Hi all,

I'm a bit of a novice when it comes to tv and associated technology but I'd value your advice.

I am now out of contract for all my services (totalling about £60 a month) and want to reduce my costs whilst making the services work better for me. I'm with sky atm but talk talk are offering a great package, £18 line, broadband and mobile.

I'm happy with the sky services (except the cost) and currently have sky tv connected downstairs, standard channels but I would be lost without the record, pause etc facility. I have a spare box but don't want to pay for multi room. What I would like ideally is to be able to watch programmes in the bedroom at a time that suits me but either remotely accessing the sky connection down stairs (signal sender??) or using some other method (Amazon Fire was mentioned to me today).

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Evie xx

If you want to remotely access your sky recordings in another room the modern way is to upgrade and get sky Q.....the secondary box can wirelessly stream live tv and recordings from the main sky Q .
But this will likely cost more!

The old fashioned way was to have a RF link going upstairs, with a link for the remote control as well. I am not sure if this stil works as the RF output may have been dropped from the specification by now (even on a regular sky+/HD box) - maybe someone else can clarify that.

If you only wanted the free sky channels in the secondary room, that can be done well using either a 2nd sky box (without a subscription) or by buying and plugging in a freesat box. But in either example u won't have any access to recordings on your main sky box and you won't have any subscription channels on the 2nd box.

Why not try NOW TV, Netflix, Amazon Prime etc. and see if that fills your requirement.

My ageing video sender connects to the Scart connector of my Sky+ DRX890 box and works no problem. The magic eye doesn't work/isn't compatible so I use the Sky+ app on my smart phone or tablet which has full remote control functionality. My sender is a 5.8GHz one, so no interference with my WiFi, microwave etc.

How do they work?

Thanks everyone for your replies.

Just use an Amazon Fire tv stick or Amazon Fire tv box both installed with Kodi. A simple set up of Kodi will give you all you want by streaming to your TV.

The content is awful and not worth the money.

Compared to Sky?

Sky is full of repeats. I got rid of Sky years ago.

I think Amazon will be the way to go having read some of the reviews. What is Kodi though? I have seen it for sale on ebay, would second hand work?

Kodi is a free media centre that you can install on various devices. It has become synonymous with piracy as people use it to get "free" content like films, sports e.t.c...

Kodi is a specialist media management system. It is basically a clever bit of software that runs on a number of devices and handles streaming video and audio from a wide variety of sources.

https://kodi.tv/about/

Kodi itself is free, what you are paying for is the device it is preloaded on.

Just be wary of some of the devices that you see on eBay, especially those claiming to give you access to what would usually be subscription services like the Sky sport and movie channels. These are very likely to be dodgy illegal streams that could vanish without notice.

Sorry, I'm a bit dumb about all this, is it best to buy 1 device that downloads both fire and kodi or as separates?

Amazon Fire is their take on a media management and streaming system. It is preloaded onto any Amazon Fire device and comes with a number of content options as standard. See

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Amazon-Fire.../dp/B00UH2O6T2

as an example of what it can do.

Kodi is a different matter altogether. It can be installed on a number of devices or you can buy a device with it pre-installed. However as standard it has no content of any sort. You have to configure it manually to connect to various sources of video or audio content. Some sellers will provide a Kodi device with some content providers set up for you. But as I said above there are some less scrupulous sellers who load all sorts of dodgy content onto it so you have to be careful.

Kodi is very good but it can require some technical know-how to get the best out of it, even more so if you buy a bare-bones device with no content set up. If you just want a simple "plug and play" device with minimal tweaking required to get going then something like an Amazon Fire, Now TV or Roku device for example may be the better option.

http://www.nowtv.com/
https://www.roku.com/en-gb/

Thank you. I will have a good look at it all later.

http://www.maplin.co.uk/p/nikkai-58g...nder-kit-a86kh

Ive been using these for a few years now and work fine in the bedroom. Just plug into the scart socket on the sky box and a scart on the tv and can control it upstairs with the sky remote.

You have to accept the pic isnt going to transmit as HD but its perfectly watchable.

better Still Sky or Sky Q or Virgin Media Netflix Amazon Prime file your enjoyment

If you go the kodi route , get it off Amazon, I was surprised to see how many boxes they have with everything preloaded for the buyer, plus Amazon have a good returns policy.

I got rid of my Virgin Media tv over a year ago and haven't missed it at all.

With on-demand and streaming the need to record shows is less and less. My smart tv gives me access to BBC iPlayer, Netflix and Amazon Prime and I use my Kodi streaming box for everything else.

Unless you are pretty switched on technically do not bother with Kodi. It is a MASSIVE chew on that needs more attention than a new born child with all its updates and rebuilds and a bunch of other nonsense.

I should of said Sky+ I am looking the new stile boxes by Sky And Virgin Media after Christmas & January I have a Look @ my Opp as football and Saints fan I may op for V M or may go Sky Q rout I have a Sony Smart TV with hd and Freeview hd built in my Smell Samsung is expect not a smart TV ( I have Sky HD )
Last edited by the power king : 10-08-2016 at 19:30