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Who's left Sky for Freesat? Any regrets?
simondsUU933w
Posts: 4,176 Forum Member
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Long time (20yrs+!) Sky customer - currently have Sky Q. Been unhappy for a while about how much I'm paying each month.
Like many people I'm finding myself watching less and less 'live' stuff and just watching 'recorded' and 'on demand' stuff.
Looking at the new Freesat recordable 4K TV Box I'm trying to work out why I'm going to lose by ditching Sky altogether?
I main watch terrestrial channels and do like some stuff on Sky Atlantic which I'd guess I'd lose. I don't want any cinema or sport other than Sky F1 which again I assume I'd lose.
Other than that I should be able to switch from paying £50+ a month to nothing right?
Any tips hugely appreciated.
Like many people I'm finding myself watching less and less 'live' stuff and just watching 'recorded' and 'on demand' stuff.
Looking at the new Freesat recordable 4K TV Box I'm trying to work out why I'm going to lose by ditching Sky altogether?
I main watch terrestrial channels and do like some stuff on Sky Atlantic which I'd guess I'd lose. I don't want any cinema or sport other than Sky F1 which again I assume I'd lose.
Other than that I should be able to switch from paying £50+ a month to nothing right?
Any tips hugely appreciated.
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Comments
As @Clem says, NowTV should cover your requirements for Sky Atlantic and F1. However, if you are not desperate to maintain continuous access to Sky channels you can save yourself a considerable amount of money compared to the advertised prices.
For example, I currently have Sky Sports for £20 per month and Boost for £2/month until May. The normal prices are £33.99 and £5 per month respectively, and I have recently finished 6 months of Entertainment at £5 per month compared with the regular price of £9.99
In order to get these discounts though, you have to cancel - you normally get a much better retention offer, either when cancelling, or soon after your subscription ends. You just have to be prepared to do without the Sky channels if they don't offer you a price that is acceptable to you.
As noted Now TV is useful for channels we did watch like Sky Atlantic, although over time we've become less frequent subscribers to that as Netflix and Disney+ have provided the entertainment we want.
I don't think there's any major downside to leaving Sky really, unless you've fanatical about a show on a channel you then won't receive. Off the top of my head, the most high profile channels that aren't on Freesat or available via Now TV are Discovery, Alibi or W. If you can live without them, you'll be fine.
I'd say go for it. If you find it's really not working for you, you can always return to Sky on a new customer deal, but I think you'll find Fressat supplemented by Now TV works quite well.
Whoah - thanks for that - didn't know it was 50% off - signed up for the year
I do miss a lot about Sky, but to me, it just became less and less worth paying for over the years. I have got Now TV Entertainment, which I may just keep all the time, but might cancel it for a month every so often. I have not re-subscribed to Netflix or Disney+ yet (had them through Sky) but I am sure I will at some point, even if just for a month. And I might get Britbox for a month or Amazon Prime for a month here and there. With All4, UKTVPlay, I Player, ITV On Demand all easily available, I don't have any regrets about what I have access to now.
At this stage, I certainly don't regret my decision.
I might reconsider if they did away with the current model and had reasonable, fixed rates with no dodgy deals and discounts. That seems to work for Netflix and Prime.
ps Sky would need to improve Customer Service access too before I'd consider coming back.
I wouldn't keep Now TV all the time at £11.99 a month. If you keep cancelling with the reason that you can't afford it, there are many deals to be had.
My best offers have been a further free two weeks and £1 a month.
More info here:
https://forums.digitalspy.com/discussion/2325319/now-tv-retention-offers#latest
Everyone has to make their own value for money judgement but to me it’s just not worth It and I can easily live without those few encrypted channels and save a few bob!
I think that more and more people are rapidly coming to the same conclusion as yourself, especially after Virgins inflation busting price increase (pretty sure Sky will be going up too).
The current Freesat line up is actually better than what I was paying for when I first got satellite!
That's interesting do you have link to that BARB data - the information available on the BARB website is now very limited!?!
Yup, Freeview even use this data in their advertising. Maybe Freesat should do too?
But 95% of the "most popular" shows does not mean that over 90% of the programmes that Sky viewers watch are FTA. They watch lots of different programmes on lots of different channels. More channels, more choice. Helpfully this usually means that there's no one programme or channel which gets large enough ratings to really dent the monopoly of the big boys, but you can't hide the effect it has on share of viewing. Some time ago the BBC had figures which showed that their share of viewing in Sky homes was nearly half that which they enjoyed in FTA homes.
People do tend to watch the extra channels that they're paying for. Any suggestion otherwise - a Freeview marketing invention - is, you could argue, a deliberate deception.
I suspect that the increasing cost of food, gas, electricity, petrol, over 10% increase in National Insurance etc will make the minds up for a lot of people.
Most of my viewing is from the PSB's and for the rest I could happily make do with the FTA channels. If crappy Virgin ever stopped virtually giving away their TV service to me, i'd dump them like a shot and use Freesat & Freeview with streaming services if/as when required. I might consider Sky if they agreed to a decent deal, but would unlikely stay after the minimum term and would only be using them for a virtually free Freesat install.
On standard, non-introductory pricing, Sky's entry level package, which includes Netflix is £31/month.
However if you were to take the following -
- Netflix (basic) - £5.99
- Disney+ - £7.99
- Prime Video (video only) - £5.99
- Now (entertainment) - £9.99
- that would cost £30. So for £1 less, together with the FTA offer from Freesat/Freeview, its hard not to come to the conclusion you'd end up with access to a lot more content. Of course you could pick and choose which streaming services you subscribe to to reduce the cost further. Again, it depends what you are interested in watching. But if you are just after a broad range of content, put like that, Sky looks like really poor value for money.
When I looked at the Sky £31 package, it didn't even include Netflix. It was just comprised of the FTA & FTV channels!
In addition, switch in and of other services like Apple TV+ and Discovery+ for additional content options!?!
(At least there are "alternative sources" for football!).
ITV4 HD is currently a pay channel, so won't be coming to Freesat until Sky/Virgin effectively stop paying them to encrypt.
Are there any FTA HD channels that aren't on Freesat, either at all or in SD only? Wasn't there a news channel?
https://en.kingofsat.net/freqs.php?&pos=28.2E&standard=All&hdtv=1&ordre=freq&filtre=Clear