Sky Hd 12 months contract.. whats next..

[Colinevan]

Hi guys.

First a quick happy new year to you all...

I want some advice on what you guys may do in my situ.

Iv had my hd box, phone and everything channel wise apart from sports for 12 months now. In all it comes in at around £52 per month. (£10 extra for the few hd channels)

Iv had it for 12 months now, not had any real problems apart from replacing the hd box 3 times due to various faults lol. Im relatively happy with sky, but wonder if any of you guys, have gone to virgin, bt etc etc.
I know you can re negotiate to reduce your bills slightly if i were to stay with sky, but has anyone done this, and if so how much did they reduced it for you by ( to give me an idea ).

Thanks.

Col.

[Southwell]

Well Virgin only do one HD channel, which is BBC HD, and it doesn't run all day. If your Sky now goes wrong you will have to pay for an engineer, although for about £8 a month you can be covered on that. Virgin equipment is all rented so all replacments are free as there is no minimum warrenty. I use Virgin internet and Sky HD and + boxes, although if Virgin were to get a decent HD lineup i would probably change as i could get faster internet and cheaper phone calls for the same price as my Sky/Virgin bundles.

[glypo]

Well I have a HD Humax PVR. It is Freesat (Freesat from BBC/ITV, and not the Freesat from Sky, which are confusingly same name but different service). It is great.

Less channels than a contract, obviously, but it is free. Really it offers much better value for money, for what I need at least. The box wasn't cheap for sure, but when you consider for a basic Sky package with HD costs around £500 a year when you factor in full costs it's mad.

I am not a Virgin fan at all. Cable is just not the future. I always find the EPG is slower than Satellite, and even terrestrial servies (Freeview) is quicker. The broadband isn't too hot either, around here at least. They make out as if they run a total fibre-optic network when in reality of course it just runs street level. Even BT manage that in some places, BT is really making waves with fibres though. investing billions to get the core of its customers on fibre within the next few years. That's real fibre too, as in 100mb/s connection speeds that actually exist. More than enough to stream TV through your broadband as well.

I find Virgin really bogs down during peak hours, this is because essentially with cable a local loop is restricted to a set amount of bandwidth. ADSL doesn't experience this as such, so ADSL network only slow down due to poor ISP not providing enough capacity. Though I am with BT for broadband and my internet is as quick peak time as non-peak - the way it should be.

Anyway, you certainly can negotiate with Sky. You are paying them over £700 a year so they won't want to lose you. I know a colleague at work managed to renegotiate his contract just before Christmas, he has HD also, and he managed to get £19/month off his bill without losing anything. That’s nearly a £230/year saving which can’t be laughed at.

[DCM]

I am with Virginmedia, and don't have an issue, my bill is about £50 a month, thats the V+ box, XL tv and internet, evening and weekend free calls. Yes you do end up in India if you have a problem, but I have very rarely needed to use that. If you want a discount, contact the Customer Retentions department of Sky.

Re: Virgin + HD, my father got the V+, 42" 1080HD plasma connected up using the HDMI cable, and when you flick between the BBC and BBC HD channel, there is no difference in picture quality, so maybe where Virgin states that, because they get so little signal loss on the fibre-optic, there is no need for HD channels.

[Colinevan]

Hmm thanks so far guys, mich appreciated... I'll have a look at Virgin, no harm is there lol.

[Colinevan]

Originally Posted by DCM

I am with Virginmedia, and don't have an issue, my bill is about £50 a month, thats the V+ box, XL tv and internet, evening and weekend free calls. Yes you do end up in India if you have a problem, but I have very rarely needed to use that. If you want a discount, contact the Customer Retentions department of Sky.

Re: Virgin + HD, my father got the V+, 42" 1080HD plasma connected up using the HDMI cable, and when you flick between the BBC and BBC HD channel, there is no difference in picture quality, so maybe where Virgin states that, because they get so little signal loss on the fibre-optic, there is no need for HD channels.

To be honest there should be a massive difference between hd and normal. The only reason i went hd was i bought a sony Hd 1080 p and the std pic via the aerial because the tv is large was quite poor, Sky std has no real difference in picture, but on hd, its out of this world. Was it on adverts ir something when you compared? Col.

[Southwell]

I get a huge difference between the SD and HD channels on my TV.

[glypo]

D'oh finished writing my reply only to see two people said what I have much quicker. Anyway I agree with them.

I think that's more to do with poor compression of HD over Virgin. As I said above, Virgin isn't fibre anyway. Cable is called cable, because it runs through coaxial copper cables. And a chain is only as strong as its weakest link so it doesn't really matter where they cut off fibre and run cable.

Anyway digital TV it doesn't matter about strength of signal, that's the whole point. With digital if you don't get the full signal, you lose chunks of data and you will see whole blocks of picture missing from the screen, or nothing at all. It's not like analogue days when signal strength affected signal quality progressively.

Sky (BSkyB), Freesat from BBC/ITV and the trial for terrestrial Freeview HD in London all used the H.264 video compression which is pretty neat. According to the internet Virgin HD is compressed mpeg2 from 1080i h264 sources - at a lower bitrate than the better compressed originals. Not sure how true that is but doesn't sound good.

Oh and also equipment quality plays a MASSIVE part in the quality too. Anyway lets just say after watching some decent stuff on Discovery HD and so on (wish I could get that on Freesat HD ) there is a noticeable difference with HD on some channels. The picture and also the sound, full Dolby 5.1 through some channels. I must admit BBC HD quality seems to be worse than before, but still noticeably better on the 40" LCD here compared with SD.

[DCM]

Originally Posted by Colinevan

To be honest there should be a massive difference between hd and normal. The only reason i went hd was i bought a sony Hd 1080 p and the std pic via the aerial because the tv is large was quite poor, Sky std has no real difference in picture, but on hd, its out of this world. Was it on adverts ir something when you compared? Col.

bbc hd to normal bbc on virgin, LG 42" hd 1080 plasma screen, and the picture was super sharp on both channels, actually, the pic quality is awesome on all the channels.

[_JP_]

virgin is ok, but only 1 hd channel sucks, but the HD looks good.

It's a pitty the V+ box is such a pile of junk, yea you can record 2 channels, 3 if you count pausing live TV while 2 others record, but the software is just piss poor compared to my old Tivo box which the muts nuts, but would be no good now as did not do HD.

I think the Sky box is good and better to use than the Virgin V+, but non compare to the tivo, pity you cant put your own box on Virgin (legally) as I am sure there are better boxes than the V+ out there.

In answer to your question Col, I would prob stay where I was, I would not move to virgin, but I think we got our virgin bill down by £20 per month and I am sure you could do the same with Sky.
If you notice most company's off new customers better deals than existing customers, maybe more of us should complain!

[chris_dono]

Bottom line is if you want HD channels, stick with Sky, I've tried a couple of the others, but the setup for Sky "just works"

[big air]

I must admit BBC HD quality seems to be worse than before, but still noticeably better on the 40" LCD here compared with SD.[/quote]


The BBC have down graded there HD signal over the last few months.

[big air]

A better idea get a Sagem D box all the channels are fee
just electric to pay for