I’m about to ditch BT for another provider as total cost is just getting silly, we are now routinly pay £50 a month for phone, basic broadband and BT TV (freeview channels only)

If I do bin BT, I will assume I will no longer be able to use the BT Vision youview box so I would like to get another recorder / iplayer type box to series record, pause / rewind live TV, access players etc. What is the best option here? Happy to apy a bit upfront to save in the longrun but do not have loads of money to splash

Ta

we pay £35/month for phone (free weekend calls I think), 30mb broadband and basic tv (freeview) with a tivo box with Virgin media. Imminently going to get upgraded to 50mb for free.

I pay £35 for BT phone/internet and have a cheap freesat box, I don’t record/pause TV but use iPlayer apps etc via my computer connected to the TV and/or Apple TV (£80) streaming from my phone/tablet. You can buy a chromecast for £20 and stream from your phone (again that won’t give you the pause/rewind etc). You can get a recording freeview/freesat box for £100 or less. You’ll save money over 2 years but the current £50 all in isn’t that bad.

I am also on the same deal as jon1973 – rated. 50mb is plenty but have the option of going up to 150mb. Tivo is decent.

check you account subscriptions – it may be possible to get it back to the 35 level just by removing a few ‘packs’ or channels and possibly unwanted things like ‘answer service’?

also tell them you have been offered better deal?

I would like to get another recorder / iplayer type box to series record, pause / rewind live TV, access players etc. What is the best option here?

Humax T2 HDR freeview box would do handle this very well indeed. Can be bought on eBay for about £70.
Not typing it all out again but here’s a few highlights…

If you use a Humax T2 with the custom firmware you can use the free and very cool Remote Scheduling website/package.

You enter a full or partial program name or keywords and the web app searches the EPG daily for any matches and either emails you when there’s a match, or sets up your Humax box to record the program and emails you to let you know.
Once set up the searches remain in place indefinitely (or until you stop them) and can be limited to certain channels or any channel.
So you could set up a search for ‘Guy Martin’ or ‘cycling’ and it will find any matching programs even if the words are only in the program synopsis.

&

I can move move recordings from the internal drive to either a USB drive or over to a network using ftp.
Interestingly I can also move downloaded/ripped videos onto the Humax from the network via ftp. This is quite handy as the Humax now operates as the DLNA server for the entire house/network. Daughter #1 loves this as she can lie in bed and watch seemingly endless amounts of Big Bang Theory on her iPad

I will try the haggle with BT and see how I get on.

Virgin would be great but not available in my area. Having said that, I have seen quite a few virgin vans around recently so need to investigte if they have plans….

@franksinatra do you not get free BT Sport and Catch Up too? Sounds like a good deal to me.

Don’t get BT sport as not infinity customer (have no interest in BT sport anyway.)

I do have catch up but only use i-player and I could easily use i-Pad for this.

I should also add that we make about 10 phone calls per month so £50 for line rental, basic broadband and basic digital TV with a recorder seems steep to me.

You get BT Sport free with BT Broadband, but you don’t want it anyway. The Youview box will still work as a HD Freeview and PVR box, obviously any vod players like iplayer won’t work.

Edit: at least the first gen HUMAX one does.

just thinking about it, I’m not sure if I have a you view box or BT vision box (are they the same thing?). It is probably about 4 years old now.

You should still be able to use the box, but you wont be able to access the BT vision part of the menu.

I ditched the TV part as I never ventured into the BT part and it’s still working.
So if you just want to keep the youview part you can with the current box you have.
EDIT – the on-demand stuff still works aswell but you don’t use that so no problem

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