Switching from SKY! What are my options?

2677 Views 32 Replies 13 Participants Last post by taoy, Oct 7, 2007

taoy

Discussion Starter · Jul 29, 2007

That time has come. Me and my tivo have had a special relationship with SKY for 6 years now! However, we are moving to a small place in London, and I can't work out how I'm going to mount a satelite dish on the house. We're probably going to have to switch to another carrier, cable or something.

Does anyone have any recommendations as to who is good, and who works well with Tivo... I don't want to have to give my tivo up. :/.

Joe

1 - 20 of 33 Posts

Pete77

· #2 · Jul 29, 2007

Your alternative options to Sky with Tivo in London seem to be the following:-

Freeview, Virgin Media (formerly NTL) or HomeChoice.

All of these work with a Tivo, although some Virgin Media boxes require a cable adapter for the IR channel changing. However these can be obtained at www.tivoland.com or on Ebay.

For Freeview boxes its important to get one where the automated features such as auto software updating can be turned off as if these cut in unexpectedly they can mess up Tivo recording.

The Wharfedale 832BN from Argos has been highly recommended for Tivo use but I don't know if its still available.

HomeChoice can't really be recommended as the box turns itself off in to standby after 6 hours and this feature cannot be over-ridden. The only way round this is to have a bottom priority manual season pass for a once an hour recording of say 5 minutes.

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cwaring

· #3 · Jul 29, 2007

Pete77 said:
Virgin Media (formerly NTL)

No. Formerly either NTL or Telewest, depending on whoever had the franchise in any given area

Prat77

· #4 · Jul 29, 2007

Pete77 said:
HomeChoice

No. It's Tiscali.

taoy, I'd recommend Freeview unless you need Sky Sports or Movies.

Pete77

· #5 · Jul 29, 2007

Prat77 said:
No. It's Tiscali.

So the point of the Prat77 secondary forum member id is apparently to only use it when I make a mistake and to thereby make a veiled statement that I am a Prat while not putting that in the actual post?

OK I admit that I was out of date not to call the service Tiscali Video on Demand Broadband (doesn't have quite the same ring about it as HomeChoice does it) but is still the same tv service and the URL www.homechoice.co.uk still gets you there and the word Homechoice is still mentioned on the website.

Well Prat77 its time to go in to hibernation again until you spot my next factual posting error.

Prat77

· #6 · Jul 29, 2007

Pete77 said:
So the point of the Prat77 secondary forum member id is apparently to only use it when I make a mistake and to thereby make a veiled statement that I am a Prat while not putting that in the actual post?

http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?p=5209364&&#post5209364 ???

I was only trying to be helpful to the original poster - thought this was what the forum was about

Apologies if I caused any unintended offense.

Pete77

· #7 · Jul 29, 2007

I bet you don't post again until you see another of my errors though.

ndunlavey

· #8 · Jul 29, 2007

Won't be long to wait, I imagine.

ndunlavey

· #9 · Jul 29, 2007

taoy said:
That time has come. Me and my tivo have had a special relationship with SKY for 6 years now! However, we are moving to a small place in London, and I can't work out how I'm going to mount a satelite dish on the house. We're probably going to have to switch to another carrier, cable or something.

Does anyone have any recommendations as to who is good, and who works well with Tivo... I don't want to have to give my tivo up. :/.

Joe

To get this back on thread...

Do you watch any Sky channels that aren't available on Freeview? I worried about giving up Sky, but found that when I moved to Freeview I just wasn't missing anything. The odd things that Sky showed that I did watch that weren't already on a Freeview channel (Enterprise springs to mind, and possibly now Heroes, depending on how good that is tonight) made their way there in the end - that doesn't seem to be anything of merit that never makes it to proper telly.

Pete77

· #10 · Jul 29, 2007

ndunlavey said:
Heroes, depending on how good that is tonight) made their way they in the end - that doesn't seem to be anything of merit that never makes it to proper telly.

Its only the live sports like Premier Football, Test Cricket, Paris-Dakar Rally etc for which your only real option is to view on one of Sky's subscription tv packages. Also the timeliness of viewing is critical with live sports.

But leaving the above question aside there are more FTA channels on Sky Freesat that are not on Freeview that I regard as ones I want to watch than Freeview channels that are missing on Freesat that I need.

For instance Freesat now has CNN, Euronews, Bloomberg Tv, France24 and Russia Today news channels that are not on Freeview. And it also has Reality Tv, The Travel Channel, Zone Horror, True Movies, True Movies 2, Movies4Men and Movies 4Men 2, not to mention Court Tv, Information TV, Wine TV, Wedding Tv, The Baby Channel and a host of other offerings that are not shopping channels but are English speaking. If I could speak any languages spoken in the Inidian Subcontient or the Middle East there would be a whole bunch more stuff I could watch on Sky Freesat that is not on Freeview.

At present E4, More4, Sky SportsNews, FTN, UK Bright Ideas, TMF and The Hits are free on Freeview but not free on Freesat. Of those personally there are none I find I need to watch but I accept that for the under 30s marketplace they are important. However within a year E4 and More 4 are likely to be free on Freesat as and when their encryption contract comes up for renewal.

Personally I'm mystified as to why anyone who has a working Sky box and desubscribes then goes out and buys a Freeview box instead?

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TonyW

· #11 · Jul 29, 2007

One bonus of sticking with Sky is the free broadband, if you do find a way to mount the dish.

I know there are other ways of getting cheap broadband then moving to Freeview etc. but they may not apply or be available, so it might just make a difference to the whole equation.

cyril

· #12 · Jul 29, 2007

Currently, the only thing I would miss from Sky is their High Definition content and 2 tuners in one box.

If you have a south facing balcony you might be able to put a Sky dish on a stand in it. This is useful if you are not allowed to put a dish on an external wall - if your balcony is internal to the exterior of course.

Pete77

· #13 · Jul 29, 2007

cyril said:
Currently, the only thing I would miss from Sky is their High Definition content and 2 tuners in one box.

If you have a south facing balcony you might be able to put a Sky dish on a stand in it. This is useful if you are not allowed to put a dish on an external wall - if your balcony is internal to the exterior of course.

Its good to know you are still out there Cyril. You seem to have been quiet in this place for some time.

taoy

Discussion Starter · #14 · Aug 11, 2007

Pete77 said:
Your alternative options to Sky with Tivo in London seem to be the following:-

Freeview, Virgin Media (formerly NTL) or HomeChoice.

Ok, it looks like we're going to decide to switch to virgin media. So, what are the chances that I can preserve my season passes? Does anyone know how to go about switching the tivo over to using virgin channel numbers without losing my years of accumulated data files...?

Joe

TCM2007

· #15 · Aug 11, 2007

Any season passes which are on channels which are also on Virgin Media will simply carry on working; TiVo doesn't use channel numbers to identify channels in its interenal workings. Just re-run Guided Setup.

There may be some channels which while they appear top be the same actually broadacst a slightly different schedule on cable; you'd lose and SPs on thioose.

cwaring

· #16 · Aug 11, 2007

As far as the subscription channels go, there are very few that are on Sky that are not on Virgin Media. Certainly all the major ones are; with the exception of Sky One/Two/Three/Sports News/News of course

(I'm sure you've heard about the problems re these channels!)

6022tivo

· #17 · Aug 12, 2007

Don't forget, you don't have to use a FREEVIEW, SKY, NTL/TELEWEST type box at all. The tivo will work with no scart input, and just record the terestial channels from your aerial.

I have one setup like this in the office (Freeview box at the tip, unrelaible old OnDig unit).

taoy

Discussion Starter · #18 · Aug 13, 2007

TCM2007 said:
Any season passes which are on channels which are also on Virgin Media will simply carry on working; TiVo doesn't use channel numbers to identify channels in its interenal workings. Just re-run Guided Setup.

That's good news. There's nothing worse than a totally reinitalised tivo!

I was thinking that perhaps I would have to make a backup of the season passes through tivoweb and try and reinstate them, but this sounds good.

taoy

Discussion Starter · #19 · Aug 13, 2007

6022tivo said:
Don't forget, you don't have to use a FREEVIEW, SKY, NTL/TELEWEST type box at all. The tivo will work with no scart input, and just record the terestial channels from your aerial.

Alas there is no TV antenna at the new place either...

aerialplug

· #20 · Aug 13, 2007

6022tivo said:
Don't forget, you don't have to use a FREEVIEW, SKY, NTL/TELEWEST type box at all. The tivo will work with no scart input, and just record the terestial channels from your aerial.

A good short term solution but with digital switchoff rapildy approaching like a herd of uncoordinated stampeding cows, this won't be a solution for most of us in a year or so's time - and based on past experiences I think TiVos will still be in a good number of our homes for a good while yet unless TiVo make an unexpected return to the UK or someone comes out with a better solution (unlikely and impossible for Sky viewers unless Sky take a retrograde step with Sky+ and give us a good user interface to replace the noddy one currently available)

I can't understand why most TVs being sold at the moment still have analogue only tuners - it's as if the manufacturers are oblivious to the fact that in 5 years time (less for most regions) their equipment will be unfit for the purpose it was sold for. I guess they could argue that the SCART was provided for expansion...

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