Hardly compelling reasons in favour of keeping the HD sub if you ask me.

I ditched Sky for Freesat 18months ago and it was the best move I ever made. Sky service (joke) was the worst service I have ever encountered and I kept on getting reconditioned boxes from them that didn't work so one day phoned them and cancelled the lot.
The initial cost of the boxes (3) was less than a years Sky subscription and I still get HD. I have a blue ray player I use should I ever want to rent a movie which is seldom.
All in all, 18 months of trouble free viewing compels me to say to you, yes..go for it now !!

I got Sky HD when it launched and swapped for V+ after the first year, due to a staff deal at Carphone, after that expired I moved to a non-cabled area, which also isn't great for Freeview.

I then resubscribed to Sky+HD got a new box etc and have recently downgraded my package to remove the HD sub.

There is no way I'm paying Sky the increased rates later this year, although I like watching the footie - I can go round my mates/parents/down the pub.

I do however use the recording features loads, and probably couldn't watch TV without the ability pause, rewind, record & series link etc.

I don't really want to pay Sky £10/month just for the ability to record etc, but to fork out in excess of £200 for a quality Freesat+HD box means the payback is around 2 years.

Or pay them £19/m for a basic channel pack (from Sept 1st) and get the recording included.

I presume once various 12month exclusive deals are up there will be more HD channels coming to Freesat, like Film4HD etc? I'm not being swayed by the fact that Sky has up to 50 HD channels as most of them are utter rubbish and the only ones worth watching are the Movies & Sports and BBCHD anyway... the rest of them exist so Sky can add a big number to their marketing billboards.

Even though the payback is up to 2 years, I'd sooner not pay Sky for something it wouldn't hurt to give ex-subscribers for free - if only as a means so that they keep their Sky card in their box on the chance they may re-subscribe in the future rather than lose the customers as they invest in other equipment, purging Sky from their households completely.

Correct an old sky card will give you all the FTV channels, which is more than 'Freesat'

Could he could keep the Sky box and the freesatfromsly card (ex sub card) and run a feed from the skybox to the freesat box, this would then give him recording of channels not available on freesat ??

No, digital recorders (as in PVR's) only record the incoming digital signal, not the outputs from the box.

I too have ditched Sky in favour of the Foxsat HDR. I was originally a bit miffed at the lack of HD channels, but then thought to myself it's the quality of the program that really matters, not the picture. And I'm also saving myself a fortune! Nothing against Sky, I was a subscriber for 15 years, I just got a bit weary of the constant price hikes and also worked out each program I watched (that I couldn't get elsewhere) was costing me about £5 w week! For far less than that I can buy the DVD/bluray boxsets....

Have freesat any plans to add other HD channels?

Freesat themselves do NOT launch/add channels - it is up to broadcasters to decide whether they broadcast FTA or on pay TV. Freesat is just an EPG platform and NOT a TV broadcaster.

The mistake many people make when comparing Freesat HD with Sky HD is the channel count.

Yes, Sky have more channels. But look at those channels. There are few there that would warrant the extra outlay. The only channel I personally would love to have is Channel 4 HD.

Oh, and anyone that uses Luxe HD as a tool with which to convince people has clearly never watched that channel! LOL

I changed from Sky to Freesat almost two months ago and haven't looked back since. As others have said, there were two main reasons for me doing this. The first, and biggest, was financial. I needed to cut down my outgoings and each month, the £48.50 I was sending to Sky stuck out like a sore thumb, but for years, I had always convinced myself it was worth having; that the fee was totally justified because of the sheer quantity of choice it provided.

And then I actually sat down and looked at what the people in my house actually watch. My self and the missus tended to watch BBC, ITV & Ch4. The kids were a selection of kiddie channels and Five in the morning for "Milkshake".

And that was when it hit me. Sure, I like my footie and my movies, but invariably, my team was rarely on Sky and my substantial collection of movies was always more viewable than those offered on Sky.

So that was the second reason sorted. I wasn't watching, or rarely watched, everything I was paying for. Ergo, I was throwing good money away.

I looked at FSFS and decided that I didn't want to still be paying Sky £10pm for the PVR functionality (Apparently, they've stopped doing this now). HD is no biggie for me. Sure, it's a novelty, but it's like colour TV back in the 70's (yes, I am old enough to remember that). We all eventually got it and everything was eventually broadcast in it. HD will be ubiquitous within 3-5 years. And why should I pay extra, especially when there's not a vast amount of material that is native HD yet. The difference in quality of sound and vision is negligible, let's be honest. Does HD offer as much of a benefit as colour did? Is it as life changing as PVR? No. In reality, it's the same old programming with a slightly better picture and sound. The vast majority of the general public (not including us AV Anoraks) won't see the benefit.

So, I invested in a Foxsat HDR and have loved every minute of ownership so far. I have not missed Sky at all. No one in this house has said, "Oh, I wish we had Sky because I'd be able to watch "xyz"". Even with the old Sky boxes plugged in upstairs, they only ever get used to watch the FTA stuff, not the FTV.

Of course, this is the way it is in my house and that's not going to be the same for everyone. But with Sky now whacking on an extra £2.50pm on all their subs and the extra £10pm you have to stump up for the privilege of HD, my sub would've been £61pm next month. £61!! That's £832 a year! On top of the licence fee! That's a tad shy of £1000 per year for TV services. I don't know about you, but that's a shed load of cash for not that much in return, IMHO

But to compare services by channel count is a little short sighted. A Freesat+ HD box will give you full PVR functionality, access to enough channels to satisfy most people and some HD to boot and the promise of more to come. Oh, and with selected boxes, you get full BBC iPlayer services on your TV via your broadband link. And IMHO, the Foxsat box functionality is far superior to that offered by Sky.

Ultimately, look into each platform and decide what your household's viewing habits are and choose the service best for you

Totally agree with what you say, look at what you want and then see what best suits your needs

Just hang on to your out of contract Sky HD box & your card, you will be able to watch more than the freesat box can decrypt & by adding a DVD recorder to the Sky, you can still time-shift progs even if you cannot use the SKY+ side of things. I have a Pace HD box that is out of contract, but with the original expired white card that still recordes & plays all the free stuff I want it to do, using SKY+...! not sure how that has occured, but I'm not complaining!

If you post your Sky viewcard number I am sure Sky will rectify the Sky+ situation for you.

For me the simplicity and features of the hdr far outweigh the few additional channels on a free to view sky box.

But, really, a PVR is so far removed from a DVD recorder - which is just like a rather unreliable VCR - as to be incomparable.

plus it doesn't record in HD at all or even in the same quality as the original transmission for SD.

But if they were all added to Freesat then all the "no hd on Freesat" moaners who frequent these forums would be delighted despite their being "utter rubbish.".

@Failed Muso #35

Very well-expressed post.

I'll second that. That is almost word-for-word exactly what I would have posted (having had the time )

Ditch Sky, get the Foxsat-HDR. I did that about 3 months ago and no-one in our family have missed Sky at all

This used to happen with the blue cards if they were left out of the box for 2 or 3 months after cancelling, thereby missing the 'kill' signal - good to hear it still works with white cards - are you able to record CH4 HD (FTV) as well as the FTA channels ?

@Failed Muso #35 - Excellent post, exactly what I would and should have said, only you said it a lot more eloquently. Nobody in my family has missed Sky since we switched to the Foxsat. My football team now play in Div1 so there's even less likelihood of seeing them live (and the continual sound dropouts on Sky sports HD channels were seriously annoying me anyhow). As PVRs go the foxsat is great - as good as, if not better than, the Sky version - it certainly has more features. I do own a Pace Twin though (gathering a serious amount of dust), so perhaps my thoughts are a little coloured by that experience .

It does if it's a Blu-Ray + DVD + HDD recorder, and everything at broadcast quality.

Oh, another advantage of Freesat+ over Sky+/HD is that radio programmes appear in the EPG and are recorded just the same as TV programmes. Unlike the feeble and irritating Sky+ HD manual radio recording 'feature'.

I'm getting very close to dropping Sports and HD from Sky, but will probably keep a basic subscription for the broadband I have, and the Doc. channels.

No it doesn't. It is impossible for a DVD recorder to record in anything other than SD. It's irrelevant that it can play back BluRay discs.

No it isn't, you can fit 2 hours of BBC HD on a dual layer DVD.

You can't record it on a dvd recorder, you normally need a PC to burn AVCHD discs and a bluray player (PS3) to replay them.