Introduce a friend and get a free Sky+ box

bigpaddy2004

Has anyone heard of this offer yet? I have'nt. Took out a customers card from an envelope today and a promotional flyer fell out from it with the above heading. There was also a url link which is www.sky.com/friends which does not seem to be a valid page.

bigpaddy2004

Correction the url is www.sky.com/friend :rolleyes:

dmeehan

the choice is a bit of a no-brainer
50 quid or a sky+ box

i know which one i would choose

watty

The €50, as the Sky+ costs extra money on top of sub to record. I'll stick to recording encryped channels on S-VHS and FTA channels direct on PC hard disk.

So it isn't so simple a choice.

Still nice offer except my friends either already have Sky, or have free cable as part of rent, and while envious othe quality won't spend money to get something they have free.

My Daughter & Son inlaw would get Sky (though he has box, lnb and card he brought from UK) but apartment doesn't allow. Then again more folks are thinking of FTA. He likes rugby so I told him to start learning Welsh

watty

And yes I got the offer this week when I renewed a basic Sky sub..
(Arghhh can I beleive I have sucummed to pay TV again!)

bigpaddy2004

watty wrote:

The €50, as the Sky+ costs extra money on top of sub to record. I'll stick to recording encryped channels on S-VHS and FTA channels direct on PC hard disk.

It mystify's me why someone would go to the bother of doing this just to record onto a hd for the sake of a measley €15? You would'nt get a full dinner in a hotel for that price :rolleyes:

Tony

bigpaddy2004 wrote:

It mystify's me why someone would go to the bother of doing this just to record onto a hd for the sake of a measley €15? You would'nt get a full dinner in a hotel for that price :rolleyes:

yeah but its €15 a month with no real expense for sky to justify this, I think sky is expensive enough without this charge

watty

You can buy a good DVD for €6 now.

The HD recording on my 20G C: and 200G V: is not a problem, easier than the VHS. And if you want to keep it a while longer it can be written to DVD. It isn't fiddly like analog video capture or even like DV camcorder transfer, essentially it works the same as Sky+

Also my Sat card has a MPEG decoder and Video out built in.

The cost of users having Sky+ is ZERO extra compared with Sky. On Dr Dish last month there were 3 PVR sat receievers all superior to Sky+ but only work with FTA Sky. Sky is making an extra nearly 180 Euro per year per person for doing nothing because of having a monoploy.

bigpaddy2004

I agree with you Tony and with you Watty. My point is as follows....people do not care anymore about the cost of these things, they just want them and thats it. I on average install 2 sky+'s with multiroom a week if not more and the customer does not blink an eye. Tony as you know personaly i am fairly active with sky. I do not even get too look at tv at all. I have worked for sky for 7 years now and have achieved a fairly high rank in Ireland from Sky tv. One time i said to myself that I would never have sky+ installed but now seen as im gonna be a daddy shortly...the wife would be lost without sky+. As far as im concerned, i dont care what it costs as long as she can record her soaps while she is out of work. So im sure there is alot of other peepes thinkin the very same thing as i do, even do i never thought i would...but there you go!!

Tony

Congratulations on the new arrival

watty

WARNING POLITICAL RANT

Perhaps in all areas in Irl, marketers take advantage of this. However the poorer get poorer and so we are getting two Irelands.

Also there seems to be no effective forum or action against "consumer rip off" or lack of competition.

Lack of or no real competition:

Bord Gais, Eircom, ESB, Calor / Flogas (Is there a cartel, the gov is investigating that one), Banks (has there been a cartel?), Dunnes/Tesco till Aldi/Lidl arrived, Tesco is up to 40% cheaper in Poland for IDENTICAL products.

Mobile phone charges, Line rental.

Competiton in cable/MMDS = almost none
Competion in Pay Satellite = almost none

If people that have money continue to shell out rather than boycott overpriced products and services then everyone suffers.

Car VRT, the iniquitius way the recycling tax is done, Bin collections since councils stopped doing it

watty

MS Media centre (PC way of doing it) is doomed. For most people Sky+ or "reell box" or any PVR box is easier.

There are now boxes with TWO remotes, an easy Sky+ style one and a mega do everything one. These boxes as well as doing everything that Sky+ does (except take a Sky card of course) will play video / MP3 from server to TV, or from the box to a PC or laptop via ethernet or Wifi.

Capture Digital or analog camcorder to hard disk as easy as a VHS recorder.

Have option for cable or terristrial digital twin tuners as well as Satellite.

MS Media Centre concept is dead.

bk

watty wrote:

MS Media centre (PC way of doing it) is doomed. For most people Sky+ or "reell box" or any PVR box is easier.

I wouldn't quite say that.

The mainstream edition of the next version of Windows, Windows Vista, is going to have Media Center builtin by default, media center will no longer be a separate product. Most Dell and HP systems are expected to ship with it.

Also the Xbox 360 is a HD Windows media extender.

So I expect it will get more popular. However I do see where you are coming from, I've a hacked Tivo myself and it works great and most people wouldn't have the patients for a windows mce client server setup. However such a setup is great, my housemate has a MythTV setup and it works great.

bk

watty wrote:

Bord Gais, Eircom, ESB, Calor / Flogas (Is there a cartel, the gov is investigating that one), Banks (has there been a cartel?), Dunnes/Tesco till Aldi/Lidl arrived, Tesco is up to 40% cheaper in Poland for IDENTICAL products.

But the markets are starting to change, there is a lot of new competition starting to arrive.

Eircom has already lost 30% of its telephone customers to OLO's like BT Ireland, UTV, etc. Nevermind the growing threat from VoIP.

In BB you have NTL, Digiweb, Clearwire, Smart, IBB all building alternative, competitive networks to Eircom.

As you mentioned Dunnes/Tesco are coming under pressure from Aldi/Lidl, aldo don't forget everything is cheaper in Poland, wages, property, supplies, so of course things are cheaper there, it is economics 101.

You are right about the other companies, however there prices are supposedly still one of the cheapest in Europe, even without competition. Do you know that thge ESB's competitors actually want them to raise prices, so that they can compete and make more money, competition doesn't always mean lower prices.

watty wrote:

Mobile phone charges, Line rental.

Mobiles, we now have four companies and more coming, competition is starting to heat up.

watty wrote:

Competiton in cable/MMDS = almost none
Competion in Pay Satellite = almost none

Well these two platforms compete with each other. Also we will be seeing a lot more competition in the coming year or two, we will should get DTT eventually, a strong freesat paltform from BBC/ITV with an EPG etc. should emerge and IPTV from companies like Magnet and Digiweb and maybe even Eircom. Things will get very interesting then.

Things are starting to improve, it is slow, but it is happening.

My phone bill has gone from about €120 every two months to just about €50 from UTV and I'm now paying €10 less for BB from NTL, since moving from Eircom and that is for a superior product (3m/300k versus 2m/128k)