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My brother has had SKY for decades - only the basic-ish channels, but now the kids are flying the nest he's going to cancel and drop down to free-to-air on freesat (supplemented by streaming).
One thing they do love is the digibox and recording - very slick and reliable, and they watch the vast majority of content from recordings.
Has anyone else dropped SKY? What did you miss? And what hardware did you get for reliable recordings?
Can you get a new TV with a reliable recording system, for best ease-of-use? Or is it generally better to get a separate digibox ?
From what I remember, the SKY planner/recorder was always the best in the business, so it's gonna be a tricky experience to equal!
Haven't dropped from Sky but been using Humax boxes for ages and have been very happy, although they have been Freeview rather than Freesat.
I've been reading up and it's complicated!Β AFAIK ...
TVs provide FREEVIEW via the aerial, and some TVs also have a FREESAT tuner (and connection for your dish cable).
1) If on Sky-Q, then all your boxes need to get sent back to Sky (Q box plus older ones). If you're only running the non-Q box, then you can keep that to access freesat.
2) If on Sky-Q, you will have the newer dish, and you can't get freesat on that with on most (cheap) boxes afaik [*]. However, if you were only (or also) running legacy kit (Sky HD), then you will be able to use a freesat box. (It's something to do with the LNB).
[*] BUT the latest 2021+ FREESAT 4K box (Techradar review) will work with the Sky-Q dish wideband LNB.
We pretty much just get by on streaming, plus the catch-up apps via our nVidia Shield. We do have a basic Virgin TV package but don't use it. I'm probably going to ditch the phone and TV in a few months once the discount period ends and the price doubles. Can get 1GB broadband by itself for Β£5 less than I'm paying now for 350MB for this package.
