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Cheapest way to get Sky F1 HD
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[Deleted User]
Posts: 18 Forum Member
I am an existing Sky customer with Full Sky subscription (Movies, Sport etc.) but do not use it enough to be worth the cost of £70+ per month
I really just want Sky F1 HD and Free to Air channels but assume I will still have to get the full Sky Sports package to receive it (£46/month).
Can anyone confirm there is no cheaper way to do it?
Thanks
Justin
I really just want Sky F1 HD and Free to Air channels but assume I will still have to get the full Sky Sports package to receive it (£46/month).
Can anyone confirm there is no cheaper way to do it?
Thanks
Justin
0
Comments
It depends if you want the channel fully...Now TV offer a day pass which is £9.99 which would be cheaper if you just want to watch the races, plus you can watch BBC's coverage when the races are FTA and not Sky Exclusive...not sure if Now TV day pass is in HD though.
If you have Family with Sports and Movies HD, then you would indeed need Sky Sports.
If you are on a legacy pack of Variety HD, plus Sports and Movies, you can cancel the Sports and Movies, but you keep the F1 channel as you have the legacy HD pack (this is what i did).
Sky+ HD Pack
Variety
Sports
Movies
Sky 3D
Sky+HD
My Bill shows:
Variety with Sports & Movies £60.35
Sky+HD Pack £10.25
So this looks like the legacy you described - correct?
So I can do as you did and cancel Movies and Sports?
Just make sure they don't put you onto the Family pack, they may advise this is cheaper, but you will lose the F1 channel, so keep Variety plus HD.
I'm confused now. When a couple of months ago I described my package (same as OP except no Movies) as "legacy" you said it wasn't, has that now changed?
I went down to Variety+HD no problems, the issue was they wouldn't let me go to Family without taking out a 12 month contract.
without knowing which post you're talking about i have no idea.
with regards to this thread though, there is no HD pack for entertainment channels any more.. it's part of the Family Pack.
people stick with the old legacy HD pack as it gives them SkyF1HD.
sky will eventually close this loophole by not allowing any package changes that include legacy packs.
Whether they'll let you do it or not I don't know. What I do know is that the cheapest you can get Sky Sports F1 HD without discounts is £62.25pm using the present packages.
You replied in post #28 http://forums.digitalspy.co.uk/showthread.php?t=1971038&highlight=legacy&page=2
There you stated that Variety wasn't a legacy pack and here you are talking about HD so fair enough it seems you mean just the HD is legacy but that still doesn't make total sense as you still need this for Sports even if you have Family pack albeit £5 rather than £10. Maybe you are saying that if someone takes out Variety now they would not be allowed to take out HD with it? Or maybe Variety doesn't now come with F1 but only for "legacy" packages? (I honestly don't know whether I got F1 or not with my Variety pack as I had no interest in it).
Either way the thing they made difficult for us was moving from Variety+HD to Family rather than it being difficult to keep Variety+HD. They even refunded us £5 a month to keep us on Variety+HD rather than move us to Family (the refund kept the prices about the same) whereas we just wanted to move to Family.
Variety isn't a legacy pack
the HD pack is a legacy pack.
if you were going to sky now, you couldn't have Variety with an HD pack, as there is no HD pack for entertainment, you would need to take Family pack.
certain people are sticking with legacy packs as it gives them F1 HD without needing to have sports - a loophole that most likely will eventually be plugged.
Well if they were that keen to "plug the loophole" they would actually let people move from Variety+HD to Family pack which they certainly wouldn't do for us without imposing the penalty of a 12 month contact.
Based upon what you are saying if you had Variety then they wouldn't take your £10 for you to upgrade to HD? Or is it just that they won't give you F1 as part of that deal? When we wanted to move from Variety+HD to Family we asked if it would help if we removed HD first (went down to Variety no HD) and then went to Family from there (I.e. an upgrade rather than transfer) but they said that was impossible so there wouldn't seem to be an easy route to get HD if you are on Variety and don't already get HD.
they are letting people move to Family... with the proviso of a 12 month contract.
i'm not even sure what you are asking now (not even sure you know what you are asking).
if you currently have Variety with no HD then the only option to move to HD is to change to Family pack. this does NOT give you F1HD.
if you then wanted F1 HD you would need to get the sports pack AND the sports/movies HD pack.
That's "letting" them move with the application of a penalty. Hardly seems like they are keen on "plugging a loophole" when they make it difficult for people who want the loophole plugged.
So to upgrade your package to HD requires a new 12 month contract? That is of course Sky's prerogative but you do have to wonder why they insist on this as it will put off a lot of people - they lost us as customers over the 12 month issue and we had been with them since before the start of Sky digital.
No, you cannot add the HD pack at £10(ish) for Variety, as the HD pack in this format no longer exists.
They split it into Family at £5 more, giving you HD versions of the SD channels in your pack (where they exist), and then you paid an additional £5.25 to get Sports and/or Movies in HD if you had the Sports and/or Movies pack.
NOTE: It was actually called Entertainment, Entertainment Extra & Entertainment Extra + back then, but i have just used the current names for ease.
That all makes sense and sounds reasonable, it's just this 12 months contract to move from Variety to Family that baffles me. I regular stopped and started Sky Sports every year with no penalty so this problem moving from Variety to Family just seems so weird and against Sky's own interests in p***ing off loyal customers.
I believe Sky have always stated that taking a HD subscription starts a new 12 month contract, and has always been the case, so moving from Variety to Family (which includes the basic HD sub) would also invoke a new 12 month contract.
The problem was Sky CS's were incorrectly telling people who had Variety+HD who wanted to switch to the Family pack, as it was cheaper, and were not interested in F1, that it would be a new 12 month contract, presumably because the computer brought up a message when they clicked on Family pack saying so, but I believe this was not the case, and confirmed on the Sky forum.
Wow. They certainly messed up with me then as the 12 month contract was why I left Sky* after a long time with them. If they hadn't insisted I had to have the 12 months for the switch then I would still be with them and would now have Sky Sports added as I did every year and paying them £60+ a month - when I put Sports back then of course the price is the same for Variety and Family so they wouldn't actually have lost any money by letting me switch.
I still don't see why adding HD should entail a 12 month contract unless they are supplying subsidised kit such as a Sky+HD box as part of the deal in which case it is fair enough but not when it's just a simple package change for someone who already has an HD box.
*It was actually the final straw rather than the only reason, their insistence on them phoning up "for security reasons" when downgrading the package was also a major factor.
It didn't annoy me, I wasn't planning on leaving Sky anyway so a new 12 month contract meant nothing, beside that I did it through topcashback, so basically it has cost me nothing extra for the year by upgrading to the family pack. Then I can cancel again and look again at topcashback again and get another year for free.
If it was just about saving money then I could have cancelled and then signed back on. A few days after cancellation I logged into mysky and there was a half price for 12 month offer on Sky TV waiting for me, it's still there. When I was cancelling the only offers they were giving involved taking out broadband and I wasn't interested in that, at the time I'd have ripped their arms off for a half price 12 months but at the moment although I'm missing PL football a bit I'm otherwise happy enough with Freesat and Freeview.
I've noticed that more recent offer letters do include that it's a 12 month minimum contract to rejoin Sky but it's only in the small print.
You only have to do one 12 month contract (barring any box upgrades or retention deals etc). If you've had the HD Pack at any time in the past then a simple package change to the Family pack would not stipulate a new minimum term period.
On the old system one single payment for the 'HD Pack' covered all HD channels including Sports and Movies - regardless of whether you had premium channels or not - and cost £10. It also enabled the F1 channel regardless of whether or not you subscribed to Sports.
This received much criticism from customers who didn't have Sports or Movies who felt they were paying an unfair HD subsidy on channels they didn't subscribe to. So on the new system payment for the HD bundle was split into two parts. The first part covers your entertainment channels and the second part (which must be taken in conjunction with the first) later covered your premium channels. Both parts cost £5 or thereabouts and no longer includes free F1.
In conclusion the old system was better for customers who want F1 without taking Sports. The new system suits those who only have an entertainment based package (and aren't necessarily F1 fans) as they now only have to pay half as much for their HD variants.
The old style 'HD Pack' is still in circulation but only for customers who had it back in the day and still have it now. Anyone wanting to add HD today, including those on the legacy Entertainment Extra (SD) pack, are only able to choose the newer option.
Unlike Chenks I don't envisage Sky making any deliberate attempt to close this "loophole." It'll just die out over time as people naturally alter their services.
Sky did not make this change to suit customers, they just did it in a clever way that allowed them to market it as such. If you want HD now you either pay a £5, £10.25, or £16.75 premium depending on what you actually want. The only winners were those who were on Entertainment Extra (now Variety) who wanted to add HD, and even then they still lose out on Sky Sports F1 HD, which they would've got with the old system.
Basically choice was reduced, much like it was when they switched from the 6 entertainment packs to only having 2.
there is already a company called that, so that would be a bad idea.
of course if you are easily confused then you are free to take your business elsewhere.