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Sky + subscription, you cannot just pay £10 a month
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! |
Sky + subscription, you cannot just pay £10 a month
Ed wrote:
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! It is outrageous but it must be legal as they've been getting away with it for years. They really are having their cake and eating it - unless you're on some sort of special deal they make you pay upfront for the equipment, sixty pounds for installation (which just involves plugging it in), then charge you a tenner a month to use it. The EPG exists whatever package you're on so they can't pretend it's for that. Furthermore, make sure you watch or archive all the stuff on your Sky plus before you unsubscribe, because all the material on the drive will become instantly unavailable for replay! |
Sky + subscription, you cannot just pay £10 a month
Ed wrote: 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) He's lying. You can have Sky+ with just FTA/FTV. I did for the 4 years I owned a Sky+ box, and so do others. Ring again and be persistent, failing that write to them, asking for indication in the T+Cs where it states you have to have a Sky TV sub to have a Sky+ sub (because there isn't, (or certainly wasn't)). |
Sky + subscription, you cannot just pay £10a month
Hi,
["Followup-To:" header set to uk.media.tv.sky.] In article . com, wrote: 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 can. You just need to find the right person at Sky to talk to. Some of the droids there don't know that the option exists. Andy |
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, so the minimum you can pay is now £25 a month (2 mixes basic sub plus the £10) Bin it and spend 400 quid on a second hand TiVo with lifetime subscription off Ebay. Plug the thing in, tell it your favourite programmes and actors and sit back and be fed everything you could want for the rest of time. |
Sky + subscription, you cannot just pay £10 a month
On Fri, 12 Jan 2007 14:51:36 -0000, "John Rowland"
wrote: Ed wrote: 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) Bin it and spend 400 quid on a second hand TiVo with lifetime subscription off Ebay. Plug the thing in, tell it your favourite programmes and actors and sit back and be fed everything you could want for the rest of time. Or get a twin tuner Topfield for £230, install a couple of extensions and get the same feature in digital instead of analogue. My Tivo was relegated to the back room years ago now. Lee. -- lee at w2designs dot co dot uk If I have one flaw, it's that I'm a perfectoinist. |
Sky + subscription, you cannot just pay £10 a month
On Fri, 12 Jan 2007 14:51:36 -0000, "John Rowland"
wrote: Ed wrote: 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) Bin it and spend 400 quid on a second hand TiVo with lifetime subscription off Ebay. Plug the thing in, tell it your favourite programmes and actors and sit back and be fed everything you could want for the rest of time. or until it breaks down.The Tivo Lifetime Subscription is apparently for the lifetime of the box not your lifetime. -- Nigel Barker Live from the sunny Cote d'Azur |
Sky + subscription, you cannot just pay £10 a month
"LeeJS" wrote in message ... On Fri, 12 Jan 2007 14:51:36 -0000, "John Rowland" wrote: Ed wrote: 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) Bin it and spend 400 quid on a second hand TiVo with lifetime subscription off Ebay. Plug the thing in, tell it your favourite programmes and actors and sit back and be fed everything you could want for the rest of time. Or get a twin tuner Topfield for £230, install a couple of extensions and get the same feature in digital instead of analogue. My Tivo was relegated to the back room years ago now. Ignores that not everyone can get freeview. As for TiVo - the new yank ones look great but the old UK ones are single tuners - so better menus or not I would take sky+. |
Sky + subscription, you cannot just pay £10 a month
"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! I am sorry to hear this. Assuming you can receive Freeview, a Topfield TF5800PVR exceeds all your expectations for less than £276. |
Sky + subscription, you cannot just pay £10 a month
"Ed" wrote in message
ups.com... I am considering cancelling Sky, because my year free thanks to Virgin Radio is almost up. 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) he's wrong . call back again, if the person isnt aware of it,ask for their supervisor. -- Tumbleweed email replies not necessary but to contact use; tumbleweednews at hotmail dot com |
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... -- |
Sky + subscription, you cannot just pay £10 a month
Vaughan wrote:
Furthermore, make sure you watch or archive all the stuff on your Sky plus before you unsubscribe, because all the material on the drive will become instantly unavailable for replay! ....This was mentioned a while ago, but I was not that interested, not having S+. However, an "introduce a friend" deal before Christmas has garnered me a free box with free install (not counting having to be at home to receive the installer). Anyway. If you cannot watch a recording after you unsubscribe, you should be able to record unsubscribed, although you'd need to subscribe to watch. Is this the case? George |
Sky + subscription, you cannot just pay £10 a month
"Zero Tolerance" wrote in message ... 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. What lets me down is non-availability of freeview, despite I live in one of the most populated areas in the UK. Some places here you can get it, others you cant just a mile away, and even where you can its often pixellated to buggery. -- Tumbleweed email replies not necessary but to contact use; tumbleweednews at hotmail dot com |
Sky + subscription, you cannot just pay £10 a month
George wrote:
If you cannot watch a recording after you unsubscribe, you should be able to record unsubscribed, although you'd need to subscribe to watch. Is this the case? Yes and no. If you have a Sky+ subscription then you can record all channels, regardless of whether you subscribe to them or not. Only for playback do you need to have a valid viewing sub. However the same logic does not apply to the Sky+ sub itself as without this £10 payment the Sky+ neither records nor plays back. Another example of Sky wanting their cake and eating it, I suppose. -- 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
Chris Leuty wrote: 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. Thanks for this What 'please stay with us' offers did they extend to you? 6 months half price is their usual. |
Sky + subscription, you cannot just pay £10 a month
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'? Well exactly. And how hard it would be to add a Virtual DOG mechanism? Not that hard if they were willing. I can only suspect that the reason Sky do not is that Sky really are controlled by Philistines and very luck business managers. Sky *should* be the greatest invention since the toaster but they have in my view flawed their products needlessly and carelessly. 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... -- As far as I know, there are no Sky CAMs available to non Sky box manufacturers. |
Sky + subscription, you cannot just pay £10 a month
Heracles Pollux wrote: 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'? Well exactly. And how hard it would be to add a Virtual DOG mechanism? Not that hard if they were willing. I can only suspect that the reason Sky do not is that Sky really are controlled by Philistines and very luck business managers. Sky *should* be the greatest invention since the toaster but they have in my view flawed their products needlessly and carelessly. 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... -- As far as I know, there are no Sky CAMs available to non Sky box manufacturers. You have to remember that a large percentage of Sky's customers are particularly thick, so the most basic interface is required for them. |
Sky + subscription, you cannot just pay £10 a month
In article , [email protected]
0spam.want.no.spam.zzz says... 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... The proprietary chipsets and firmware used in the Toppy make such things much harder than they should be. There is no official TAP API to access stuff at the required level so nasty firmware hacking and hardware access is needed. Though some equally difficult tasks have been done on the terrestrial model thanks to monumental efforts by some notable developers. A dreambox would be better IMHO. The hardware is more open and some of the softcams can (unlike the hard CAMs a toppy would need) handle card updates. How difficult a Sky EPG is depends on the data format. If it is in plain text it might be possible to work out: a bit trickier if it is encrypted. Steve. |
Sky + subscription, you cannot just pay £10 a month
On Mon, 15 Jan 2007 17:49:32 -0000, Steve
wrote: How difficult a Sky EPG is depends on the data format. If it is in plain text it might be possible to work out: a bit trickier if it is encrypted. Hm, true. I wonder if it is. Actually, thinking sideways, isn't all the Sky EPG data published on the sky.com website anyway? Might be easier to extract it from there.. -- |
Sky + subscription, you cannot just pay £10 a month
In article om,
"Ed" wrote: What 'please stay with us' offers did they extend to you? 6 months half price is their usual. Nothing at all. They phoned up yesterday to get an idea of why I cancelled, in particular to ask if I had any technical problems that may have made me cancel. But again, no offers. |
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