Freesat - is it really good value for money?

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Faust

04-12-2012

Originally Posted by IQ1:
“Well I think the New Humax ticks all those boxes and the backward EPG should be easy enough to work, even my father might use that for On Demand TV.
Satellite does seem to be a good bet for the future, more space and Channels than Freeview.

Regarding hidden costs, personally I haven't noticed any in the last four years and I haven't needed to make any upgrades to hardware apart from adding a 1Tb HDD for extra storage. If you buy a 1000S and it is connected to a good dish set up and BB connection it should eventually get all the OD Services promised to it and receive all the Channels on the Freesat EPG, if anything new is added then that's a bonus, of course Channels are also removed. (Ignore the pictures on the 1000s box YouTube etc Freesat jumped the gun there.)
Hopefully it would carry on working well past it's 2 year warranty, but who knows ! My 4 year old HDR is still working faultlessly and it gets every service and channel it was supposed to get. I can understand why some recent buyers of the Foxsat HDR are annoyed, but unfortunately that happens, I bought the brand new iPad 3 in March and it has already been replaced with a faster iPad with a nice little FireWire interface.

Obviously any satellite box will be obsolete eventually, I have a few that need to be recycled, unfortunately they aren't capable of receiving the channels I actually want to watch i.e. High Definition Channels. I don't regard progress as a problem, I like watching HD programmes on my 50" TV via HDMI rather than analog/digital satellite TV on a small CRT via SCART and if I buy films they are on Blu-ray not DVD.
If you want to be up to date with the latest developments in technology and have the best it quite often involves new hardware and they generally don't give it away for free.”

Thanks for the very informative post. The 1000S sounds just what I am looking for. I will be ordering from JL this week. I have an acquaintance who will be putting up the dish and my relative does have good BB - 18 mbps connection. I tell you what, if Sky doesn't start putting on more programmes of interest to our family then we may be buying more of these boxes in the not to distant future.

White-Knight

05-12-2012

Originally Posted by Faust:
“This is for an elderly relative living on their own, I was simply trying to make sure that what we buy them is likely to have most of the things they will make use of. It was through talking to an neighbour that first alerted me to upgrades to hardware that hadn't crossed my mind. I think someone pointed out that the as there were no subs it was better value than Sky, then someone else pointed out that the box uses less juice than a Sky box. Well as our relative was never going to be getting a Sky box I really fail to see the relevance. Now what else is it I may have missed?”

+1 channels are ideal for this if like many people you suddenly remember when you turn the tv on and see your favoured programme 1/2 way through. Of course only repeats or VOD can save you if more than an hour late.

However, I wonder how easy it would be for an old and forgetful person to learn how to use VOD on top of a set top box?

There are a lot of repeats now so I suggest learning to use the search facility shoudl be top of the list.

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