Moving house, take existing SKY with us, get new SKY, or something else?

[Clariman]

We will be moving house this summer. At our current home we have a Sky dish, Sky Q, and some Sky Q mini boxes. I am trying to decide what TV service to have where we are going. I had thought we would apply for a new Sky Q service in the new home to get the benefit of "new customer" pricing and taking our Sky Q mini boxes with us. However, it looks as if Sky Q has been replaced by Sky Stream but that has no recording capability. That then begs the question whether other streaming services might be better.

The only additional Sky service we have is multiroom. It looks as if we'd have to buy additional Sky Stream devices if we went that route which is annoying given that we have the Sky Q mini boxes already.

Any ideas?

Thanks
C

[Tedx]

I'm not sure you can benefit from new customer pricing. Happy to be corrected on that one.

And I don't have Sky Q, but as I understand it, they still own the gear? Again, happy to be corrected.

Sky Stream looks interesting - at least from the perspective of no more dish....on the downside, does it facillitate channel hopping? I need to channel hop. It is my reason for being. I've been hanging on to my HD box until it expires and now I have the full fibre, Stream is on the cards after it goes bang.

Other streaming services? (My opinions)

Amazon. Cheap. Amazon Prime delivery is a bonus.....but the video service is poor. The movies are old (unless you want to pay more) and the Amazon generated stuff is, own the whole, crap. You get some free English Premier League football games for a day over Christmas.

Netflix. We got this in December to watch the 2nd Knives Out movie. Its ok, but there's an awful lot of dross to wade through. Netflix make a movie about anything and whilst some are semi interesting...most are....crap. They don't even do a free trail. Best to get a password from a mate and try it out that way.

Rakuten. Basically an online video shop to by and rent new movies. I quite like it. Avoid the free stuff unless your really into adverts. Handy if you need to go to the loo a lot I guess.

By BiL has Disney+ and often raves about it. But then he talks about Star Wars as if its real. Make of that what you will.

Apple TV. No Idea. I've seen the odd bit on youtube (Basically Jon Stewart ranting about something or other)

Channel 4. Britains biggest free streaming service. Essentially, its 17 zillion hours of 'Come Dine with Me' and 'A place in the Sun'. Its free for a reason.

Pornhub - The worlds biggest streaming service (Despite what Disney and Netflix say). Great for keeping the kids occupied - although they'll moan they've seen most of it.

[elkay]

Are you in a contract? If so, Sky will insist in continuing it at the new property.

Is Virgin Media available? I would have a strong preference for them over Sky.

elkay

[Clariman]

Are you in a contract? If so, Sky will insist in continuing it at the new property.

Is Virgin Media available? I would have a strong preference for them over Sky.

elkay

Out of contract and I was going to get my wife to put it in her name as a new customer, but there aren't any new customer deals that I can see.

Not sure about Virghb Media

[BullDog]

Are you in a contract? If so, Sky will insist in continuing it at the new property.

Is Virgin Media available? I would have a strong preference for them over Sky.

elkay

Out of contract and I was going to get my wife to put it in her name as a new customer, but there aren't any new customer deals that I can see.

Not sure about Virghb Media

We gave up on a Sky subscription. We have a NowTV subscription which is a Sky company with Sky content but streamed rather than satellite broadcast. We find it works out significantly less costly for what we want compared to a Sky subscription.

[DrFfybes]

I would ring Sky and see what they can do at the new house - if there is already a dish they might do a great deal to retain you.

They still do dishes and SkyQ and it will stay for about another 10 years, but they are trying to steer people away from it.
https://www.sky.com/tv/sky-q


We moved in between lockdowns, Sky wouldn't install a dish at the new house, so we had to stop the service.

After 7 months of fighting with a BT box (why on Earth does a company that promises whole home wifi need a wired connection from their box to their router?) we called Sky again - got a free dish installed and they continued our service so we kept our Diamond/VIP/whatever. IIRC they charged us £17/month for their basic package.

Currently get Sky Signature and Core TV for£19/month, plus Ultimate TV, Sky go and Netflix for free (although I expect it to go up next month next month when our 2 year deal comes to an end).

I didn't really push, they just kept adding things on for free

Paul

[Alaric]

Channel 4. Britains biggest free streaming service. .

There's itvx as well.

That's free but with ads. I think they raid the britbox archive from time to time, since there's old bbc stuff on there as well.

There's channel 5 and bbc iplayer as well, along with uktv.

Amazon Firestick contains all this with a straight forward user interface. No recording facility though.

[CliffEdge]

We have Freeview. It's free but we still get some new dramas, unfortunately.

[Clariman]

Thanks again everyone. We have decided to take Sky with us. Free dish installation, got them to take a tenner off the price, and all with netflix bundled in.

[tjh290633]

Thanks again everyone. We have decided to take Sky with us. Free dish installation, got them to take a tenner off the price, and all with netflix bundled in.

You can get Sky without a dish these days. We have a SKY GLASS which streams from the internet and you can do the same with a puck and an ordinary television. No problems with heavy rain or snow cutting you off. You need a decent connection, above about 25 Mbps I believe. I would investigate that.

TJH

[Tedx]

And if you dont want the telly, theres sky stream.

No recording facility though. And when you start totting up all the add ons (multiroom, UHD, ad skipping etc,) the cost can get (even more) expensive.

[Clariman]

Thanks again everyone. We have decided to take Sky with us. Free dish installation, got them to take a tenner off the price, and all with netflix bundled in.

You can get Sky without a dish these days. We have a SKY GLASS which streams from the internet and you can do the same with a puck and an ordinary television. No problems with heavy rain or snow cutting you off. You need a decent connection, above about 25 Mbps I believe. I would investigate that.

TJH

Thanks TJH. I meant to say we were taking "Sky Q" with us. I was aware of stream but we would have to buy the stream pucks and we so like to be able to record shows which you can't with stream.

[Clariman]

And if you dont want the telly, theres sky stream.

No recording facility though. And when you start totting up all the add ons (multiroom, UHD, ad skipping etc,) the cost can get (even more) expensive.

Thanks. See my reply to TJH just now above

[scrumpyjack]

I have been with Sky for over 20 years and rang up to cancel to see what offers they made. I asked about Sky stream and they said they don't discount that at all, but I got 30% off my current Sky Q sub so have continued with that. Friends who have Stream really like it. I thought all the back stuff is available online on Stream so you don't need to 'record'?

[Mike88]

I suggest you post your question here:

https://forums.digitalspy.com/categories/sky

That website is used by professionals in the industry and you will get a very informative reply there.

[Tedx]

I have been with Sky for over 20 years and rang up to cancel to see what offers they made. I asked about Sky stream and they said they don't discount that at all, but I got 30% off my current Sky Q sub so have continued with that. Friends who have Stream really like it. I thought all the back stuff is available online on Stream so you don't need to 'record'?

Its not always available until sometime later and some filmscfor example that you have saved are not always available. Also, we do our own form of ad skipping but recording a program foe 15 minutes or so then fast forwarding through the ads at 30x.

[tjh290633]

I have been with Sky for over 20 years and rang up to cancel to see what offers they made. I asked about Sky stream and they said they don't discount that at all, but I got 30% off my current Sky Q sub so have continued with that. Friends who have Stream really like it. I thought all the back stuff is available online on Stream so you don't need to 'record'?

Its not always available until sometime later and some filmscfor example that you have saved are not always available. Also, we do our own form of ad skipping but recording a program foe 15 minutes or so then fast forwarding through the ads at 30x.

If you stream Channel 5, it leaves out the adverts, even if you are watching the programmes following the original. Go back to the start of the first programme and you are away. Likewise on Gold, where I watched two episodes of Blackadder and found that when I stopped, I had beaten the live programme.

The ability to watch Question Time not long after it has been recorded on iPlayer also allows one to retire to bed earlier than waiting for the broadcast version.

TJH

[swill453]

The ability to watch Question Time not long after it has been recorded on iPlayer also allows one to retire to bed earlier than waiting for the broadcast version.

I don't know if it's just my telly, but when I watch this on iPlayer the lip-sync is off.

Scott.

[tjh290633]

The ability to watch Question Time not long after it has been recorded on iPlayer also allows one to retire to bed earlier than waiting for the broadcast version.

I don't know if it's just my telly, but when I watch this on iPlayer the lip-sync is off.

Scott.

No problem for me using an old TV and a puck.

TJH

[Skaterryal]

Moving and deciding on a new TV service can be a bit of a puzzle. Since you already have Sky Q equipment, it might be worth reaching out to Sky customer service to explore your options. They might have solutions or offers that cater to existing customers.