Freesat or wait for youview??


I have just moved out (from mum n dads) with my GF, i had sky+ and loved it but now we just have very old sky box for bbc...

sky+ is to much £££... we really want a recorder ASAP as we keep missing our shows we live in Kent and freeview at my house is so rubbish and 2012 is the swap over... I want to get a freesat box but i see youview is another option (the future peeps say) but with not much info (when out,1st part 2011, cost, est.)
I want to know should I wait for youview that will be £300+ properly or get a 320 GB freesat recorder for £180???? Also We don’t have internet at moment as we are renting and youview looks mainly internet based to get the most from it, but one day we will get internet… so not sure what to do as I want to record ASAP but also don’t want to waste my money…?

Any info or help please

Cheapest option is to get hold of an old VCR or DVDR and hook that up between the Sky box and the TV. That way you can record stuff of the Sky box while you are out.

I would suggest the HUMAX Foxsat HDR is the way to go for now.

The YouView timescales you quote are for the first YouView devices (Likely to be Freeview/YouView boxes rather than freesat) My Guess is end 2011/start of 2012 for a freesat box - but some would say I might be optimistic.

My contract with sky is up soon and I'm tempted to get freesat+HD.....Lets face it sky is a waste of money

From what I understand the first wave of YouView will be focused on Freeview, so you may be waiting a while for a Freesat device - not unlike the paucity of integrated TVs which offer Freesat v. Freeview.

Have to agree, and in 2012 you can sell the HDR on ebay to get something back. If your freeview reception were better then I'd wait.

Thanks to you all for the help

I have just got a Humax FOXSATHDR...

When I called Humax they said the freeview new T2 box will be youview ready end of this month but as i can't get good freeview signal I didn't go got it when its better I'll sell my FOXSATHDR.. my next door neighbours given me his internet code now, is there a way i can make it wireless to get bbc iplayer??

I don't think there is a specific wireless adapter for the hummy but Homeplugs work fine - you need two one for your router and one for the HDR. They work by using mains wires to send the signal.

And don't forget you can also use ITV player as well. It is still in beta testing so do a quick search of the site to find the access code (it was (is) channel 999 the green green blue green green on your remote).

I doubt homeplugs will work between two different houses. In fact, it would be a major security flaw if they did.

They ought to work if the two houses are on the same electrical phase.

You could perhaps get a small wireless-to-ethernet adaptor. I've seen them advertised on eBay for about 40 quid.

It would be very very very rare for adjacent properties to be on the same phase unless it was a communal installation as in flats where they may phase segregated by floors.. They are deliberately staggered to equilise phase loadings.

I hope the generous neighbour has a very generous download limit

Hmm my old problem of not reading things properly. Nowster has the best solution.

thanks people.. and yes i have a very cool generous neighbour =)

...interesting. I wonder if bob_cat will be along to clarify that.

The box might be ready, but there are rumours that the service will be delayed until next year...

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/money/art...-TV-plans.html

...not that I usually believe the Daily Mail. I can't see any response on the YouView website yet.

Cheers,
David.

yes he said the box is ready and he didn't sound to confident probably trying to get me to pay for the newer model... but I agree it will be ages still before we see 'youview'

These things always seem to get delayed, which is a shame as I really like the sound of YouView. I'm not surprised to find stories like this in the Daily Mail though, due to Sky potentially losing business to such a digital TV service

The Daily Mail has nothing to do with Sky. The Mail is a competitor to News International. If you're looking for a conspiracy theory, the Mail hates the BBC, and the BBC is behind YouView - but I don't believe for one minute that this is the reason for this story being run by the Mail.

Cheers,
David.

Telegraph article on YouView

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technolog...ntil-2012.html


Article on Homeplugs - re sharingwith neighbour

"Can my neighbour steal my internet connection if he has a HomePlug?
No, the electricity meter acts as block on the signals that are transmitted across the network, so there is little chance of them leaking out on to the public wiring and your neighbours picking them up. Your are able to encrypt the signal if you are on a shared power supply within a house share for example.

Don’t forget to check the security options on any wireless devices in the house. If an outsider can access the wireless network, they also gain access to the homeplug-connected computers"

http://www.faculty-x.net/homeplug-blog/?cat=4

What a silly article! Interesting that there's a demo box somewhere though - even if it doesn't work properly yet.

Cheers,
David.

I suppose it depends what you consider to be 'waste'. In one sense any money spent on a leisure activity is wasted since it doesn't produce anything. Sky is therefore a waste of money in the same sense that drinking alcohol is a waste of money

Of course if your personal tastes mean that most of what you watch is available for free then having a Sky sub is pointless - that would be like a teetotaller buying beer. In my case easily 75% of what I watch is only available on the Sky platform at the time I watch it and almost all of that is HD. And I'm not talking about sports or films here.

I'm more inclined to consider my license fee to be a 'waste of money' given how little BBC output I watch. It's probably going to jump by 20% simply because the new F1 season is imminent.

You sound the the sort of person who really does need sky.

People who watch specialised output - in your case I'm assuming foreign programming since most of the other non-sport/film stuff is originated on the main, freely available, UK channels, (Unless you are a major fan of old repeats. ) - should be sky's market.

The people for whom it's a waste of money are those who took out a sky sub when there were just the 4/5 terrestrial channels and have not realised that there is now far more available free.

I'm still converting people to Freesat/Freeview simply by suggesting they do an audit of what they actually watch that is only available on sky. At least one person found that she hadn't been watching anything that wasn't on Freeview for over two years!

When you add a PVR into the equation there's even more available free because you can watch stuff that is recorded at times when you would never be watching live.

Even easier if you have Sky+, as presumably almost everything you watch is recorded.

Just look down the planner and see what channels you record - in my case almost everything was on the Entertainment mix, so I dropped all the other mixes.There were occasional programmes I watched on Discovery etc. but you don't notice after a while as you don't look at that section of the EPG anymore

But if someone is only watching the free channels, they should certainly cancel Sky - and if they want a PVR, then buy a Freesat one (I don't consider paying the Sky+ subscription a viable option).

Nah, knowledge pack is the bulk of it. American shows on FX, Living and Sky is the rest.

Yup. Mind you I also feel a bit sorry for those who only have Sky for the sport. It's easy to miss other stuff if you don't make the effort to trawl through the EPG. The old 'but it's all repeats' stems in part from that. There's so many channels and so much stuff that it's easy to miss the new stuff. It might only 10% but 10% of a helluva lot is still quite a lot. I think I average nearly 40 hours a week and hardly ever watch repeats.
Yeah. Of course some people drop down to the £10pcm version of Sky but that only makes sense for HD (sorta) or short term.

I thought the lack of Five HD on Freesat would be a pain but it's such a poor showing so far that I don't think we can count that as a significant loss. What's more interesting is that the gap between the première on Sky and it appearing on free channels is shortening. In some cases it's been less than six months. So far that's unusual but that must be eroded some of Sky's benefits.

Where does Knowledge Pack get UK programming that has not been transmitted on the main UK channels?

If I ever needed more programming that would be the pack that I would probably go for. Does it contain Sky Arts?

It doesn't. However it carries a lot of interesting (or at least entertaining) foreign stuff. Most of it is available in HD and (in my opinion) it's documentaries that benefit most from HD. That's not to say that a fresh crime scene or major construction site in glorious HD is to everyone's taste of course
[/quote]If I ever needed more programming that would be the pack that I would probably go for. Does it contain Sky Arts?[/quote]No. Until recently the HD pack got that but now Sky have tightened up it's all out of bounds.

Still Crime HD, Discovery HD, Nat Geo HD and History HD have a lot of good stuff