Crossing the Sky and Virgin Media divide

forzacalcio

Apologies if this is the incorrect section. Im at a crossroads with Sky, Their price seems a bit ridiculous now. Looking at about €135 for Sky, HD, 2 x Multi room and BB and their customer support is absoluetly shocking (I spent 5 days onto them about trying to subscribe to Sports Extra for the Winter Olympics and they cant seem to get it right. Im out of contract in 2 weeks and looking at re-signing or switching. Any advice?

Virgin seem to be offering the same deal with Sky Sports for €88.50. Ive done a small bit of research but the individual sky and virgin threads are made up of existing customers mostly so is there anyone who crossed the divide recently to or from Sky from or to Virgin and what are your pros and cons? I see its all streaming now and I do fear losing the Sky Q boxes. ANy help is appreciated

I am in the same boat, Sky is simply too expensive to justify. Sky Q is no longer offered in the UK and here in Ireland a new customer can only get a very basic Essentials package.

The future is indeed streaming. Sky will be taking down their satellites mid 2030's to be fully replaced by Sky Stream.

Your choice is to pay the premium to keep Sky Q until they decommission the satellites or to accept the reality now that streaming is the future.

I see this as another example of the shitification of everything nowadays. The quality of everything is getting poorer while the prices are increasing.

Personally, if I'm going to be streaming I might as well just use the free catch up apps. Its a very simple change of habit from recording everything to using on demand. The negative is they push more ads on you and the repetitive nature of the adverts. As I said, shitification. C'est la Vie. I'll tell my grandkids how in my day we could record live Tv.

PixelCrafter

Sky Q is just removed from online sales in the UK. They're still selling it by phone.

FTTH in the UK is still far from universal and Sky could well just ditch their rural market over there.

There's a lot of discussion about where TV is going in the UK. They could end up with a "last light" service on Freeview and Freesat with just the core public services, sort of more like a British Saorview / Saorsat, run on the cheap as a rural service. That's where things are already going in France. Canal+ is mostly abandoning satellite, with the TNTSat Freesat equivalent being made very bare bones, and commercial channels already abansoning it.

ffocused

OP, I tried VM a few years ago and found their TV box very underwhelming and slow compared to Q. Not sure if they are still using the same box now though.

I ditched Q last month for same reasons as you and use Freesat and Saorview for UK/IE terrestrial channels and Now TV for entertainment sports and sports extra packs. The catch up services negate the need for recording and iPlayer and ITV X are easily accessible via VPN.

If you are considering this you probably need a new LNB for freesat though as standard Q lnb will not work. I was lucky enough to get a hybrid lnb from Sky when Q launched thanks to Setanta Sports not working on multiroom boxes at launch.

My tv bill dropped from over €150pm at end of contract to €66 which includes Now Entertainment, Sports, Sports extra, UHD boost and Netflix premium.

The best thing about Now is you don’t need to spend hours on the phone to cancel or change something. You can do it all online and they usually offer a new discount when you go to cancel at the end of your offer period.

I did not bundle my broadband with Sky so that is an extra cost.