Omega Owners Forum
Chat Area => General Discussion Area => Topic started by: Mr Skrunts on 12 October 2008, 01:42:29
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Just been doing some sums. My Brother has got Sky HD, so next year when/if I get a plasma I thought I might consider the HD option.
Just found out I am allready paying £100 per month for BT (thats after a package revamp saving me a minimum of £22 per month), Sky, TV Licence and a heavy usage ISP Subscription. This does not include my mobile packeage.
I dont have Sky Sport or Movies but do have the £22 standard package, plus nearly £12 for the TV Licence.
My ISP packeage plus a couple of other subscriptins costs me £42 per month, if I give up this package I will never be able to take it up again. I have 16 hours a day unlimited bandwidth with this and make the most of it (and before any one tries to shoot holes in it it all legal activitiy that it's used for)
If I drop the ISP I could go over to the Sky unlimited package and save £9.75 and possibly gain some extra speed from my current 8 MB upto a possible 16 MB on the Sky Unlimited. But if and I think it's just a matter of time they may/will impose restrictions
All the above saving will do is cover the HD cost.
2 Questions.
1. Does any one have Sky HD, and what do you think of it.
2. Has anyone got Sky Broadband, Mainly the Extra £5 unlimited option, is it any good and what is thier support like.
On annother level, has anyone dropped thier Sky service in favour of a freview box and was it worth the change.
TIA. :y
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dont have sky but other HD tv and is big different on sport chanels or movis
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dont have sky but other HD tv and is big different on sport chanels or movis
What service do you have, are you on cable?
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hi m8 are u able to get cable if u can pm me
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hi m8 are u able to get cable if u can pm me
See forum guidelines about text speak ;)
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Freeview box, cost us 55 quid. 46 channels and no problem at all.
Mobile internet on orange costs us 15 quid a month, no BT line required. 3GB limit, but have never been anywhere near that, and I am surfing and watching vids every single night......
Dolphin 35 mobile plan costs 30 quid a month inc our discounts, and for that we get 600 mins plus unilimited texts.
Wouldnt want to spend 100 quid plus on these things, and HD doesnt really bother me. We have a second hand Loewe Aconda 32in TV that we got for 75 quid from a woman who didnt understand the brand and the picture is as perfect as we will ever need.
:)
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Few times I have used sky broadband, I have been disappointed at the speed, which is why I still pay another ISP despite having sky.
Speed ratings mean nothing....
Next doors new 8meg connection, is 300k most the time
MY more expensive 1 meg link, runs at about the max I can expect of it - high 900's
the amount you use the net, you need to weight up which you value more, speed etc 'v' poundnotes
you get what you pay for.
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Few times I have used sky broadband, I have been disappointed at the speed, which is why I still pay another ISP despite having sky.
Speed ratings mean nothing....
Next doors new 8meg connection, is 300k most the time
MY more expensive 1 meg link, runs at about the max I can expect of it - high 900's
the amount you use the net, you need to weight up which you value more, speed etc 'v' poundnotes
you get what you pay for.
I tend to agree with you on that. :y :y
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Freeview box, cost us 55 quid. 46 channels and no problem at all.
Mobile internet on orange costs us 15 quid a month, no BT line required. 3GB limit, but have never been anywhere near that, and I am surfing and watching vids every single night......
Dolphin 35 mobile plan costs 30 quid a month inc our discounts, and for that we get 600 mins plus unilimited texts.
Wouldnt want to spend 100 quid plus on these things, and HD doesnt really bother me. We have a second hand Loewe Aconda 32in TV that we got for 75 quid from a woman who didnt understand the brand and the picture is as perfect as we will ever need.
:)
I currently have a Toshiba 24" or 26" TV in my living room and it works fine for me and in all honesty I dont want to replace it. So the HD would be when I replace the old TV
I am considering a wide screen in the mean time for my Bedroom as I tend to lay on my bed to use my PS2 (yes still got the old version) so instead of the Sky HD I am now looking into the Sky + so I can start recording stuff on other channels.
Also have been looking at PVR's one has caught my eye but the price has put me off.
http://www.richersounds.com/showproduct.php?cda=showproduct&pid=HUMA-PVR9300
What ever I end up with needs to be able to transfer to a computer, so any idea's are welcome.
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I have Sky HD , it is sharper and clearer compared to the non HD channel broadcasting the same program , no doubt about it but how they can say up to 4 times more detail beats me ... i dont think its worth the extra £10 a month for a few channels in HD.... i phoned Sky a wee while ago to go down to the minimum package as im on the full package at the minute. When i told them why i wanted to drop my subs they offered me 3 month at half price :y
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I have Sky HD , it is sharper and clearer compared to the non HD channel broadcasting the same program , no doubt about it but how they can say up to 4 times more detail beats me ... i dont think its worth the extra £10 a month for a few channels in HD.... i phoned Sky a wee while ago to go down to the minimum package as im on the full package at the minute. When i told them why i wanted to drop my subs they offered me 3 month at half price :y
They word the stuff carefully.
I cant get cable and I think Sky is totally over priced, but we are stuffed if we want the variety as there is no competion.
When do they turn the Analougue signal off.
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I've got a normal sky set up downstairs and a freeview PC card and vista media center up stairs in the bedroom,
Got the chance of a 28" HD TV's for £250 so might have to upgrade next month
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I've got a normal sky set up downstairs and a freeview PC card and vista media center up stairs in the bedroom,
Got the chance of a 28" HD TV's for £250 so might have to upgrade next month
Seems a lot for a 28"
http://www.aria.co.uk/SuperSpecials/Televisions/?x=12&p_order=price_asc&p=cF9wcm9kdWN0c1BlclBhZ2U9MTAmcF9zdHlsZT1kZXRhaWwm
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Cheap TV with extras
1) Freeview
A twin tuner dual record PVR is a must, chase playback is brilliant - we rarely watch live TV.
They are available for just iver £100 up to a few hundred
Another option is a PC with Freeview cards
2) Freesat
There is HiDef and PVR but no HD PVR yet, but is well worth watching out for.
Different channel listing to Freeview
3) Cheap options
a) Cable with minimum package, it appears that you can get a minimum package if you use their phones and broadband, chap at work does this, works out free for TV.
b) BT Vision - used as PAYG - you get a free Freeview PVR and you get the option to different levels of subscription, £3 allows you to BBC C4 C5 downloads for the last week and is pretty usefull.
Other programmes are PAYG or you can subscribe but this costs money.
Don't know of any Sky ultra cheap deals
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We got Virgin Media Cable package for TV inc Setanta sports - 2mb broadband - phone- + [ optional mobile deal 300 mins 300texts /myth £10 using your own phone]
total charge inc phonebill (hardly use it,use my moby)approx £42/mth :y :y
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I use Sky + TV, no films or sport (not HD -- not enough channels on HD to make it worthwhile) , Sky Broadband (no idea of speed -- but never seems slow), can't comment on support as I have never needed it, zero downtime (so far) hardly ever loses connection. Sky telephone, unlimited calls £5 monthly, including abroad.
Whole lot comes in at £42 per month ---- no surprise phone bills ( have family abroad -- so used to pay a fortune)
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I use Sky + TV, no films or sport (not HD -- not enough channels on HD to make it worthwhile) , Sky Broadband (no idea of speed -- but never seems slow), can't comment on support as I have never needed it, zero downtime (so far) hardly ever loses connection. Sky telephone, unlimited calls £5 monthly, including abroad.
Whole lot comes in at £42 per month ---- no surprise phone bills ( have family abroad -- so used to pay a fortune)
Do you keep the same phone number as when with bt? I need to relook at all of this. :)
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ok, so, broadbamd first. Unless you are on virgin/cable your speed will be limited by how far you are from the exchange. More than a mile and you will not be getting the full 8/16 mb advertised. Also, depending on what you use your connection for the upload speed may be important, most isp's limit this to 1/2 a meg, tho you can get different connections which are greater, but with a lwer downstream speed as a result. The 16mb from sky depends on if your exchange has let sky fiddle as if not, the max will still be 8meg. Sky had a lot of bad press regarding their service, but this is normally down to the firmware they put on their routers, you can replace this and fix that issue, they have alsobeen known to give high latency, which will mean online gaming is not really usable and webpages ttake ages to load, a call to them fixes this. if you are with bt, when they change their broadband service soonish, you will have to pay a high premium to reserve bandwidth, otherwise you'll get left with the dregs, reading up on what they're proposing, its outrageous.
Sky hd. Watch a sky channel that also broadcasts in hd, example sky movies, then flick to something like discovery or even bbc, notice a difference? Sky deliberately broadcat these channels in a lower qualitry, including sound in order to convince people they need hd, for this reason alone i wouldn't get it. Also, noticed how good their add for hd looks? Why dont they broadcast all shows in that quality? Besides all that, there just aren't enough channels yet. I'd say your money is better spent on a blu ray player or ps3. Oh and the sky hd isn't full hd, so it wont be 4 times the detail.
Phone wise, the best deal i found is the sky talk, for £5, i get unlimited calls 24 7, to all uk, and a load of worldwide destinations, keeps the wife happy during the day, as she dont have to wait till after 6 now.
Hope this helps, any questions just ask!!!
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I use Sky + TV, no films or sport (not HD -- not enough channels on HD to make it worthwhile) , Sky Broadband (no idea of speed -- but never seems slow), can't comment on support as I have never needed it, zero downtime (so far) hardly ever loses connection. Sky telephone, unlimited calls £5 monthly, including abroad.
Whole lot comes in at £42 per month ---- no surprise phone bills ( have family abroad -- so used to pay a fortune)
Do you keep the same phone number as when with bt? I need to relook at all of this. :)
Yes, kept same number -- pretty painless really. One day I was BT -- the next Sky.
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we have
Virgin V+ and additional box We get all the sport channels but we do not get the sky box office, we have Virgins version which i feel is a lot better
20Meg with unlimited download
Unlimited evening and weekend calls on the landline
all of this comes to £72 a month
And we dont have to contend with Sky's crapper than crap customer service :y