Sky Broadband

Just noticed Sky broadband has appeared as a LLU provider on my exchange, so went to the Sky site to see what speed I could get (currently on Max and no date for WBC) and apparently Sky no longer do a Broadband only package. I dont want Talk as I get a BT discount on rental and have no need for Sky TV, how long has this been the case?

I read on here it happened on September 1st.

Great. No use to me now. Grrrr.

There was a discussion on here about it a couple of weeks ago, you could probably still find it as this forum has been pretty quiet.

Most people, myself included, didn't seem happy with the change as it effectively locks you into their LLU service and makes it much more painful to migrate back out again.

I'm already on Sky BB without line rental and even though this change doesn't affect me (yet) I plan to move away from Sky when the contract is up at the end of the year. I do not want someone else dictating what bundles I have to have - I want the choice of where I get the different components of the service.

EDIT : In fact the discussion is still very recent : here

Edited by ian72 (Wed 14-Sep-11 08:15:56)

Surely you wouldn't have to move away from the Sky Contract at the end of the year? I can't see Sky forcing you to take line rental at the end of the year?

The BB product on its own is hard to beat in all fairness. {LLU not Connect}

I've nearly had it a year and it is great.

Not so much that I have to but I did have a faster connection with Be and main reason for Sky was to try out Sky Anytime+. So far anytime+ isn't doing much for me and so was considering a move back to Be - and at some point they are going to want to move customers over to their line rental and will probably force the issue by increasing the prices for the standalone broadband - that possibility pushes me a little closer to moving back to Be.

What bit rate does Anytime+ appear to use?

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

What bit rate does Anytime+ appear to use?

You mean when downloading to the Sky box, or when playing the movie?

Have to say I haven't looked and not sure how I would get that. The SD downloads I think are not dissimilar on the disk to if they were recorded off sky so quality is seems as good as a broadcast. HD stuff is only delivered via the satellite anyway and so is essentially the same as if they had broadcast the thing.

The actual download appears to happily come down at line speed.

I have been impressed with the quality of the stuff available for download, just not the quantity. There are quite a few movies but what I really want is to watch "box sets" of TV programmes and anytime+ is pretty poor for those, I expect it to get better earlier this year which is why I took a punt on it but I don't think it is improving and movies is not enough of a draw for me (especially as I also have Lovefilm and can't keep up with watching the movies from that at the moment. let alone anything else).

I am now in the process of leaving sky, this being one of the reason.(swap over on Tuesday)

When sky were still newish, they were by far the best provider, but the last year our so has well in my eyes seen a major back slide in the quality of there service (bb I'm talking about here) and their customer service is now atrocious, to say the least.

Playing as in the quality of picture.

Which other poster has said is SD quality, in which case a lot less interested in it. Sky HD quality is what I'd want from Anytime+, can get this level from XBox Live / PS3 Movie store, and the Xbox live films are portable onto a PC for when travelling.

Anytime doesn't need sky broadband and provides HD for most of the movies/programmes that come down via it (a very limited selection!).

Anytime+ is entirely downloaded via the sky broadband connection and only provides SD.

I have Anytime, which is over the Satellite

I was talking about Anytime+ the downloaded over Sky Broadband VoD content

There is some HD content on Anytime+. Only movies at the moment though. The quality seems about the same as HD content broadcast over satellite.

Edited by _Resonance_ (Sat 17-Sep-11 08:03:49)

find the hd quality on anyime+ very good, although as others have already said - just not enough of it

when I download an anytime+ movie it looks to be pulled down at around 3500K.

Does it say how big the download is (if you press info) ?

I don't have Sky HD, but I saw SD movies being downloaded at approx 2Mbps on my 10Mbps connection.

Edited by deleted (Sat 17-Sep-11 18:15:09)

yes there are 2 area's you can see, first the fownload queue. Each one of these states the download size, between 850M to 1.2G for a movie. These are in standard definition as the anytime+ bits look to be standard def. Once you have downloaded a bit, it becomes available for view via recorded, where you can see the % downloaded.

Thanks, I think some of the Sky Showcase movies are HD on anytime+. From the filesize and the running time, it should be possible to approximate the bitrate.

will have a look on sunday and get back here

sorry for coming in late to this - been on holiday
but fyi......

2012, SD, runtime 151mins as per sky - 1.37GB
2012, HD, runtime 151mins as per sky - 5.40GB

28 days, SD, runtime 99mins as per sky - 928MB
28 days, HD, runtime 99mins as per sky - 3.56GB

just the first 2 examples for info and yes its just some movies that are HD downloads, but one good thing for the slow speeds like me - let it download about a minute for the SD stuff and you never catch up with the download so can watch in real time, HD stuff need a few minutes more to ensure no buffer

Many thanks for the explanation and confirmation.

Cheers