Leaving Sky TV - what options do I have?

Oxide™

Oxide™

Oxide™

Soldato
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Hello,

I really need to cut back on my monthly bills in order to save enough for a house deposit and one of the luxuries I am considering is Sky TV.

I am a massive fan of Sky and their pvr - I have phone, 40mbit fibre, HD, multiroom and variety HD pack with Sky and pay around £60/month (around £40 in monthly discounts)

If I had to ditch the Variety HD and save £35/month - what cheaper TV alternatives do you recommend please?

I haven't had to research this in years as I have been happy with Sky but there's netflix, amazon prime, chromecast, WD Live etc which I don't know what is recommended - please help

I will really miss the Sky F1, discovery, history, comedy, sky one, sky atlantic channels
 
Most people on here seem to be saying that, if you cancel and wait a bit, you'll get a 50% off offer pretty much guaranteed.

If you have the F1 channel then be very sure about leaving as you'll never get it back again.
 
I dumped sky and all its channels in Feb as my discounts ended and the robbers wanted £80pcm.
We only watch a handful of channels but they were spread amongst the different packages (very clever Sky!!), so cutting packages didn't really work right for us.
So, after ditching Sky i bought 3 x NowTV boxes with enough sky movies and TV packages to last 14 months. It cost me a total of £140, equivalent to less than 2 months sky sub.
Doubt we'll ever go back to Sky now.
Got Sky One, Sky Atlantic, so for me, Arrow, Flash, GoT is covered.
Most things are on catchup so PVR isn't really needed. Sky Box Office is also available to buy the odd movies should you want to.
I also have a FirevTV stick wit Amazon Prime account and have sideloaded Kodi onto it.
Between them they cover pretty much everything i need from my TV (we don't do sports anyway).
So gone from £80pcm to less approx £10pcm.
 
Vertigo1 said:
Most people on here seem to be saying that, if you cancel and wait a bit, you'll get a 50% off offer pretty much guaranteed.

If you have the F1 channel then be very sure about leaving as you'll never get it back again.
Click to expand...

Not sure I would get 50% discount, I already have 5 discounts applied?

Would I need to get Sky Sports to get the F1 channel in future?
 
Banzai_Joe said:
I dumped sky and all its channels in Feb as my discounts ended and the robbers wanted £80pcm.
We only watch a handful of channels but they were spread amongst the different packages (very clever Sky!!), so cutting packages didn't really work right for us.
So, after ditching Sky i bought 3 x NowTV boxes with enough sky movies and TV packages to last 14 months. It cost me a total of £140, equivalent to less than 2 months sky sub.
Doubt we'll ever go back to Sky now.
Got Sky One, Sky Atlantic, so for me, Arrow, Flash, GoT is covered.
Most things are on catchup so PVR isn't really needed. Sky Box Office is also available to buy the odd movies should you want to.
I also have a FirevTV stick wit Amazon Prime account and have sideloaded Kodi onto it.
Between them they cover pretty much everything i need from my TV (we don't do sports anyway).
So gone from £80pcm to less approx £10pcm.
Click to expand...

NowTV seems to be ok - what is the quality and streaming like? So all I'd lose is SkyF1 and pvr functions - would I be able to Fast Forward through all the ads in I'm a Celebrity and Britain's Got Talent etc?

I also have a FirevTV stick wit Amazon Prime account and have sideloaded Kodi onto it - I have no idea what this is lol
 
Last edited:
if your going to use kodi then why bother at all with the sky now subs?

all you need is broadband which would be £20-£40 a month max depending on the speed you want.

there is no real direct alternative to sky as it has exclusivity over channels, it's boxes have the slickest software and features.

if your looking to save money, freesat and broadband is all you need.
 
Kodi 'can' be hit'n'miss at times, but very good generally. You can find just about anything if you install the right sources.

NowTV is pretty good for streaming HD quality. If you watched Sky stuff on catchup then the adverts are excluded from it, which is good. We watch GoT literally 2 mins after it starts on Monday at 9pm, but we don't have to watch the ads :)
Channel 4 ads, you can't skip through sadly (grrr), can't remember about ITV stuff and other channels tbh.
Biggest grip for me is if i watch Good Morning Britain on ITV, it ALWAYS starts with adverts before going into the show which means you could actually miss something you were hoping just to turn on and watch. Total ball-ache that is.
 
I have dropped my Sky to the basic package but didn't want to lose F1. I have it with my HD sub. Get to keep Atlantic, Fox etc.

I have 2 Roku's in the bedrooms with Netflix and Prime.

Only thing I miss is Discovery for Deadliest Catch.

Sky know we want to keep the nippers happy so Nick Jr is gone but I can find the current favorites, Dora and Spongebob on Netflix and Prime. You don't even get kids channels on Sky's Now TV.
 
A couple of months ago I was going to ditch Sky for NowTV & FreeView. In fact I did ditch, I put in my 30 day cancellation notice.
However shy offered me a 50% code and I consider £19 about the acceptable rate for the package I use, so I took it.

Next year I'll try again, but the moment the deals give me a price of £21+ a month I'll leave for good for other services.
 
SkyGo pc now seems to have iplayer type PC download capability, new button and slightly modifed interface although we have not tried it.
SkyGo and Nowtv on a PC seem to have duplicated functionality - so why does sky not replace Nowtv PC access by SKygo and give it download too.

Skygo also seems to have better picture quality and improves bitrate if it establishes bandwidth is available.

m@try my understanding Nowtv tv is a 720 stream and not 1080 (which is supported on new nowtv boxes but not originals, and neither support hevc/h265 unlike new roku4 box) - but - it is the bit-rate as well as picture size that contribute to picture quality
 
EddScott said:
Sky know we want to keep the nippers happy so Nick Jr is gone but I can find the current favorites, Dora and Spongebob on Netflix and Prime. You don't even get kids channels on Sky's Now TV.
Click to expand...

You can get a kids pass for £2.99 a month.

I find the quality to be perfectly fine. I only have a 32" 1080p TV, so that could be a factor.

Aren't they also due to release a newer Now TV box that can support 4K and, has the ability to record?
 
This nowtv doc suggests (live?) channels mostly sd/576i and sport 720p & on demand 720p

They do not confirm refresh rate though,whilst 25hz for movies is fine (sped up from 24.xx Hz they are shot at) for other channels and fast action like sport 25hz as opposed to 50hz would not be very fluid vs 1080i/50hz of freeview hd,
but maybe nowtv is on par with streaming competition.
[ I have not watched enough fast action stuff on nowtv to comment ]
... and bit-rates count too.
 
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