Sky Broadband Deals

I just got a letter from Sky today, they say they will give me Sky Broadband Connect for a full year for free if i take out one of their packages.

From what i gather they want me to take out phone line rental with them and their entertainment pack for £19.50 a month. I gather they will install a dish and Sky + box for free.

Now at the moment i am with Zen internet and Talk Talk for the phone and use Freesat HD, i have a 1.2 meter dish and quad LNB for around the house coverage of the satellite.

I pay around £15.50 for Talk Talk which includes free international calls anytime of the day to many countries including the USA. ( hang up after one hour and re-call )

I pay a little over £18 for Zen lite which is their 10 gigabyte package.

So in total thats around £34 a month for both not including any additional calls i make.

With the Sky offer i could potentially get their line rental international calls package for £17.50 and Entertainment pack for £19.50, so that's £37 a month.

It's tempting as i assume i will have a free dish, satellite receiver, router etc and after a year i can cancel the contract for Sky entertainment but keep their phone and internet package.

The thing is, what i would really like is their HD pack for £10.25 a month BUT i want that without paying for the Sky Entertainment pack at £19.50 a month, so is it possible to negotiate with the Sky sales team and get the HD pack without subscribing to the entertainment pack. ? I mean if one only wants HD content then why do i need to buy standard definition content first.

Also, i pay Talk Talk £3.50 for free international calls, do you think Sky would negotiate on this and drop their price from £5 to £3.50 to match the Talk Talk price.

The other thing is the letter states a Sky + box but shows a picture of a Sky + HD box, i assume if one wanted their HD package they would send an HD box and after a year one could potentially cancel the contract and have an HD box for use with Channel 4, Channel 5, BBC and ITV, or am i wrong. ?

I know the recording facility would stop if i cancelled any contract, incidentally another thing, i have a really good HD projection system and a 104inch size screen, can one record a programme in HD off a Sky HD box and unplug it and take the box into my dedicated room to view the HD content on the big screen or does it need to be connected to a phone line to allow viewing of the HD content, i assume the box has an HDMI and optical or digital audio out socket.

I suppose i'm really wanting opinion of others on whether this is a good deal and are Sky sales open to negotiation on the packages one can take out as i only want their HD package and do not want to pay extra for a standard definition entertainment pack.

Another appeal for me is the possibility of getting Channel five and ITV 2,3,4 in HD for free even when any subscription runs out.

Edited by deleted (Wed 01-Jun-11 17:35:37)

No such thing as a free lunch (or free sky)

You need to SKY BB, SKY Talk, SKY Talk Anytime, Sky talk International, Sky ent pack, SKY HD pack and then multiroom. This is more than what you have now.

You have the numbers:
Line rental+international: £17.50
SKY tv no movies: £19.50
SKY HD (but no movies HD): £10.15 on TOP of ent tv pack, not instead of
SKY Broadband, freefor 2G or £10 unlimited.

$ky - the Debtor Effect

Might i just add the reason you cant just have the HD pack is you only get the HD equivalent of what you subscribe to. So if you only have the entertainment pack + HD sub ud only get the HD channels from the entertainment pack you would not get any of the others EG syfy HD discovery HD and so on.

Also the only free HD channels you get are BBC HD BBC 1 HD ITV HD 4 HD five HD and a Japanese news channel in HD you dont get ITV 2 3 4 oe E4 HD unless u pay the 10.25 HD pack sub.

Hope this gives you a bit of info to help you decide

Ash

EDIT
click here this tells you what channel is in what pack

Edited by acpsd775 (Wed 01-Jun-11 18:46:18)

Unfortunately i can only get Sky connect here, the local exchange is not unbundled yet.

As for Sky HD channels, well the thing is, why can't they provide me the HD channels for £19.50 a month, why do i have to pay them an extra £10.50 for them. By that i mean i could get them in standard definition for £19.50, so can they not provide me them in HD for the same money, i feel it's an option they should provide.

I guess i'm asking if Sky sales are open to negotiation on this, has anyone tried negotiating with them or do they not enter into negotiations at all.

It's less attractive a deal when i have to pay that additional £10 for the HD channels but i'd be willing to pay the equivalent £19.50 ( for entertainment pack ) if i could get the channels in HD.

These things look attractive but can soon start adding up, i don't need the HD movie channels, i'm happy with my blu ray ( when they don't muck them up with outdated masters and DNR and EE ) and Blockbuster rentals, some television in HD would be good though.

Would i get to keep the HD box at the end of the 12 month contract. ? That might make the extra £10.50 feasible if it got me freesat hd channels after the contract ended.

Edited by deleted (Wed 01-Jun-11 19:05:06)

Ive tried and tried to get the HD channel sub nocked off i even argued the fact that when i was with virgin media the HD channels were free and they just basically said yea but virgin dont offer as many HD channels as we do so they do it free to get custom and basically if you dont want to pay dont have them .

i was like well thats a nice way to treat the customers.

With the box yes you get to keep it once youve got it its yours for ever it turns into a freesat from sky box(different from BBC/ITV freesat) if you cancel your subscription you get about 240 channels but the sky+ features stop working you still get BBC HD BBC1 HD ITV HD 4HD five HD free if you have the paid HD channels cut off. Hope this helps

Ash

Ok Zen have a good reputation as a ISP so do Sky ??? no wait .. Sky Connect service has a rubbish reputation because its a rubbish over subscribed bit of doggy doo .

Would i give up a well managed resold BT product from Zen for Sky excuse of a resold BT product ? take a guess .

It can't ever be as bad as Virgin ADSL, when i was with them my download speeds during peak time were capped at around 25kbp/s, that's despite not downloading anything to get put on a speed cap.

Actually Sky Connect is about on par with Virgin Media ADSL, and O2 Access I would dare to suggest, i.e. avoid like plague

I guess i'll not be taking Sky up on their offer then because i just cannot work on my website and enjoy the internet with such poor speeds ( its the lag factor that is really annoying ) it'll be late next year before i get the chance to look at Sky unlimited because thats when my local cabinet is supposed to be upgraded.

Edited by deleted (Thu 02-Jun-11 15:34:02)

In reply to a post by TalkTalk1969:

it'll be late next year before i get the chance to look at Sky unlimited because thats when my local cabinet is supposed to be upgraded

Your local cabinet doesn't come into this. Are you confusing Sky LLU with FTTC?

In reply to a post by acpsd775:

Ive tried and tried to get the HD channel sub nocked off i even argued the fact that when i was with virgin media the HD channels were free and they just basically said yea but virgin dont offer as many HD channels as we do so they do it free to get custom and basically if you dont want to pay dont have them .

i was like well thats a nice way to treat the customers.

With the box yes you get to keep it once youve got it its yours for ever it turns into a freesat from sky box(different from BBC/ITV freesat) if you cancel your subscription you get about 240 channels but the sky+ features stop working you still get BBC HD BBC1 HD ITV HD 4HD five HD free if you have the paid HD channels cut off. Hope this helps

Ash

Then I would have told them to stick all of it and canceled the lot

Not heard from Sky for a while, never offer me anything

It don't bother me that much i don't actually have the HD pack it dont interest me enough to pay for it at the moment. As most of the channels are on the packs i don't subscribe to. So out of the 50 id only end up with about 12 of them lol that's why i was trying to get it for free lol

Ash

For me the HD channels are great, for the first few days it was mesmerizing even though you see all the pimples and turkey necks.

lol i did have them once for 1 month and did enjoy the better quality but as i say because i only sub to a few packs i was i would end up bascly paying like £1 per channel extra lol and its not worth it at all lol. Now if they introduced the old sky HD pack back were you got the HD channel even if you did not sub to the SD one id take it up in a shot lol.

Ash

In reply to a post by Oliver341:

In reply to a post by TalkTalk1969:

it'll be late next year before i get the chance to look at Sky unlimited because thats when my local cabinet is supposed to be upgraded

Your local cabinet doesn't come into this. Are you confusing Sky LLU with FTTC?

At the moment i can only get 8meg here, the cabinet is supposed to be getting upgraded late next year to allow for at least 20meg, i assumed this would allow for Sky Unlimited or indeed much more choice, i thought this was local loop unbundling ( LLU ) is this not so. ?

In reply to a post by TalkTalk1969:

At the moment i can only get 8meg here, the cabinet is supposed to be getting upgraded late next year to allow for at least 20meg, i assumed this would allow for Sky Unlimited or indeed much more choice, i thought this was local loop unbundling ( LLU ) is this not so. ?

No, LLU is all at the exchange. The cabinet stuff is FTTC. Sky don't offer any FTTC products yet, to get higher speeds using the FTTC technology you would have to change to a different ISP.

Wish I could have got a 2.5ltr for the price of the 2.0ltr Ford S-Max!

In reply to a post by jchamier:

In reply to a post by TalkTalk1969:

At the moment i can only get 8meg here, the cabinet is supposed to be getting upgraded late next year to allow for at least 20meg, i assumed this would allow for Sky Unlimited or indeed much more choice, i thought this was local loop unbundling ( LLU ) is this not so. ?

No, LLU is all at the exchange. The cabinet stuff is FTTC. Sky don't offer any FTTC products yet, to get higher speeds using the FTTC technology you would have to change to a different ISP.

Maybe i have got it all wrong then, it might be the exchange getting upgraded, i have tended to lump the exchange and cabinet into the same category, my mistake.

Its all confusing, but if we forget FTTC which is the cabinet and look at the exchange.

BT might be upgrading their equipment from 8meg (ADSL) to upto 24meg (ADSL2+) but this is not LLU. LLU is where Sky install their own broadband equipment and offer ADSL2+ upto 24meg.

If the exchange is physically small and only handles 2,000 lines or so, it might not have space for third party equipment.

In reply to a post by acpsd775:

It don't bother me that much i don't actually have the HD pack it dont interest me enough to pay for it at the moment. As most of the channels are on the packs i don't subscribe to. So out of the 50 id only end up with about 12 of them lol that's why i was trying to get it for free lol

Ash

My sister and brother-in-law have the HD subscription, I asked my sister a couple of weeks ago if she still thought it was worth a tenner a month, she seems to think so. But then both are working, they can afford it.

I could afford to get Sky and Sky HD, but i don't think Sky have improved from when i had it about 5 years back, it could even be longer than that to be honest.


I keep looking at Sky every week I go to their site and see what is on offer, but then change my mind,

i got HD on Freeview, it is ok, nothing to realyl write home about to be honest, Channel 4 HD is better than BBc, when they have something worth watching in HD.
i have seen Sky HD in a few different places now and again it is ok, but nothing to jump up and down about, but then the content I have seen don't need HD.


i don't record HIGNFY in Hd, no point, just waste hard drive space. But if a documentry came on about the oceans, then I would record that in HD.

I record everything i watch

In reply to a post by zyborg47:

I record everything i watch

Now, had you just said "I watch everything I record" I could have seen the point in that. I'm afraid I don't quite see the point in what you said

In reply to a post by zyborg47:

In reply to a post by acpsd775:

It don't bother me that much i don't actually have the HD pack it dont interest me enough to pay for it at the moment. As most of the channels are on the packs i don't subscribe to. So out of the 50 id only end up with about 12 of them lol that's why i was trying to get it for free lol

Ash

My sister and brother-in-law have the HD subscription, I asked my sister a couple of weeks ago if she still thought it was worth a tenner a month, she seems to think so. But then both are working, they can afford it.

I could afford to get Sky and Sky HD, but i don't think Sky have improved from when i had it about 5 years back, it could even be longer than that to be honest.


I keep looking at Sky every week I go to their site and see what is on offer, but then change my mind,

i got HD on Freeview, it is ok, nothing to realyl write home about to be honest, Channel 4 HD is better than BBc, when they have something worth watching in HD.
i have seen Sky HD in a few different places now and again it is ok, but nothing to jump up and down about, but then the content I have seen don't need HD.


i don't record HIGNFY in Hd, no point, just waste hard drive space. But if a documentry came on about the oceans, then I would record that in HD.

I record everything i watch

Dont get me wrong i adore HD got tons on blu-rays and always watch the free HD channels.

But when it comes to sky its not worth paying the extra 10.25 for me because i dont have all the channels i only subscribe to 3 mixes and dont have movies or sports (hate sports and own basically every movie they show on the movie channels on dvd/bluray lol).

So out of the 50 channels sky offer in HD i only got about 12 of them when i did a 1 month trial of the HD pack so it works out at 85P a channel witch dont seam a lot but considering the other 280 channels only come to 22 quid it is lol.

Plus i dont even watch all of the 12 channels i actually got so it was even less value i used that have HD with virgin media and used to watch them all the time but it was free with virgin media so i had it weather i asked for it or not.

Ash

I pretty much record everything I watch (barring odd things that I watch "off the cuff"). This is because I time shift everything and watch very little "live". By doing that I skip all the adverts and other gumph and only watch what I want to see.

In reply to a post by Squirrel:

In reply to a post by zyborg47:

I record everything i watch

Now, had you just said "I watch everything I record" I could have seen the point in that. I'm afraid I don't quite see the point in what you said

I don't watch anything as it is broadcasted, ok that is a little lie I do watch the grandprix live and the news now and again, but anything I really want to watch I will record.


I don't watch everything I record, I record some things and think why did I record that and erase it without watching it.

In reply to a post by acpsd775:

Dont get me wrong i adore HD got tons on blu-rays and always watch the free HD channels.

I like Blu-ray as well, I only own on set of Blu0ray disks and that is planet Earth, but I went a lot from lovefilm

But when it comes to sky its not worth paying the extra 10.25 for me because i dont have all the channels i only subscribe to 3 mixes and dont have movies or sports (hate sports and own basically every movie they show on the movie channels on dvd/bluray lol).

So out of the 50 channels sky offer in HD i only got about 12 of them when i did a 1 month trial of the HD pack so it works out at 85P a channel witch dont seam a lot but considering the other 280 channels only come to 22 quid it is lol.

Plus i dont even watch all of the 12 channels i actually got so it was even less value i used that have HD with virgin media and used to watch them all the time but it was free with virgin media so i had it weather i asked for it or not.

Ash

Yep, that is obne of the reason I would not pay the extra tenner. If sky got rid of that tenner charge, then it may bring me closer to getting sky, but then again maybe not.

Just more money out per month for something I would hardly use, I do that now for my mobile phone, £25 a month wasted

In reply to a post by ian72:

I pretty much record everything I watch (barring odd things that I watch "off the cuff"). This is because I time shift everything and watch very little "live". By doing that I skip all the adverts and other gumph and only watch what I want to see.

That is what I do, the problem is I now got a load of simpsons on the box and need to watch them quick,, other wise I will run out of space.

Ah I see, a very odd way of saying "nearly everything I watch has been recorded", which to me is definitely not the same as "I record everything I watch" A question of tense you see.

I agree - 10/mo just for a couple of channels that you can already see as part of your sub in HD is terrible.

would be far better if sky charged £10 but gave you all of the channels in the HD pack - even if you dont already sub to them.

Money for old rope.

BTW zyborg - 25/mo is a joke for a mobile contract..

I pay 7.50/mo for 600mins x-net (ll or mobile), unlimited landline calls (24/7), 500 texts and 3gig internet sim-only on t-mobile!

disks are cheap as chips these days..

I do something similar, got a microserver recently that has 6TB of storage in it (and due to add two extra disks soon..)

In reply to a post by wifigeek:

I agree - 10/mo just for a couple of channels that you can already see as part of your sub in HD is terrible.

would be far better if sky charged £10 but gave you all of the channels in the HD pack - even if you dont already sub to them.

Money for old rope.

they did do that to start with, but then they stopped it. the problem is if people keeps paying that £10 then Sky will keep charging it.

BTW zyborg - 25/mo is a joke for a mobile contract..

I pay 7.50/mo for 600mins x-net (ll or mobile), unlimited landline calls (24/7), 500 texts and 3gig internet sim-only on t-mobile!

600 mins on a network that is useless is a waste of 600mins. No mobile phone company gives 3gig internet use, even 3 only give 1gig.

i will change to sim only again once the contract is done,

In reply to a post by wifigeek:

disks are cheap as chips these days..

I do something similar, got a microserver recently that has 6TB of storage in it (and due to add two extra disks soon..)

Disks may be cheap, but i still need a way to keep the content off the PVR. the digital stream it is easy enough, just stick a external USB drive on it. Can't do that with the Hitachi and that is the one that is getting filled up.

Never mind got four days off after tomorrow, can spend a coupld of hours watching some Simpsons

In reply to a post by zyborg47:

600 mins on a network that is useless is a waste of 600mins. No mobile phone company gives 3gig internet use, even 3 only give 1gig.

i will change to sim only again once the contract is done,

Tmobile actually do give you 3 gig on some contracts unless it states a less amount in the contract you sign up to. Also three only give 1 gig on some of there lower priced packages now a lot of them now come with all you can eat that also includes PAYG as of the other week.

And when they say al you can eat they mean it checkthis link out for proof of amount they allow you to go to.

Ash