[anne&derek]

Hi all,

We bought a panasonic TV with freesat built in before Christmas. Currently we have skyplus in one room and sky in a second room so 3 outlets on dish used so still have one free. Now we want to do away with sky subscription or at least minimise the cost.

As far as I can see, we could keep the skyplus box and pay £10/ month for record only as it wont record if we dont pay. We would then need a fourth cable from the dish to connect to the new TV for freesat, leaving the sky plus box set up as is. (We can find a solution for the second room by buying a freesat box so will use 1 dish outlet.)

Questions:
i) Am I correct in my assumptions, in particular that we can leave the skyplus box as is and the recording would be using the sky channels and not freesat?
ii) Is there a better way?
iii) Is there another recording facility we could use - dont want the humax PVR box as we would be paying again for the freesat functionality?
iv) Would we need to keep the telephone connection for the skyplus box?

[Broadz]

DVD (or video) recorders connected to your various digiboxes and satellite television sets will obviously allow you to record the digital satellite signal you are receiving, and if you buy one with a hard drive you won't be using DVD discs. But, there are some limitations. A DVD recorder won't be able to record two Freesat channels simultaneously, whilst a Sky+ box with the £10 Freesat PVR charge will.

The Sky+ box will be recording from its own Freesat channels, not from the Freesat channels on the Panasonic TV.

Telephone connection is not required if you aren't having multiroom.

You don't need to replace your standard Sky box with a Freesat box unless you really want to - a Sky box with an expired Sky card in it will pick up all the channels that a standard Freesat box will - and a lot more besides.

[anne&derek]

Many thanks for reply.
Hadn't realised that about the sky box in second room. Does that mean if we remove the card it will work or do we have to keep the card in?

Re the telephone line, we had that in before moving to multiroom. I thought that was essential. Would be good to get rid of it - less wires at spaghetti junction!

So, just to clarify, are you saying we only need to pay sky £10 for sky plus (we have broadband too.. I am assuming we will be able to keep that for £5 month) and stop multiroom payment ie £15 in total per month as against the £37 at the moment? If so, wonderful....

Anne

[Broadz]

If you remove the expired card from the standard Sky box, you will lose half a dozen Freesat channels - Five, Five US, Fiver, Setanta Sports News and Sky 3, and maybe one or two others. If you leave the card in, you will get those as well.

The telephone line is not essential, and is not monitored by Sky, unless you have multiroom. Even if you were to keep the Sky subscription on the Sky+ box, but drop multiroom, you wouldn't need the phoneline connected to either box.

Not sure about the broadband issue - Sky may insist that you have a Sky TV subscription to keep using Sky broadband. In which case, pay £16 per month for the minimum Sky sub on Sky+, keep broadband and get Sky+ functionality thrown in for free as well. You still don't need a phoneline though, if you cancel multiroom on the other Sky box.

[anne&derek]

Many thanks for advice. Will now see what sky say!