Thetownend.com

Anyone got it? I'm trying to convince myself it'll be worth paying the £10pm subscription charge.

I'm thinking of a) ringing up saying I want to cancel because I'd quite like HD but don't like the £10pm charge and if that doesn't result in a good offer then b) cancel my subscription and get the wife to sign up through quidco which at the moment is £49 for the box, free installation and gives £120 cash back so in effect pays the HD subscription for a year.

HD is defo worth the extra, i cant watch the football if its not in HD anymore!

Mates:- "You coming to watch the game down the Pub tonight?"

JPC82:- "Nah, it's not in HD!"

me, mates?? um yeah sure :)

I didn't want to say it so i'm glad you did. ;)

Depends what you watch Sam. If you watch a lot of footy/sports and movies then I guess it's worth £10. If not then don't bother.

Personally I don't get the £10 worth these days, but then I'm not paying £10 thanks to sky screwing up a discount on my account :)

Of course there is also the new EPG being rolled out slowly now, you can use that to convince yourself (it' not that exciting, but you will be able to tune in to ITV HD manually).

http://www1.sky.com/HDGuide/

thought i would before every1 else did! and yes all my mates are youth teamers and all the rest of the usual comments

got it on order.

mainly because our current sky box keeps dying and it's hardly worth calling out an engineer who'll just format it and maybe replace it with a second hand one.

I definitely wouldn't take Movies because I have my Lovefilm subscription which is better value for money IMO.

Sky HD is ery good and worth thte extra if you have aTV big enough, under 32" it isnt worth it.


have you formatted the sky box yourself yet SY, its easy to do through the menus.....Services....system setup....press 0 then 1 then select.....and reformat away :)

I just got a new 42" plasma TV and whilst the picture is great, football is a tad on the shit side at my current viewing distance (a few feet further back is better). Personally Id jump at the chance of paying a few quid extra to get everything in HD, especially football. Only problem is I'm with Virgin, so I'm fucked.

V+ is HD. I'd get it if I could, but the cable in my street stops at number 20. I'm number 22. Cunts.

Yes it is, except Virgin only have 1 HD channel - BBC HD. All the rest are Sky exclusives at the moment.

1 HD channel?? fucking hell thats ridiculous

you might need to double check the rules about signing up again, sometimes the offers you can't have if you've had sky for the last 6/12 months

its easy when 1 of your uncles works for sky, he installs all my stuff whenever needed and get the box's for free

what our uncles? install your stuff for free? fuck that, what are you doing to them?

shhhh dont tell my Boyfriend Sam - I pay for the Sky and I refuse to pay the extra (I dont even have full package) despite his constant moaning!

I have got it......very good for me as i like all those natural History programmes.

Also remember that you get more disc space with HD!!

And that HD programs take up shed loads more space than the SD equivelant. So I find it still fills up quickly!

But you're not having Sky, a new customer is i.e. Sam's mrs.  I'm planning to do this at ours, my fiancé is current subscriber, I'll get her to cancel then I'll take out Sky in my name, should have no problems as we don't have same surname, then we should get a good deal.

Sam's married though

80% of the stuff i record is standard stuff.

i'm switching to Virgin next month when i cancel my Sky. For £10pm cheaper i will get all music, Setanta, Sky Sports, 20mb Download, unlimited anytime landline calls and HD box.

Makes sense to me. Shame you can't do the same Sam

TBH I upgraded my standard Sky+ Hdd so the HD box is a bit of a downgrade once I start recording HD channels.

Yeah, that's the only problem I could see. Apparently it should work though, even the guys who sell new Sky subscriptions in shopping centres etc. suggest to do this.

If you've got different names then it's a piece of piss, you can just say you've just moved in.

Yep - weve done it when our sky box broke!

Think I'm definitely going to go down the new customer route.

SkyHD upgrade for existing Sky+ customers = 12 week wait

SkyHD new install for new customer = 5 day wait

It does my head in though - exsisiting customers should be treated equally as well dont you think?

get someone to recommend you then get some M&S vouchers too

oooy yeah can i recommend you then i might get a sky + box? I dont want HD as my tv isn't HD... But i can recomend HD as my boyf has it watching football on his TV is ace!

You can re format the boxes yourself. There are unstructions hidden away on the sky site, or you can ring them & they will talk you through it

I think sonic is saying that if it keeps dying a format won't fix it.

You can format it yourself though Si (so say).

You can, through the service menu. Press:

Services, 4, 0, 1, Select

Yeah, you can do that yourself.

i reckon you might be able to do it yourself

Well I bit the bullet and cancelled my Sky this morning. Cancellations would only offer me a reduction on the waiting period for HD installation (6 weeks instead of 12), but nothing off the monthly price.

New customers are currently being offered installation slots this Saturday (!) so I'll be signing up again through Quidco tonight (as the wife) to get my £120 cashback.

thats fucking shocking tbh Sam. Sky should be offering you the same deal as a new customer. At the end of the day you'll be starting a new contract with them so there is no difference.

Sky don't really have direct competition though. Of course there is cable television, but as pointed out, it lacks a lot of content and the HD aspect doesn't compare well to Sky.

They'll try and get away with as much as possible.

Yeah, I tried bullshitting them by saying I was moving accross to Virgin and they basically said "fine, they've only got 3 HD channels and we've got 31 - that's how we justify the extra £10 per month".

31 HD channels???? what are they?

found them. blimmy i didn't know they had that many but tbh i'd only watch Sports and Sky 1 for HD.

We don't have movies.

What my bug is with Sky is the chanel selection & price.

Good morning.

It looks like my senile bunch of old cuntish neighbours have caved in and are paying for a communal dish for our block of flats. When this is done and I want to order my sky will they charge me for standard installation even though the dish will already be there? Its only a matter of plugging in the box and the cables anyway isnt it? I want HD too. I cant justify paying 60 odd quid for something that i could easily do myself....

What content is Virgin lacking? If anything its the other way round - Virgin has the BBC, Channel 4 and ITV catch up services and a decent amount of other on demand content none of which Sky has. Channel wise they are pretty much exactly the same, at least with the channels worth watching.

Sky is more expensive as well, at least it would have been for me - about £30 a month extra over Virgin and that was with a shit broadband connection. Sure there is bugger all HD channels but that ain't the end of the world.

My impression was you ended up paying a lot on Virgin for Sky Sports and Movies. Sorry if I'm wrong. The HD argument stands.

If you have sky+ you can record things without needing on demand though, so I think that's a bit of a wasted argument. I do think on demand is a great thing though, just that recordable tv is every bit as easy and good.

I have Freeview+ and it does me fine. I'll use my pc for on demand stuff. Fanboys irritate me more than the seagull man at football.

They did charge those people with Sky+ dishes already up to install HD. So I wouldn't be suprised.

One thing may may need to consider is how many sat feeds the communal dish will provide you. Sky+/HD really requires 2.  If you are going to get  2 ignore the rest of this post!

2 feeds mean you can record one channel and watch another (or record 2). Until the new EPG arrives you'll need to be careful not to try dual recording, etc. I think people work around this by constantly forcing a 'fake' second recording on the non existent second feed.

The new EPG does have a 'flat mode' where it will allegedly work with 1 feed but people were bitching about it (not sure why, you'll have to google). More info here, but note that the new EPG may not be downloaded until June. .

http://www1.sky.com/HDGuide/pdf/HD_EPG_MICROSITE.pdf

The cost of the sports channels is pretty much the same on Sky and Virgin. Not that any of it really matters in my case, I'm not allowed to put up a Sky dish so its Virgin or nothing. I did check the prices anyway and Virgin was a fair bit cheaper.

Recordable TV isn't as easy or good as on demand. Its not just about the programmes that have been on over the last week, the BBC have a series catch up for some shows on iPlayer plus there is a lot of extra programming available through the separate Virgin on demand service (loads of music video's, films, tv shows).

I'd have to disagree that Recordable TV isn't as easy or good as on demand. So you can catch up on bbc / C4 shows.  great.  With sky + you can record anything off any channel at any time and series link it. 

And Anytime TV on sky+ is on demand TV anyway.

Not that I'm a sky fanboy, its just that they currently offer the best service by a mile.  I'd love someone to properly compete though and drive prices down.

You can do the same with V+, plus you can record two channels and watch a third at the same time.

Sky have far too much power at the moment though and the regulator should be doing more about it. They should have got taken to the cleaners for removing their channels from Virgin and they should be doing something about Sky holding the exclusives for so many HD channels. Before anyone says it, Sky removing their channels from Virgin was never about the money - it was all about screwing Virgin over and taking their customers.

I thought Virgin didn't have any deficiencies vs Sky?

Sky probably do have too much power but that comes with providing content as well as the platform. They only have one competitor (ie Virgin) who have a smaller potential customer base due to lack of cable in many areas & the barriers to entry into the market are so finciancially huge its difficult to see what the regulator can do without just favouring virgin all the time.

I've done exatly the same previously and put it in the wife's maiden name even though we have a joint bank acc and that is a different surname - that's the way round it.

I signed up for Sky Broadband yesterday and got sky talk free for 6 months, I intend cancelling sports & movies next week - hopefully they will offer me a good deal to keep one of them and I can then tell the wife the offer was too good to refuse but we only get to keep sports  :)

Stopped paying for Sky and Virgin ages ago. Eurovox is the way forward! ;)

All booked, being installed next Friday 8)

Well done Sammo!!!  Didn't think you'd have a problemo.

Just out of interest grim reaper, have you actually got the foreign set up?  If so how much is it?

I paid £85 for the box off the internet. You have to download a firmware patch to update the box so it will decode the Virgin signals which was straight forward enough. I was paying over £50 a month for Sky so this box has paid for itself in less than 2 months. I less bill at the end of the day.

How does this work?
Special dish??

Eurovox runs off the Virgin cable service, basically allows you to watch their encrypted services for "free". Works like the old chipped cable boxes.

Like grimreaper says, you have to keep it updated with firmware patches as and when Virgin change their encryption.

If you have or have had a cable service in the past then you're connection to Virgin is still 'Live'. To cut costs Virgin do not send engineers out to the little green cabinets in the streets to 'hard disconnect' ex- customers, instead they just take back your Virgin/NTL cable box so you cant watch the service anymore.

But if you get the Eurovox box this can soon be rectified...  :tvhappy:

jesus, we're still waiting for a date after ordering it about a month ago

Standard "sod the existing customer" policy.

Mobile phone companies are just the same.

on my sky hd anytime thingy there is a demo video of the new sky epg, is there anyway i can get this now or do i just wait until sky decide to upgrade mine?

You need to wait. They have started a slow, gradual rollout. The Thomson manufactured boxes are being done first, but only 2 versions have been done thus far (4E300E, 4E3004) .

After the Thomsons it's anyone's guess who comes next - I'm guessing that they will speed up downloads when they are confident the release doesn't cause issues.

GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGGGGGHHHHHHHHH!

Sky customer service is fucking shit!

I know my box is fucked because I can hear the hard drive clicking, just send me a fucking engineer not run me through 45 minutes of fucking useless 'troubleshooting'.

Wankers!

Computer says no Sam. It's in the script, thou shalt not deviate from the script. The script is king. All worship the script.

Oh yeah, if this is the new HD box that needs replacing they may  well fob you off with a referb. I guess it still carries the 12 month guarantee, but if it were me Id tell them to bring a new replacement not a referb. Referbs come in plain brown boxes, new ones don't.

Right this is booked to be installed in a week or so.

Do i need it connected to the phone line for the 12 months or can i disconnect it? We only have one phone point in the flat, and thats 8-9 m away and i dont want cables everywhere

Only has to be connected for the initial setup. The guy who installed mine actually said "I don't mind if you disconnect it when I'm gone".

Sam do you have sky? This could influence my partipation (and not to mention my brother's) in tomorrow's festivities.

user

If you see that I started this thead, I think that tells you the answer is "yes".

I was meant to put 'sky sports'. A consumption of alcohol may have caused me to leave the second word out.

Before you say read through the other posts in this thread, I can't be fucked. Clever ain't I?

Yes I have Sky Sports.