Replacing Sky

[MooseTrackz]

I'd like to get rid of Sky as its mainly rubbish TV and replace with something, but I'm not sure which/what route to go. Chromecast or Amazon Firestick/Prime or whatever. I was hoping you might share your experiences of either or all or some other that I haven't even considered and/or their pitfalls/pros/cons etc. What streaming services are worth the €€€'s? Trying to make an informed decision but having trouble seeing the forest through the trees. Thanks in advance!

[jkeny]

I can't make a recommendation to you but just want to relate a woeful experience I had with Sky & why I would never do business with them
I was organising a sky installation into a new apartment for my daughter who was away on holiday.
After two engineer callouts & failures to install TV or internet/phone, I called the sky number & got an automated menu which I had to endure a full 10 minutes of Sky advertising & upselling before I got to talk to a person.
My daughter has cancelled Sky & gone to Virgin who delivered a working modem in 1 day & TV is working

[james]

We only ever had cablelink (or whatever it became) so no premium stuff like sports and movies.

We got a satellite dish and an aerial and we have all the standard english stations (bbc1/2/4 itv/channel-4 bbc-news film-4 plus lots of stuff we dont watch) and we have rte on saorview. We have a humax satellite reciever/recorder for the freesat stuff and are quite happy with the setup.

If you are interested I can supply more info ...

james

http://www.astra2sat.com/



http://www.astra2d.com/

[Diapason]

I can't get rid of Sky because I'd miss Sky Atlantic too much, but most of our current viewing is Netflix (via Chromecast). That seems to provide a lot of good stuff that we enjoy, but ultimately it really all depends on what you like to watch. We have Amazon prime too (having signed up by accident!) but we only use that to watch American Gods. Annoyingly, Amazon prime doesn't work with Chromecast.

A freesat box is obviously an easy place to start if you're cutting Sky because it's plug n play with the dish you already have.

[Ken Moreland]

I had SKY for years , costing a fortune mainly for cartoons and advertisements . I cancelled SKY and bought a Lidl Silvercrest receiver and never looked back. I used the SKY dish but later installed a Lidl Silvercrest satellite dish and that feeds four TV's throughout the house. This has all been working for over 10 years without any problems . All the UK main channels have HD satellite broadcasting so it's important to get an HD receiver like this one http://www.preloved.co.uk/adverts/show/ ... 80-b2.html for best quality. KM

[MooseTrackz]

I can't get rid of Sky because I'd miss Sky Atlantic too much, but most of our current viewing is Netflix (via Chromecast). That seems to provide a lot of good stuff that we enjoy, but ultimately it really all depends on what you like to watch. We have Amazon prime too (having signed up by accident!) but we only use that to watch American Gods. Annoyingly, Amazon prime doesn't work with Chromecast.

A freesat box is obviously an easy place to start if you're cutting Sky because it's plug n play with the dish you already have.

Are the movies on Prime worth the investment in your opinion? I like the idea that with Netflix you can cancel at any time and pick it up at a later date with no penalty. I'm toying with getting Hulu so that I can watch all those shows that I enjoy on Sky Atlantic, without the Sky bit, at a much better price!

[Diapason]

I'll be honest, I haven't really investigated what's on Prime at all, but I really should since we're paying for it (my wife signed up for prime without realising, such wouldn't be the kind of thing she'd normally fall for, so I'm still a bit miffed with Amazon about that. I also hate that it doesn't work a Chromecast.)

I like Netflix and I like that you can dip in and out with no messing around cancellation fees, so I agree that there's little downside there. Still, I find it pretty useless for movies and have really only watched TV programmes in it, but they have quite a lot of the premium stuff.

Let me know how you get on with Hulu if you pull the trigger.

[MooseTrackz]

Let me know how you get on with Hulu if you pull the trigger.

I will. I'm rather fascinated with the whole VPN thing (cloak and dagger stuff)

[Rocker]

Like many here we replaced the SKY box with a Humax Freesat equivalent. SKY are hopeless to deal with and show no loyalty to their customers. We were with them for many years and I asked that they give me SKY Sports free for a weekend (the weekend the Ryder Cup was on). They refused so a few months later they lost our custom.

Freesat is fine and does all we want. We got a new TV which has Saorview so our TV needs are covered. Some quirks with Freesat is that some channels have very low sound levels. All the BBCs are fine, some Drama channels have a very low level of sound. No idea why this is, it means our Yamaha soundbar needs to be set at max volume to hear any of the Drama channels.

Ditching SKY was something we should have done years ago. But we had got used to the way the SKY system works and it was the fear of the unknown that held us back for so long. Now that SKY is gone, we don't miss it at all.