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

"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

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. ;-)

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.

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.

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.

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.

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..


--

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.