Sky is costing me around 25 quid a month. For that I get a HD box - record/pause features which are truly useful and probably the only reason to keep it. Anyway sick as I am of feathering the dreadful Murdoch's evil empire with my hard earned I'm considering dumping them.
Looking at Freestat - seen an all singing all dancing Humax machines....anybody got one ?
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Sky will supply a card for a one-off fee - use your current sky dish and box............saves buying a new Humax box etc
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Ah, good idea....will I be allowed to record etc on me box ?
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I have Freesat HD and Freeview on the TV, with the HUMAX HD freeview PVR
My mum has the similar Freesat HD PVR.
Both are much the same, both are brilliant. You just plug your existing sky dish into the Humax (I hope your dish has a dual or quad LNB?)
I am happy to report that I have no need to put any money in the evil empires coffers. (anything on Sky i want to watch, I get it from a US torrent site well before it appears on sky)
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Good info Zero i have to look into Freesat.
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>> Ah, good idea....will I be allowed to record etc on me box ?
Your channel choice will be pretty restricted.
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Don't you lose the ability to record I'd you aren't giving Sky some money?
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I will never understand this fixation about Murdoch - on a scale of 'evil' he is hardly worth a mention in comparison with the thousands of worthy candidates.
Blair still walks this earth a free man and Labour supporters still seems to love him despite his illegal war, which I find rather more disturbing than some ancient schmoozer like Murdoch.
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>> >> Ah, good idea....will I be allowed to record etc on me box ?
>>
>> Your channel choice will be pretty restricted.
>>
Restricted to zero in fact
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>>the dreadful Murdoch's evil empire
What a silly statement.
I've worked with Murdoch. He's smart, clever and driven. Admittedly I don't find him the most pleasant person to be around, but insofar as running a media company is concerned, the man deserves significant respect.
And his "evil empire"?
Do you realise the BBC would still be the malaise ridden POS it was in the 80s without him? Do you realise that football, cricket, golf and others have developed because of him and his "evil empire"? Do you have any concept of how much technical development has been driven in the UK because of the fear from the BBC and ITV that if they didn't do it, then Murdoch might?
I know its terribly trendy and worthy of significant street-cred amongst the unwashed to hate murdoch and to use such emotive phrases as "his evil empire", but its also somewhere between juvenile and puerile not to mention ridiculous and inaccurate.
I've worked with them all, and I'd trust my bank balance and my soul to Murdoch before I'd trust that bunch of self-agrandising, self-appointed guardians of morality, self-satisfied jerks at the BBC.
Such behaviour is reminiscent of the conforming non-conformist behaviour of a first year student desperately trying to be one of the crowd.
Last edited by: No FM2R on Sun 9 Sep 12 at 19:39
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I hate him.
Last edited by: R.P. on Sun 9 Sep 12 at 19:45
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Thumbs up for Sky had it 15 years and enjoy it.
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>>I hate him.
I didn't even realise that you knew him.
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Well said!
At least with SKY you CHOOSE to pay.
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Murdoch is brilliant at what he does, so I respect him for that.
He also has some regard for the value of journalism, which many of the profit driven proprietors do not - they see us as a cost centre.
Murdoch is one the few proprietors who would back the likes of Mazher Mahmood - the fake sheikh - who only produces a handful of stories a year.
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I'm in same camp as RP and. IIRC, Zeddo.
If Murdoch restricted himself to running a media empire I'd probably just dislike his content. But when he runs a worldwide outfit that not only attempts but succeeds in perverting democratic politics then we all need to sit up and take notice.
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>> Well said!
>> At least with SKY you CHOOSE to pay.
I chose not to.
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Whether he is pleasant to be around or not is irrelevant. Man on a mission - to take over media, and undermine rule of law. Evidence: his minions are going to be in court to answer for alleged criminal behaviour whilst in prominent positions in the empire he runs assiduously.
Last edited by: NIL on Sun 9 Sep 12 at 20:33
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>>undermine rule of law
Its really not his mission. However much the BBC might wish you to believe that it is.
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We'll see. The Met failed to properly investigate a very large number of serious breaches of the law, until forced to do so. That motives behind that failure would be interesting to examine. The defence the Met gave, financial stringency in the face of other important resource demands, does not wash. There are ways and means of getting additional aid. The lesson of Icarus springs to mind.
The Guardian on the judicial review: tinyurl.com/8zpx67p What is not stated is that the failure to investigate included failure to examine the chain of command of the commissioning editors, perhaps in time to allow evidence to be lost. Job done?
Report on the apparent extent of the corruption, from the BBC: tinyurl.com/cbh2q4h If the BBC was reduced to a token, weak public service broadcaster like the US public broadcasting model, you can't seriously believe that other stations would carry such news? Fox news and its allies were in a position to become dominant before the proverbial hit the fan.
Coruption in office allegations: tinyurl.com/ceokp4m
A long list, still growing.
Rule of law? Undermined.
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>> the 80s without him? Do you realise that football, cricket, golf and others have developed
>> because of him and his "evil empire"?
Developed completely in the wrong direction. Murdoch money has ruined english soccer.
I dont blame Murdoch tho, I blame you tits that pay for sky.
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Like Murdoch or not, whoever runs a media empire big enough to provide the service Sky does is going to be more JR Ewing than that nice Mrs Smith who runs your corner shop.
And I'm a Freesat man myself.
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and does it work as advertised RR ?
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>> and does it work as advertised RR ?
>>
We're pleased with it, the box cost us about £70 with the HD channels. I prefer it to the elderly Sky box we had up till then and any recording is done on a DVD recorder.
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>I dont blame Murdoch tho, I blame you tits that pay for sky.
I'm one of the tits who pay for Sky purely and simply for the convenience. Don't have a sports subscription because neither of us are interested in the sports they cover. Most of out viewing is factual stuff. Discovery Channels, National Geo, Travel, History etc. You can't get those on freesat/view. I could probably find free feeds for Discovery etc. if I bought a new receiver and fired up the movable dish I suppose.
If I could dump the BBC and save the telly-tax I'd do it tomorrow. They're about as impartial and educational as a Labour Party conference.
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>> I'm one of the tits who pay for Sky purely and simply for the convenience.
>> Don't have a sports subscription because neither of us are interested in the sports they
>> cover.
You are only half a tit then. Still I suppose living in Basingstoke a sky dish is de rigueur
Last edited by: Zero on Sun 9 Sep 12 at 21:36
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>Still I suppose living in Basingstoke a sky dish is de rigueur
Try and sell a house in Basingstoke without one.
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>> They're
>> about as impartial
As the labour party whine about them being right wing, the Tory party moan about them being left wing, and the liberal moan about being ignored, they are impartial enough for me.
Sky news is a bit to much like a tv version of the Sun for my tastes.
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It is difficult to know what to watch tho'.
It'd be nice to watch news either without an editorial bias, or at least less of one. I'm not sure what one should read, watch or listen to these days for an objective and factual report.
It certainly isn't the BBC. Sky is mosty reasonable unless the subject is broadcasting but, as you say, very much like the Sun.
The Granuad has got worse, the Mail was never any good. How's the Express these days?
Radio 4 is driven by the BBC editorial approach. ITV is driven by pretending to be the BBC and Channel 4 are typically confused.
I am never sure what to say when asked.
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I say we are blessed in the UK, given the appalling state of most TV and news around the world
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Blessed? Less cursed perhaps.
However, that is the problem. I was falling about in hysterics about some news reporting here concerning Europe, and so was asked what source should be relied upon.
And I don't know.
I do know that any situation I have ever been knowledgeable about, that has been reported somewhere has pretty much always been reported badly.
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We are blessed in that you can, with virtually no restriction, use the net to see how news on any single event is reported. Given that choice of sources you can almost certainly make some sense of the truth. Or blindly reinforce your own prejudices of course.
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I know, but it seems a pity that all you can do is read everything and then take an average.
I'd actually pay for an objective service.
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Did anyone answer my question about losing the use of recording if you get a free card from Sky? It used to be the case and a lot of replies since. But I don't think anyone answered that.
Of course the Sky Anytime+ is about to get (a) renamed and (b) a lot more useful. Soon there will be catchup TV from iPlayer etc. But that too is available elsewhere.
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>>Did anyone answer my question about losing the use of recording if you get a free card from Sky
About 12/18 months ago then yes, you did lose the recording ability.
At that time you could get Freesat with a PVR, mine was Humax, for free
You could use Freesat from Sky without PVR for free (which has a few channels that Freesat does not, IIRC).
Or Sky with PVR functionality for a few quid a month. ( £5 or £10 I think).
It may well have changed in the meantime.
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I have the Humax PVR Freesat setup, because there was no Freeview HD at the time of purchase (although only Blu-Ray disks can provide the highest HD level). It has twin dish leads, meaning I can record two programmes at once while watching a third, although this is subject to some restriction I don't understand. The manual isn't crystal clear, either. Another niggle is that commands get slow responses, so that an impatient extra click takes me two stages on instead of one. There seem to be about 200+ channels which I imagine is far, far fewer than Sky can provide but I only use a dozen regularly. I am generally well pleased with the setup.
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>> although this is subject to some restriction I don't understand
Your sat receiver box only takes two LNB feeds so can tune to two into particular signals (based on band and polarisation). If you watch a third it would need to be using the same band and polarisation as one of the channels you're recording.
Something like that anyway. Effectively you have only two tuners in the box. Unlike some cable boxes from Virgin Media that have at least three. I think the Tivo box has 4.
Last edited by: rtj70 on Mon 10 Sep 12 at 09:08
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"I'd actually pay for an objective service."
You don't have to: you'll get RTE (Irish state broadcaster) and Al Jazeera on free-to-air.
RTE, though small, are well-respected for their journalistic integrity, and Ireland isn't a big hitter on the geopolitical stage with an axe to grind.
The primary reason the powers that be in the US don't like Al Jazeera is because they do a good job of presenting a point of view at odds with that of CNN. When I've tuned in out of curiosity, I've been impressed by their even-handed reporting - not something I can say of CNN or, indeed, the desperate efforts of Sky News to find something to fill air-time 24 hours a day.
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I usually watch RT or Al Jazeera news on Freesat, some of those Ruskie byrds really do it for me!
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>> As the labour party whine about them being right wing,
>>
When? Where?
The facts [quoted below as printed by The Guardian] – as revealed in a freedom of information request:
Roy Greenslade
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 14 August 2012 18.01 BST
" .... between 1 April 2010 and 28 February 2011, the BBC bought 59,829 copies of the Guardian compared with 51,384 copies of the Times and 48,968 copies of the Daily Telegraph. The Daily Mail came in fourth (45,553) and the Financial Times was eighth (33,721).
....
....
There are so many similarities between the BBC and the Guardian aside from assumptions about politics. Both organisations are free of commercial ownership, with the corporation funded by licence and the paper owned by a trust.
Both are imbued with a public interest ethos. The BBC is a public sector service and the paper views itself in a similar vein. (The Scott Trust values include "a sense of duty to the reader and the community"). It is therefore fair to say that the corporation and the paper have deeply ingrained shared values. ...... "
Also, from Yes Minister:
"Hacker: Don't tell me about the press. I know exactly who reads the papers: the Daily Mirror is read by people who think they run the country; The Guardian is read by people who think they ought to run the country; The Times is read by people who actually do run the country; the Daily Mail is read by the wives of the people who run the country; the Financial Times is read by people who own the country; The Morning Star is read by people who think the country ought to be run by another country; and The Daily Telegraph is read by people who think it is.
Sir Humphrey: Prime Minister, what about the people who read The Sun?
Bernard: Sun readers don't care who runs the country, as long as she's got big tits."
Last edited by: John H on Mon 10 Sep 12 at 09:35
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"Yes, Minister": full of sharp and insightful dialogue about HOW the country is really run; wonderfully funny, wonderfully acted and sadly missed, as are several of the actors who imbued it with life.
One of the absolutely, best ever, TV programs.
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Roger, I don't know if you're near London, but I think that there is a run of Yes, (Prime) Minister episodes being performed live on stage at a theatre somewhere in the West End at the moment.
I was in the vicinity on Saturday, and I know that I saw a large sign advertising these delights above a theatre entrance somewhere. Sadly my faculties were insufficiently sharp to be able to remember the precise location and details now, as I was engaged at the time in an attempt to complete a Monopoly Board pub crawl (including stations, but excluding utilities). In case you're interested, the attempt proved a success, 32 of us ultimately arriving at The Castle, near Angel, Islington, at approximately 22.30 hours after an 11.00 start at the Old Kent Road. Hic.
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Cracking show saw it at the beginning of the year.
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>> Roger, I don't know if you're near London, but I think that there is a
>> run of Yes, (Prime) Minister episodes being performed live on stage at a theatre somewhere
>> in the West End at the moment.
www.yesprimeminister.co.uk/
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>> www.yesprimeminister.co.uk/
Ah ha! I must have been falling in/out of The Lord Moon of the Mall.
Good work, Focus, as ever. (P.S. I'm just switching away from Eon to Scottish Power for a cheaper rate and a two winter fix.)
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>> (P.S. I'm just switching away from Eon to Scottish Power
>> for a cheaper rate and a two winter fix.)
Thanks - I've been a bit lazy and only looked at Eon's alternatives so far; must see what else is out there.
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I've saved £17 a month on the DD and the fix is until Jan 14. Happy with that. According to Martyn Lewis, the fixes are disappearing fast from comparison sites (sure sign of impending price rises). E.g. EDF's long fix is only available if you go direct to their website, you won't see it on uswitch or the like.
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>> run of Yes, (Prime) Minister episodes being performed live on stage at a theatre somewhere
>> in the West End at the moment.
Being remade for TV apparently: tinyurl.com/ca74jpc (Sun)
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>> I'd trust my bank balance and my soul to Murdoch
Bank balance perhaps. But your soul is already lost.
It isn't trendy to fear and despise the Digger. It's just commonsense. Unless of course you actually like a flood of wall-to-wall pay-TV sport, soft porn, C-grade celeb tittle-tattle and vulgar, reactionary politics. Far from doing the BBC any good, this thrust by the big-money media has infected what used to be a public broadcasting system, and a good one at that. It has been looking increasingly dumbed-down for years now.
Governments on both sides of the Atlantic have to debate what to do about the Digger and how to keep him under some sort of control. Not many people in the world can twist the arms of prime ministers and presidents. He's a big beast.
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My soul is not lost. Grubby perhaps, but I'm sure its still in the drawer where I left it.
>>Unless of course you actually like a flood of wall-to-wall pay-TV sport, soft porn, C-grade celeb tittle-tattle and vulgar, reactionary politics.
No, I don't, and I don't pay for subscription TV where I have a choice. But sufficient numbers of people known as subscribers must do. And Murdoch's not worried about what the company broadcasts, providing it is meeting its performance targets - paid or renewed subscriptions or purchases.
Murdoch's mission, if he has one, is to become more wealthy and more powerful. The impact that programming has on that is only how much it is in demand.
>>Governments on both sides of the Atlantic have to debate what to do about the Digger
They don't need to. And they'll never get anywhere if they do.
Its dead simple really; if sufficient people stop watching, buying, paying then what is broadcast / printed / said will change.
It's no different to the argument against the paparazzi.
If there was no demand for it, then a commercial enterprise won't do it.
Look at "phone hacking [sic]". Nobody minded reading about Gordon Brown's son, nobody minded reading details of this affair or that illness. I guess nobody minded where the information came from - I suppose that they would have realised it was friends/ doctors/ whoever if they had thought about it.
But they are seemingly outraged that it came from mobile phone messaging - and assorted bribery.
Why?
And News international, BSkyB and the rest survive and prosper by delivering what people will pay for.
However, I believe the BBC should rise above a desperate need for popularity as judged by ratings. The way they are created and managed should allow other criteria to be used beyond simply viewing figures.
If they wish to be measured by viewing figures, then they should be prepared to largely fund themselves as the other PSBs do.
If they wish to be measured by their achievement of higher goals, then they should sort out their programming.
Equally that means the Government should play its part - e.g. continue and grow the list of protected sporting events, not reduce it.
But then the viewing masses need to play their part. Don't watch anything that you morally disagree with, and consider abandoning a single channel or an entire MCO if you feel they are showing too much material that you object to.
2 years later, if the offensive progamming remains, then I feel you will need to understand that it isn't a conspiracy from any one person, it is the desire of the viewing and paying public.
Last edited by: No FM2R on Tue 11 Sep 12 at 15:57
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>> it isn't a conspiracy from any one person, it is the desire of the viewing and paying public.
A conspiracy involves more than one person by definition... but you can't blame the viewing or reading public for the Digger or other tabloid media. You can blame them for watching and reading the stuff, calculated to appeal to their lower instincts, but they can't be blamed for the stuff itself, produced by skilled, often cynical people and very narrow in range.
Sky News isn't too bad in this country being kept honest by the beeb and the other mainstream channels which have old-fashioned values. But have you taken a look at Fox? Takes you by the scruff of the neck and forces you to be a drooling moron. Most unpleasant.
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>>being kept honest by the beeb and the other mainstream channels which have old-fashioned values
I haven't watched Fox, no. However, if you think the BBC is keeping anybody honest because it has old-fashioned values then I regret that you are wrong.
Quite the contrary I'm afraid. It may well have been so at one stage in its history, but not these days.
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>> It may well have been so at one stage in its history, but not these days.
You mean being careful about facts, having at least a semblance of balance and keeping news and comment separate are things of the past? When I am part of a news or current affairs audience I like being treated more or less as an adult. Can't help it. I too am old fashioned in some ways.
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>> it. Anyway sick as I am of feathering the dreadful Murdoch's evil empire with my
>> hard earned I'm considering dumping them.
>>
Murdoch/Sky vs BBC
Jobs/Apple vs Gates/Microsoft
Page/Google vs Zuckerberg/Facebook
Branson/Virgin vs Walsh/BA
Islam vs Christianity
thoughts of "hate" and "evil" = irrational = you got religion.
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I believe in the religion of the Invisible Pink Unicorn.
"Invisible Pink Unicorns are beings of great spiritual power. We know this because they are capable of being invisible and pink at the same time. Like all religions, the Faith of the Invisible Pink Unicorns is based upon both logic and faith. We have faith that they are pink; we logically know that they are invisible because we can't see them"
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Now THAT'S thread drift, par excellence!
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If you stop paying the subscription to Sky you lose the recording function - FACT.
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That's what I thought it would do but it might have changed recently. And who can blame them when they give the box away if you sign up for 12 months. But without that functionality you'd be better off getting a Freesat box.
As soon as there's is some of the catchup TV content on Sky Anytime+ I'll connect my Sky+HD box to the router. Not much point at the moment.
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Sky have managed to become a virtual monopoly of pay TV by restricting the manufacture of their receivers and limiting the use of them to receive other satellites. In the rest of the EU it is possible to purchase most different makes of receivers and merely purchase a viewing card from an agent or the TV company. It is impossible to do this in the UK: you buy a Sky box or you cannot receive the Sky bouquet of channels.
It has also been suggested that Sky were responsible for the demise of On Digital through the dirty tricks of another Sky company, NDS, who leaked details of the encryption of On Digital's cards. Thus, there were more pirate cards than subscriptions and On Digital finally ceased.
The allegations are not new, but Panorama had tracked down Lee Gidding, the man behind The House of Ill Compute (or THOIC), which N.DS admit was taken over after its own security unit in Israel had found Gidding trying to hack Sky cards. N.DS says THOIC was used as a tool to track and catch more hackers, Gidding alleges it was fed On Digital codes and encouraged to leak them as far and wide as possible.
The cards used by On Digital and then ITV Digital were from Canal+ Technologies and were widely compromised. N.DS never denied hacking rival cards – which is legitimate practice – but strenuously denies distributing the resulting codes and thereby undermining rivals in the market. Canal Plus sued N.DS, but the case was settled when News Corp bought out and broke up Canal Plus Technologies.
Last edited by: Robbie34 on Mon 10 Sep 12 at 12:12
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>> Looking at Freestat - seen an all singing all dancing Humax machines....anybody got one ?
>>
Yes, and very happy with it too. I hate paying subscriptions for telly, so I'm very happy with the standard Freesat HD offering. I use Humax HD, an old unit without the recorder bit. It's a nice, user-friendly piece of kit.
All the main channels I watch are there, there's stuff for the kids and a smattering of HD channels. I was very happy to see 24 channels of live HD content for the Olympics too. Don't think that was on Freeview?
Overall picture quality seems better than Freeview to me, especially as we don't seem to be in a good signal area.
It's nice to have iPlayer etc integrated too.
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Thanks all - maybe I should self-moderate - I don't like Sky...leave it at that. May well be going for Freesat once I've downloaded all my recorded treasures !
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That's the other thing you'd lose after cancelling Sky - access to the programmes on the box. Getting them off onto other media takes ages of course and you can't watch anything else at the same time (you can with Virgin Media's HD box). And keeping the quality high is tricky if using DVD-R's because you either get the quality and can't store much or you get low quality and longer record times.
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I have a Humax Freeview PVR, A Humax Foxsat PVR, and a HUmax Foxsat HD box that I use with my motorised dish to watch F1 on RTL when BBC aren't showing F1 live. I turn off the volume on the TV and listen to the commentary on Radio 5 Live. The only downside is that RTL have advertising breaks.
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I've dumped sky months ago Rob 25 quid to spend on something else.
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We have, as a legacy of their being installed when we bought the house, both Freesat & Freeview.
Even with an old, non-SKY supplied, SKY box, there are more channels available ,including many of the "+1hour" offerings.
I am agitating, on the constant drip basis, for a Humax Freesat HD PVR, now under £200 on Amazon, but SWMBO is in foot-putting-down mode, as our funds are destined for other more "girly" things such as carpets, patio paving and new wardrobe doors (Not all at once, I hasten to add).
If I had to choose between the two, I'd go for Freesat.
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You are the boss Roger like me.>:)
Don't watch telly so much now.I've got loads of dvd's I haven't seen.Then the internet plenty of subjects on you tube.Son ofloads plenty of books which I should read.And baysitting granddaughter live is stress.>)
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I torrent loads of North American cop shows to watch when the UK soaps are on!
Looking forward to the new seasons, later this month, of NCIS, The Mentalist and Person of Interest and in the meantime watching The Glades, The Listener, Rizzoli & Isles, Common Law and a couple of others and deciding whether to finally get up to season 6 on Dexter.
www.eztv.it is the place for TV torrents , by the way. (Not blocked by UK ISPS as is The Pirate Bay - not that the blocking stops me - if I want to go to TPB!)
Jolly Roger.
Last edited by: Roger on Mon 10 Sep 12 at 14:43
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>>now under £200 on Amazon<<
£214.08 to be precise.
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Crikey - they've gone up since I looked last.
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>> >>now under £200 on Amazon<<
>>
>> £214.08 to be precise.
>>
Like he says, although, as camelcamelcamel shows, it did drop to 199 briefly. Amazon's pricing is very volatile.
uk.camelcamelcamel.com/Humax-500GB-Recorder-Requires-Satellite/product/B0039J42LM
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I have a subscription for sky. basic + discovery channels and music etc for £18pm.
I bought my hd+ box new and not from sky. my subscription is monthly so can cancel when i want.
there are 3 old sky boxes in the 3 bedrooms and all pick up sky channels free to air plus BBC etc and for which I pay no subscription.
18pm is fine but we used to pay nearer 70 with all hd+sport channels and never watched them.
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I have 3 sky boxes in my house. The oldest is in the bedroom (original, 14yr old, non-plus, non-hd indestructible Panasonic box), the middle aged one in the study/childrens den (Amstrad white Sky Plus box, non HD), and the HD Sky Plusser in the living room.
The middle aged box is of dreadful quality, and often needs rebooting (which takes blimmin' ages) and often needs a call to Sky helpdesk to resynch the viewing card to the channels we pay through the nose for. The children use it most, which of course leads to much tech support floorwalking for Dad.
So, I would dearly like to replace the middle aged box for one of the same spec (pause live TV, record, but no HD needed), and would dearly like to do so for minimal outlay, and avoiding Amstrad junk.
Is it possible to use any other kinds of receiver, such as these mythical Humaxs or whatever, to receive Sky TV in the manner I desire? Or am I tied to hunting down a Sky branded replacement box of some kind?
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The later Amstrad boxes that Sky usedas their HD boxes are okay I think. Sky took them over of course so not the Amstrad of old.
If you offer RP a fair amount, then when he doesn't need his Sky box anymore perhaps he'll sell it to you for a reasonable price? Just a thought.
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Good idea.
RP?
But does beg the question - can I use a Sky+ HD box with a non-HD viewing card and non-HD TV?
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We've got a Sky+HD box... we don't subscribe to HD. Obviously we get the free to air HD channels from BBC, ITV, etc. on the box. Just not the Sky HD channels.
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>> But does beg the question - can I use a Sky+ HD box with a
>> non-HD viewing card and non-HD TV?
Yes, you can. However, you can't use anything other than a Sky box with a Sky card. I mentioned this in an above post.
You can get secondhand Sky + boxes quite cheaply on Gumtree. I recently paid thirty pounds for a Pace Sky+HD box that was advertised on Gumtree, and it included a Sky card that allows FTV channels. I was going to use it in my touring caravan when away in France, but my Humax box is much better.
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>>
>> So, I would dearly like to replace the middle aged box for one of the
>> same spec (pause live TV, record, but no HD needed), and would dearly like to
>> do so for minimal outlay, and avoiding Amstrad junk.
>>
You might well find that Sky will do you a deal on a new box, provided you keep paying 'em for another 12 months. I've just had a 500GB Sky+ HD box plus new dish & quad LNB for a net cost of about a fiver. They finally seem to have started offering existing subscribers some decent deals sometimes.
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Speaking as one who does not pay for a TV licence and is not interested in 99% of SKY Sports, (but still objects to the TV tax), I am faced with a financial choice .
Do I pay for one or two of SKY's basic packages for a fair bit of repeated stuff - still with adverts - or do I have high speed internet?.
For me it's no contest. Internet wins hands down.
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>> Speaking as one who does not pay for a TV licence and is not interested
>> in 99% of SKY Sports, (but still objects to the TV tax), I am faced
>> with a financial choice .
>> Do I pay for one or two of SKY's basic packages for a fair bit
>> of repeated stuff - still with adverts - or do I have high speed internet?.
>> For me it's no contest. Internet wins hands down.
FFS. What's a reasonable charge for all the TV & radio (not to mention internet) content on BBC?
The license is a tad under £3 a week. The Guardian is £1.20 a day; even the Sun or Mirror must be close to £3 a week.
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>FFS. What's a reasonable charge for all the TV & radio (not to mention internet) content on BBC?
£0.00 if I don't use it?
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I think he gets it free because of fogeyism Bromp.
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Not free but Guilty as charged.
Take me back to the days before endless repeats, Reality TV and Eastenders.
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ITV drama (and BBC for that matter) has been pretty well crafted since the Olympics.
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>>Take me back to the days before endless repeats, Reality TV and Eastenders.
Yeah, like the 70s...
Laurel & Hardy, The Wilkinsons and Crossroads - just to pick a comparable example.
And how about quality Sunday evening viewing...
ctva.biz/UK/TV-Listings/UK_1971_04_25_Sunday.htm
Or not.
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Actually once I get past being nostalgic for things like The Persuaders, Hogans Heroes and other fun stuff, I do then remember the torture of the weekend with wrestling all saturday afternoon, and every weekday afternoon in the holidays with horse riding and the pain of midnight close down as I got older.
Thank goodness for the radio in general and Luxumburg and Caroline in particular - a life saver until Capital finally tuned up. Captain Kremmen anybody?
Little Nicky Horne, Little Nicky Horne, On your Radio
Michael Aspel makes your morning, Michael Aspel makes your day....
www.youtube.com/watch?v=YkkoevdqyM0&NR=1&feature=endscreen
www.youtube.com/watch?v=xKL-ea4dQUk&feature=watch_response
.............. brings back memories...
Oh God, I'm getting sadder by the minute.
And I realise that whilst there is an awful lot of crap on the television these days, its a rare night I can't find something to watch late at night or early morning - essential for someone like me who doesn't sleep much.
Last edited by: No FM2R on Mon 10 Sep 12 at 23:06
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Being a WW1 buff - the documentaries that BBC in particular specilaize in are the best. There was a history programme about the British Isles on a non BBC channel - I looked forward to it. Greatly disappointed - learned pundits such as Helen Mirren and Colin Jackson talking about the Romans - I'm sure they're very clever people but still....
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Yeah, and 40 years of progress has given us:
Cash in the attic, Flog it, Eastenders, Citizen Kahn, Jeremy Kyle, Emmerdale, 999.
Repeated ad nauseum.
Crap isn't it?
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>> Citizen Kahn
Saw that for the first time last night - it felt a bit 70s with it's gentle humour, but we thought it was quite funny.
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>> >> Citizen Kahn
>>
>> Saw that for the first time last night - it felt a bit 70s with
>> it's gentle humour, but we thought it was quite funny.
I found it actually quite painful.
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>> >>Take me back to the days before endless repeats, Reality TV and Eastenders.
>>
>> Yeah, like the 70s...
Yeah LIKE! the 70s
The Sweeney Dah Dah Dah!
Special Branch
UFO
The Professionals
Fawlty Towers.
Dads Army
Rally Cross from Lyden Hill
There was some CRACKING tele in the 70s.
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Thank-you Zero.
I knew there'd be someone old enough to remember good stuff from that era.
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>> Thank-you Zero.
>>
>> I knew there'd be someone old enough to remember good stuff from that era.
My Formative years.
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There was some superb stuff - but there was also some almighty dross and huge gaps in programming for the certifiably sane.
My absolute favourite of the moment, probably a reflection of my happiness at the time, was Morecambe and Wise.
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> FFS. What's a reasonable charge for all the TV & radio (not to mention internet)
>> content on BBC?
The same as for ITV and the commercial channels.
OR by subscription and not by compulsion, enforced by dire threats issued by a commercial entity to whom the gathering of this tax has been outsourced.
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I think it makes complete sense to have public broadcast television. I equally think that should be government funded.
However, two issues;
The BBC needs to re-read its charter and go back to doing that - documentaries, informative news, educations and/or otherwise uneconomic programming which would not be made by a commercial outfit, minority sports in a quality manner, and all important national sports of which somewhere betwen a certain amount and all should be shown on the BBC so that it is accessible to all.
The BBC believes it should be fighting with ITV, CH4 and the rest for ratings. In truth it should be complimenting them. If you can make money with a program, then leave the commercial stations to make it.
For as long as FTA statiosn are showing early evening soaps, there is NO justification for the BBC to do. Ditto The Voice, ditto any reality TV which is neither investigative or educational.
A return to the organisation which saw the value in objective documentary and natural history.
The second issue is there is perceived to be a link between the receiver licence fee and the funding of the BC. That link should be broken - its only one of perception anyway.
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I think you need to read the Charter of the BBC.
Its mission is to to inform, educate and entertain, not just to give us a natural history documentaries although they do of course provide some superb programs of that type.
Entertainment is an essential part of the programming of the BBC and always has been.
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Of course I'm being a bit of a humbug when I denounce Sky and the Digger.
I don't read The Times which went dodgy long before the Digger, when that Thomson fellow bought it and banished the small ads from the front page, doing away with proofreaders at the same time. But there is a substantial Sky HD package in the house where I live. I am not the subscriber but it has the F1 channel which faffs away a lot of the time and Sky Atlantic, on which I watch the superb dark, amoral Sopranos a couple of times a week, HBO's intelligent portrait of raw cash-capitalism now. There's other classy American TV on it too, the quirky Curb Your Enthusiasm for example.
The reason it's here at all is for the movie channels. Naturally I enjoy those too.
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Freesat Vs Sky. - Falkirk Bairn
