I’m getting tired of Sky and their ripoff prices. One of our suppliers came in today and told me to ditch them and buy a Humax box which will give me loads of free channels, recording facility, TV guide etc.

He described it as being almost like Sky without Sky Movies and Sky Sports but the info I’ve found so far seems to suggest there’s more than just those channels missing.

More interested for the kids really more than anything else but if I can shell out £300 on a good box, maybe leave my sky dish fitted with dual or quad LNB and get a fair selection of channels I’ll give it a go.

Anybody had both and can give a fair comparison ?

I had both but we only watched the free stuff on Sky anyway. We have a HD plus box and have a fair back log of TV to get through anyway.

Mostly watch BBC / C4 as a lot of the other free stuff is not that great.

Depends what you watch really.

Pull the sky card out of your box for a few days and see how you get on with the channel selection – as this is what you’d get with Freeview/Freesat

http://www.freesat.co.uk/what-you-get/our-channels
Do you watch things that are not on these ones?

If you don’t then free sat is great. The other option is a freeview recorder.

Our telly has Freesat HD built in, personally I don’t miss Sky at all.

I use my PS3 with PlayTV to record Freeview stuff, its nowhere as refined as Sky’s PVR but does the job.

As others have said – it really comes down to the channels you watch. And of those channels that may only be available on Sky how bothered are you if you don’t have them? We have been happy with Freeview for a long time now. Only recently moved to Virgin Media as I wanted to ditch BT as a phone provider and Orange as a BB supplier. Decided on the collection approach and got TV as well. Our old Humax was not an HD box so we didn’t get any of the free HD channels, and now we do. But the new YouView boxes are HD so that could be an option. Plus a lot of TVs now have a built in tuner an also the “smart” TVs allow connection to internet based sources so you can even get iPlayer etc direct from the TV.

Freesat all the way I’m not paying £30+ a month to watch tv I’d make do with free view but have zero reception. Everything I want to watch is on it.

We’ve got freesat through the tv and would be surprised if we’ve looked at more than 10% of them, only channel missing that would be nice to have for me would be quest I think, as the guy I work with always mentions forestry and machine type stuff they have on that interests me.
Sky have a freesat option too as we have it in a staff house, just paid for install and that was it I think.

What Sharkbait said – remove the card and voila – freesat…!

You don’t get all the channels via the skybox if you pull the card.
If you contact sky they will sell you a viewing card (about £25) that “unlocks” the freeview channels so you could use one of their skyHD (multiroom) boxes for it. (about £20 second hand, thats what I have done for the kitchen).

You don’t get all the channels via the skybox if you pull the card

You get everything you get with Freesat. The only additional stuff with a non-subscription card is the Sony channels which, IMO, aren’t worth the £20 you have to pay to get the card.

We have Freesat because there’s no other way of getting reception at home. It has more than enough cr#p on it unless you’re a TV addict and the box only cost about £30. However, I’ve never had Sky so might be missing out on a life-changing TV experience that would make £360/year sound reasonable.