuitive, recordings fail more often than on Sky. The thing is we watch most things via catch up, Netflix etc so despite the pains of the box it’s really hard to justify going back to Sky as we simply didn’t watch the additional content on there. If a deal came my way though I’d consider it as I’m ready to throw the Humax out the window it’s so painful to use.

Exactly my experience, I started using a Firestick instead to watch catchup stuff but found that a little slow as well so purchased a Fire TV HD box which plugs into ethernet and HDMI port, that works a lot better than the stick.

[Dave J]

You used to have to pay to enable recording facilities, not sure if that's still the case though.



£10 per month gets you all the functionality of the sky plus box with freeview channels

[JustALooseScrew]

Ken Figenus said:

I do rate the SKY+ box

You could get yourself a ZGemma box and plug an HDD.

There are firmwares ( OpenVIX is the last one I looked at) out there that completely mimic the Sky+ functionality.

It can also download the weekly EPG and to all intents and purposes looks and behaves exactly like a Sky+ box.

One major bonus with it is that it understands satellite transponders correctly - so it can record multiple TV programs if they are on the same transponder; unlike the Sky box which will only allow you to watch 1 record 1.

Nice bit of kit but takes a bit or research to get setup. It also does IPTV as well too.

Cracking bit of kit!

(ETA) Do some reading before you commit.
HTH

Edited by JustALooseScrew on Thursday 13th December 13:05

[AJB88]

JustALooseScrew said:

You could get yourself a ZGemma box and plug an HDD.

There are firmwares ( OpenVIX is the last one I looked at) out there that completely mimic the Sky+ functionality.

It can also download the weekly EPG and to all intents and purposes looks and behaves exactly like a Sky+ box.

One major bonus with it is that it understands satellite transponders correctly - so it can record multiple TV programs if they are on the same transponder; unlike the Sky box which will only allow you to watch 1 record 1.

Nice bit of kit but takes a bit or research to get setup. It also does IPTV as well too.

Cracking bit of kit!

(ETA) Do some reading before you commit.
HTH

Edited by JustALooseScrew on Thursday 13th December 13:05

Does look a decent setup that might dump my Humax for one of them. I just watched a set up video using H9S and Wooshbuild Infinity, using the SKY menu's it looked decent, especially as you can hide the non-free channels.

[Ken Figenus]

Dave J said:

You used to have to pay to enable recording facilities, not sure if that's still the case though.

£10 per month gets you all the functionality of the sky plus box with freeview channels

Yes - still the case. But I own the hardware right? And I recorded programmes on my 1Tb (that are actually free to air) during my SKY subscription. Guess what? They block the playback if you don't have a sub. Grrr!

[Easternlight]

Ken Figenus said:

Dave J said:

You used to have to pay to enable recording facilities, not sure if that's still the case though.

£10 per month gets you all the functionality of the sky plus box with freeview channels

Yes - still the case. But I own the hardware right? And I recorded programmes on my 1Tb (that are actually free to air) during my SKY subscription. Guess what? They block the playback if you don't have a sub. Grrr!

I've read that if you disconnect the sat feeds from the back of the box before you cancel you can miss the kill signal that locks you out of your recordings.
They also say that after a few months you can re connect and use the sky box again for free channels.
But, and this is the problem with re connecting, the kill signal will be sent out at random some time and then it's locked.
The only way to keep your recordings is to not re connect, or save them to disc's.

[Ken Figenus]

JustALooseScrew said:

You could get yourself a ZGemma box and plug an HDD.

There are firmwares ( OpenVIX is the last one I looked at) out there that completely mimic the Sky+ functionality.

It can also download the weekly EPG and to all intents and purposes looks and behaves exactly like a Sky+ box.

One major bonus with it is that it understands satellite transponders correctly - so it can record multiple TV programs if they are on the same transponder; unlike the Sky box which will only allow you to watch 1 record 1.

Nice bit of kit but takes a bit or research to get setup. It also does IPTV as well too.

Cracking bit of kit!

(ETA) Do some reading before you commit.
HTH

Edited by JustALooseScrew on Thursday 13th December 13:05

Interesting! I'm geeky enough to be interested in Linux but looks like a lot of effort after a days work (fighting editing computers I've built)! You'd add an USB ext HDD to one of those and they become a PVR rather than receivers only?

I WAS leaning towards buying a BT TV UHD box (£120) as reviews are good on the functionality and then paying for the odd rental like GoT but was just told you HAVE to have a monthly sub to get that facility. As per top tip above could I run Now TV on the BT UHD box instead to get that?

Sorry for the gazillions of questions, and thanks for the help - off to resurrect the Humax 1000 now to see if it is a bit pants!