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Sky + subscription, you cannot just pay £10 a month
Ed wrote:
So I called today, and the bloke said you cannot pay the £10 a month unless you have a Sky subscription, Call again. -- Digibox problem? : A reboot solves 90% of these. The Sky Digital FAQ: http://tinyurl.com/8vef5 UK TV overseas: http://tinyurl.com/6p73 BBC/ITV reception trouble? ; http://www.astra2d.com/ ---- Only the truth as I see it. No monies return'd. ;-) |
Sky + subscription, you cannot just pay £10 a month
Dom Robinson wrote:
but I see the Topfield can only record from its in-built tuner and I can't stick the Sky box through it which rather cancels out the point of getting it :( True, nearly all freeview DVRs just copy the mpeg stream, and don't have an mpeg encoder chip so can't record from an external source. Look for one with a DVD recorder built in, as it will need an mpeg encoder for that, so should also be capable of recording from an external source. It won't change sky channel for you though, or have sky in its EPG. There is a method of using the sky "autoview" function to wake up any standard DVD recorder from standby and record, but its a bit fiddly and not always reliable IMO If you want to record sky on a DVR, and want the DVR to "know" the EPG and programme titles, you only really have these options: Sky+ - records the stream TVDrive (and go cable for the sky channels), records the stream Tivo - well you know this one is really the best ;) MCE - expensive and fiddly, but flexible with xboxes as extenders -- Mike |
Sky + subscription, you cannot just pay £10 a month
On Fri, 12 Jan 2007 19:46:01 -0000, "Heracles Pollux"
wrote: Assuming you can receive Freeview, a Topfield TF5800PVR exceeds all your expectations for less than £276. How do you find the user interface on the Topfield? Any good? I've not yet come across a Freeview PVR that wasn't rendered almost completely unusable by poor software and/or a poor interface. -- |
Sky + subscription, you cannot just pay £10 a month
"Zero Tolerance" wrote in message ... On Fri, 12 Jan 2007 19:46:01 -0000, "Heracles Pollux" wrote: Assuming you can receive Freeview, a Topfield TF5800PVR exceeds all your expectations for less than £276. How do you find the user interface on the Topfield? Any good? I've not yet come across a Freeview PVR that wasn't rendered almost completely unusable by poor software and/or a poor interface. -- Well the Toppy is probably the only consumer PVR device that allows the user to "skin" it using its unique free TAP facility. Topfields's own EPG is crap. I swear by JAGS 2.5 EPG. Others use EPG Navigator. Within 30 minutes I was able to suitably reconfigure EPG Navigator's skin to my own tastes. It's good and the free-coders who provide this stuff tend to respond to any issues and make any obvious improvements. Most of all, the flaws that Sky really shouldn't build in to a premium product like (such as RED DOTs) can be turned off on the Toppy. The Toppy Remote Control is good too. And there is two great features that I think Sky may not have: 1. Twin tuners supports Picture-In-Picture. 2. You can run JAGS and EPG Navigator without interrupting your recording, so you can multi-task. The Toppy's reliability is, IMHO, ok. It's self supported instead of 0870 supported, which is what you get for free-view. Sky is a really mass market device: 10s of millions of users. The Toppy is an expert user's product: Probably 250,000 users. I wrote to Sky's Directors several times saying how they should offer power user services and control over DOGs and RED DOTs. They don't do that because their product like the first Ford Model T is monolithic. I think Sky needs to adapt to different customer's needs just like the car, coffee, and PC industries do, and capitalise on the configurability of the hardware and TV programme content. You can understand their resistance. |
Sky + subscription, you cannot just pay £10 a month
"Zero Tolerance" wrote in message ... On Fri, 12 Jan 2007 19:46:01 -0000, "Heracles Pollux" wrote: Assuming you can receive Freeview, a Topfield TF5800PVR exceeds all your expectations for less than £276. How do you find the user interface on the Topfield? Any good? I've not yet come across a Freeview PVR that wasn't rendered almost completely unusable by poor software and/or a poor interface. -- PS. I agree. A lot of DTT set top boxes are crap compared to the strengths of the centrally controlled Sky zombie box. |
Sky + subscription, you cannot just pay £10 a month
I had a look at these on a site since the sound pop issues just cannot be resolved on my TiVo, and that's after changing the hard drive and PSU so it's neither of those that were causing the problem*, but I see the Topfield can only record from its in-built tuner and I can't stick the Sky box through it which rather cancels out the point of getting it :( (*I posted this on the TiVo Community site, but while others are getting the problem, no-one has found a solution that solves it) Yes this is a strength and weakness with the Toppy. You can only "record" two DTT channels at once (plus watch a third on the same multiplex). The strength is that the recording is stored as the stream. On playback, you can switch on and off subtitles and change aspect ratios. You can also export the raw .REC file via the USB port to PC and then convert to MPG using VideoRedo. The quality is excellent and as good as DTT permits. Obviously, you can not record from Sky or Cam Corder. Candidly, I have a seperate DVD+RW recorder for that which plugs into Toppy's input scart socket and thus the Toppy RGB scart will pass through the DVD in RGB (not composite). The Toppy also shares its scart input via its RF modulator around the mansion house. ;-) |
Sky + subscription, you cannot just pay £10 a month
"Heracles Pollux" wrote in message ... "Ed" wrote in message ups.com... I am considering cancelling Sky, because my year free thanks to Virgin Radio is almost up. But I am not sure I can live without Sky+ functionality, so I was resigned to paying the £10 a month. So I called today, and the bloke said you cannot pay the £10 a month unless you have a Sky subscription, so the minimum you can pay is now £25 a month (2 mixes basic sub plus the £10) You may as well pay for the movies or sports package! This is a disgrace, surely it is illegal to call the recording funcionality of the box a 'service' and charge for its use! According to the terms and conditions on their web site http://www.sky.com/portal/site/skyco...le?contentid=1 0836203 "Sky digital subscription required for Sky digital programming. Sky+ can store an average of 40 hours of programmes at a time. Sky+ subscription required to use the Personal Video features of Sky+ boxes. Sky+ subscription is free when you subscribe to one or more of Sky Premium mixes i.e. Sky Sports mix, Sky Movies mix, otherwise £10 per month." I'd take that as you have to pay the tenner, no way around that. But the first line saying "Sky digital subs for Sky digital progs" ....obviously if you want to record Sky digital progs (be it Sky One, or UK Gold, which is part of the sky digital package) they you have to subscribe. But if you just want to record the free-to-air stuff (BBC, ITV, E4, and god knows how many other free channels), then NO, you should be allowed to record these as they are not part of Sky Digital. Phone back and argue the toss - tell them you've upheld your end of the Sky+ contract by being connected to the phone and subscribing for the year. I would assume the only cost you SHOULD have to pay is the ten quid a month, plus perhaps a £20 fee to swap over to freesat. |
Sky + subscription, you cannot just pay £10 a month
In article ,
"RegTheDonk" wrote: But the first line saying "Sky digital subs for Sky digital progs" ...obviously if you want to record Sky digital progs (be it Sky One, or UK Gold, which is part of the sky digital package) they you have to subscribe. But if you just want to record the free-to-air stuff (BBC, ITV, E4, and god knows how many other free channels), then NO, you should be allowed to record these as they are not part of Sky Digital. Not E4; that's subscription-only on Sky Digital unfortunately. Phone back and argue the toss - tell them you've upheld your end of the Sky+ contract by being connected to the phone and subscribing for the year. I would assume the only cost you SHOULD have to pay is the ten quid a month, plus perhaps a £20 fee to swap over to freesat. I was offered the £10 a month option as a last resort when I cancelled recently. It does exist and there is no £20 fee. |
Sky + subscription, you cannot just pay £10 a month
On Sat, 13 Jan 2007 19:31:53 -0000, "Heracles Pollux"
wrote: Topfields's own EPG is crap. I swear by JAGS 2.5 EPG. Others use EPG Navigator. I must say, I do like the sound of how configurable the Topfield is. And there is two great features that I think Sky may not have: 1. Twin tuners supports Picture-In-Picture. 2. You can run JAGS and EPG Navigator without interrupting your recording, so you can multi-task. Nice. Sky is a really mass market device: 10s of millions of users. The Toppy is an expert user's product: Probably 250,000 users. Sounds a bit like Tivo! But that absolutely makes sense. I've really spent a good long while looking for a well-specified Freeview PVR (e.g. twin tuners) that "works just like you'd expect" but so far it's been the supplied software that's been the letdown every time. Perhaps with the Topfield having something of the 'open source' about it, that could be a good basis for, as you say, an expert user to build something that works just how they want it to. I'd still offer my right arm for a twin-tuner TiVo, but there you go.. I think Sky needs to adapt to different customer's needs just like the car, coffee, and PC industries do, and capitalise on the configurability of the hardware and TV programme content. You can understand their resistance. Perhaps, but it's in their interests to make people happy. Even if only one tenth of one percent of people find red dots annoying, then that's still 8,000 people and several million quid a year of income. Makes a lot of sense to give people the option if you can. How hard would it be to change that 'On-screen icon timeout' option into something you could set as 'On', 'Off after 30s', 'Always Off'? Don't Topfield make a similar satellite box? Maybe armed with a few of those unofficial CAMs it would be possible to put together something pretty decent and flexible. Writing a TAP to decode the Sky EPG? Must be possible... -- |
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