The Lemon Fool

I have canceled my Sky subscription as the price was increasing and I wasn't impressed with the Q box or the lack of games for my sports teams. I was getting everything for £35 for two years but it went up to £38 earlier this year and they were about to jump it to £50 until I canceled it.

What is the best alternative in terms of a non-Sky or VM service?

Freeview
Freesat
YouView
Other Sat

And with streaming devices what do you recommend? Is there a device I can get both Sky Sports and BT Sport on for an extra subscription each month for those months that I might use it?

Apple TV
Chromecast
Roku
Firestick

The only things I really watch are Documentaries especially Nat Geo. Sports. And Business News like CNBC, Bloomberg and FBN.

On Sky I found myself only watching Sky Sports for a few football games and the NFL although my NFL team has only been on there once this year so I had to just make do with the Red Zone on Sky Sports Mix. I subscribed to BT Sport between March and Sept each year for the Aussie Rules.

I think there is going to a lot more cord-cutting in the near future unless the traditional subscription platforms can give better value and transparent pricing.

It would be nice if there could be more competition in terms of platforms in my view which would encourage innovation and help to lower costs for end consumers if for example Virgin Media was competing with a rival cable company in the same area and the same goes for Sky with its Satellite TV platform.

Finally, what is going on with Freesat? I remember when they used to have loads of boxes you could buy but now even the Humax ones are going and it is not known when the replacement Arris ones will be available. Is this service doomed?

john10001 wrote: Is there a device I can get both Sky Sports and BT Sport on for an extra subscription each month for those months that I might use it?

Apple TV
Chromecast
Roku
Firestick

Now TV is a rebranded Roku, but it's Sky as a provider so Sky channels are available, usually at a cheaper cost than through the satellite.

Have you tried youtube for NFL coverage?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RDb1MGs ... PP05h4vETe should give you the highlights of all games from week 4.

You can subscribe to the official NFL channel - not sure what the benefits are, maybe no commercials between games??

Hadn't heard about demise of freesat - that's what we use. That could be a problem as am about to upgrade our tv and might need a new box to connect. Freeview not that reliable where we live.

Roku streaming is great for us. Have ditched satellite dish and aerial. Best with decent broadband though.

I've not heard of any problems for Freesat or Humax. We don't have any viable TV reception in this area so we went over to Freesat some years ago. I think the last time I turned it on was about a year ago to watch a football match so I've no idea if the service is under threat.

More information would be appreciated.

Alaric wrote:

john10001 wrote: Is there a device I can get both Sky Sports and BT Sport on for an extra subscription each month for those months that I might use it?

Apple TV
Chromecast
Roku
Firestick

Now TV is a rebranded Roku, but it's Sky as a provider so Sky channels are available, usually at a cheaper cost than through the satellite.

Usually at a much much much cheaper cost if you are after Entertainment. Discounted Now TV boxes used to be the favourite but three months half price on cancelling is always a staple, and after I cancelled last month they outright gave me a free month to get me back. Plus of course you can discontinue and resubscribe as and when you wish.

Sports isn't Cheap but you can turn it on and off as you want it, and buy by the day, week or month.

https://www.uswitch.com/tv/guides/what- ... on-now-tv/

The price you pay is resolution, but the picture is more than acceptable on my tv, although that might partly be my tv... Still 7 day free trial, and no contract, definitely worth a look.

If you really want the NFL then an NFL pass will give you every single game live except the one that's on Sky (they pay much more)
And yes it does have adverts, but they're American ones which are at least different adverts.

Premiere league is much harder as it is now spread between at least four channels (2 sky, BTsport and Amazon prime). So trying to follow your team is now really hard. Pub?

Gryff

gryffron wrote:If you really want the NFL then an NFL pass will give you every single game live except the one that's on Sky (they pay much more)
And yes it does have adverts, but they're American ones which are at least different adverts.

Premiere league is much harder as it is now spread between at least four channels (2 sky, BTsport and Amazon prime). So trying to follow your team is now really hard. Pub?

Gryff

The thing which kills official PL channels is that they don't even show every game in this country, forcing people to seek out other not so official and often free options to follow their team, then expect this not to hurt the subscriptions to the official channels. It's a level of delusion on a par with the music industry refusing to acknowledge MP3's. They would do well to look at the NFL pass...

Atleast sky can be turned on and off using Now TV, and is there a non-Prime member in the country who doesn't use their annual free months trial in December? BT is more of a problem.

OP might consider taking some of the cash they are denying sky and using it to go to a game or two instead of watching it on tv. Depending on who you support this can lead to a much better/worse experience...

john10001 wrote:...
What is the best alternative in terms of a non-Sky or VM service?

Freeview
Freesat
YouView
Other Sat
...
Finally, what is going on with Freesat? I remember when they used to have loads of boxes you could buy but now even the Humax ones are going and it is not known when the replacement Arris ones will be available. Is this service doomed?

I hope that Freesat isn't doomed. I just bought a new TV and it had both dual Freesat and Freeview tuners built in. I don't know how common that is but maybe that's a reason for stand-alone boxes to be dying out although if so I would expect Freeview boxes to be dying out as well. Perhaps it's considered that a new Freesat customer will be slightly more tech savvy (since it needs a dish to be installed) so will either shop for a TV with a tuner, get a general purpose satellite box and tune it in to Freesat themselves, or simply use an existing Sky box which brings me to ...

For the regular BBC, ITV and other free channels, notwithstanding the possible concern you raised, I would definitely recommend Freesat over Freeview. It has more channels and also on Freeview some channels share a frequency with another channel so for instance some of the ITV channels (not ITV1) stop broadcasting at midnight and hand their frequencies over to stuff like shopping channels. Those same channels on Freesat don't do that. Also, as hinted at above, I don't know if it's the same with a Sky Q box but certainly when I cancelled my late parents' Sky service after they died I was able to carry on using their Sky box to receive the Freesat channels. I could no longer record anything and I can't remember whether live pause and rewind worked but I could still get all the free channels just fine.

I'm not so big on streaming or paid-for sports I'm afraid so can't advise on that but for the free stuff at least as a first step I'd leave the Sky box plugged in and see if that suits your needs after your subscription ends. From memory I don't think you need to get another viewing card, just leave your current Sky card plugged into the Sky box and it should revert to only allowing access to the free channels only and showing you a "Your subscription doesn't include this channel, call Sky to upgrade" type of message if you try to watch a Sky proprietary channel. This was 8 years ago now so maybe things have changed but given the low effort it's worth a try so see if your current Sky box will play ball.

- Julian

john10001 wrote:

Moderator Message:
Moved to Computers TVs and Phones from DAK. Shadow left in place there.

I have canceled my Sky subscription as the price was increasing and I wasn't impressed with the Q box or the lack of games for my sports teams. I was getting everything for £35 for two years but it went up to £38 earlier this year and they were about to jump it to £50 until I canceled it.

What is the best alternative in terms of a non-Sky or VM service?

Freeview
Freesat
YouView
Other Sat

And with streaming devices what do you recommend? Is there a device I can get both Sky Sports and BT Sport on for an extra subscription each month for those months that I might use it?

Apple TV
Chromecast
Roku
Firestick

The only things I really watch are Documentaries especially Nat Geo. Sports. And Business News like CNBC, Bloomberg and FBN.

On Sky I found myself only watching Sky Sports for a few football games and the NFL although my NFL team has only been on there once this year so I had to just make do with the Red Zone on Sky Sports Mix. I subscribed to BT Sport between March and Sept each year for the Aussie Rules.

I think there is going to a lot more cord-cutting in the near future unless the traditional subscription platforms can give better value and transparent pricing.

It would be nice if there could be more competition in terms of platforms in my view which would encourage innovation and help to lower costs for end consumers if for example Virgin Media was competing with a rival cable company in the same area and the same goes for Sky with its Satellite TV platform.

Finally, what is going on with Freesat? I remember when they used to have loads of boxes you could buy but now even the Humax ones are going and it is not known when the replacement Arris ones will be available. Is this service doomed?

Don't go for apple Tv or chrome cast. I have a very bad experience with both devices. Currently, I am using amazon firestick on my smart tv and its working like a charm. setup firestick and use any live tv channel app on firestick and you are good to go.you don't need anything. I am using a fire tv stick for the last one year and it's worth it. You don't need to buy expensive subscriptions. Just jailbreak your firestick and install some popular streaming apps and use VPN to unblock geo-restriction. You can use Pluto tv, Mobdro, Showbox, live net tv on your fire tv.

Firestick is a best alternative of sky. Try it once!

The problem here is that Sky is so darn good and if you watch a fair bit of TV the cost is worth it. I know it's expensive but what the heck unless you can find better things to do with your money or are hard up.

Snorvey wrote:And then there's the Sky+ box. A superb bit of technology in itself.

Not so superb at kiloran castle. We got through 3 Sky+ boxes in about 5 years. They kept locking up and the only cure was to do a full reset so we lost everything we had recorded. Sky apologised each time and replaced them, but ultimately it was too much hassle so we dumped Sky (hard work in itself) and bought a Humax Freesat box 7-8 years ago and it's been 100% reliable. Saved a fortune over the years, and Freesat's channels are pretty much what we had with Sky (meaning 95% garbage)

--kiloran