Alternatives to Sky

[Squink]

I suspect the answer to this is 'no'.

I have Sky Q at home, for which I pay £47-odd quid for movies, HD and Netflix, with a multiroom subscription.

My wife is very happy with the setup. The children watch lots of tat on Netflix in the conservatory and the Sky system is very easy and straightforward.

However, my wife and I don't actually watch very much TV and most of it is terrestrial soaps (her, not me). Therefore I reckon we're paying quite a lot of money to effectively hire a PVR with lots of advert-ridden channels.

Is there anything similar where I can go into a shop and buy a freesat box or whatever that does the same thing, but where I can pick and choose my subscriptions as and when I want them? It's got to be easy to use, by which I mean exactly as easy to use as the Sky setup. Any compromises to that won't get past my wife.

 

[Squink]

Neither of these allow recording on a box. I've got a Now TV dongle, but it's really not the same level of convenience as Sky Q.

There must be an opening in the market for something like this.

 

[Squink]

What do you actually want?

Something similar to Sky's service where all the subscription stuff (netflix, amazon prime video and whatever else) can be accessed in one place via a user-friendly portal that's snappy, not sluggish and also with the ability to watch and record free channels.

A box or boxes that I can pay for up front rather than being tied in to endless £47 quids a month. The Sky Q box is essentially this, just tied in to a Sky subscription.

 

[Squink]

Thanks - I'll check out the BT box. Now you mention it, I seem to recall trying to get BT's 4k service before but they wouldn't sell me it because my line wasn't fast enough.

They're probably cheap enough to buy a couple