We have the full Sky deal £88pm and are looking to reduce the cost. We are out of the 12 month contract period.

So the Fire stick – am i right in that the premium channels I have now – Sky Sports for Rugby, F1 and Eurosport, Sky 1, Atlantic and Discovery, MTV aren’t available?

I’m also guessing I’d need a recorder, would our (then redundant) Sky box do?

Or whats the alternative easy setup?

I’ve just downgraded my Sky package and purchased a Firestick with Kodi installed. I’ve now got more TV than I could ever watch. Latest films, most box sets and all the sports channels you mentioned and loads more. I don’t know if you can use your sky box to record, I’m sure someone will be along to let you know

Kodi? I’ll google that tomorrow.

I don’t know if you can use your sky box to record, I’m sure someone will be along to let you know

No you can’t record without the relevant subscription.

If you want to stay legit you can get Now.tv app on Chromcast and either pay for sports when you want it rather than being tied to a full year.

Thanks riddock, useful to know.

my usual reply is the humax hdr1000s /1010s . Records programmmes and does series link etc. The only caveat is that it can be a little slow and need a reboot once in a while. Be prepared that once your sky subscription goes so do all the access to the recordings even the free ones.

Firestick here with Kodi loaded (used to be called XBMC).

Very happy.

Is Kodi that hack thing, a mate has a firestick and downloaded something off the tinterweb and has everything now. Very impressive.

Nice to hear the fire stick is appreciated; I missed out on quite a bit of cycling during it’s development 🙂

I’ve got a chromecast and just been lent a fire stick. Is there anything it can do that a chromecast can’t? (I’ve got the usual apps on a smart bluray player)
Just wondering which is best…..

We’ve got a Chromecast and a Fire stick plugged into the telly in the bedroom. We use them for different stuff – the Fire stick for Amazon Prime series and films, the Chromecast for everything else.

If you have Amazon Prime you can’t use a Chromecast to stream stuff, your only option (unless you have a smart TV etc) is to use a Fire Stick.

Kodi is media centre software that can be unofficially sideloaded onto the Firestick. The hacks are really the addons you enable such as Genesis or Phoenix that enable you to watch streams.

The Firestick is really good value especially if you get the offer to pick one up for £25.

Nice to hear the fire stick is appreciated; I missed out on quite a bit of cycling during it’s development

oldnpastit – on behalf of my kids: thanks. Best £25 I’ve ever spent. They can get all the Netflix stuff through it, so I’ve actually got the telly in the front room back. I can’t thank you enough for that 😀

Just cancelled my Prime as the content is a bit meh. Think I’d go with a proper Roku and use Now.TV when required.. maybe add Netflix, but again that gets old quick (and I don’t watch much telly). Dare say Kodi is available on Roku, I’m using Plex myself for my own media, but I don’t use the dodgy streaming sites.

on behalf of my kids: thanks. Best £25 I’ve ever spent. They can get all the Netflix stuff through it, so I’ve actually got the telly in the front room back. I can’t thank you enough for that

Cool, thanks! I’ll pass that on to the (many) others involved.

Zgemma box with twin tuners here.
Sky skin – Check
All Movies channels – Check
All Sports channels – check
Basically every channel possible on sky except box office

I can record onto ext hard drive or usb
I can series record or record off tv guide
I can watch one channel whilst recording another
I can pause live tv etc.

Its not quite as slick as Sky but it cost me £150 with 12mths back up service and server cover. Then I pay £35 per year to continue.

Very happy with it

Another happy Firestick/Kodi owner here, I did the Kodi install myself and its a bit of a faff but worth doing.

Regards keeping your Sky stb to use as a recorder once you no longer have a active subscription on it you will no longer be able to record OR access existing recordings, however you did used to be able to pay circa£10 a month to enable recording/ live pause on the freesat channels.
I assume all the streaming players like iPlayer, itv player etc would still be active.

Diverting a little from the OP, AppleTV running KODI which connects to a MythTV backend for live Freeview and PVR functionality, KODI plugins provide the rest 🙂