Goodbye Sky

General Chat
1

After 8 years, I think it’s time to say goodbye to Sky. £70 (TV only - Sky Cinema and UHD pack) is about to magically transform itself into £84 without renewing the 18 month contract. If I renew, it stays at £70. Spent 40 minutes on the phone to see if I could get a better deal - only prepared to knock off £8, so it becomes £62/month.

Given that the majority of what I watch now is through the TV’s streaming apps or Apple TV, I think I can get away with most of what I watch that way (and even then, several subscriptions are included free with my EE mobile contracts). Not much use for Netflix these days, and I could possibly get away with NOW TV if I want to watch an HBO Max show.

Sky is definitely not as good value for money as it used to be :frowning:

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2

I think Sky’s time is over, tbh.

If the new owners are clever, they’ll turn it into a streaming platform. But they’d have to really get the cost down to less than a tenner a month…

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3

If you don’t have sport, I don’t see the reason to pay a lot for Sky.

Now you’ve cancelled, you’ll get better deals appear.

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I have Sky Cinema, UHD and Netflix and I’m paying a lot less than £62. Do you have any other Sky services contributing to that £70?

If you want the best deals, you’ll need to go via Retentions.

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They need to more with Now TV but they’re running it as an old style cable company at the moment… limited device support, pay extra monthly fee for HD or anything beyond stereo (and even if you pay that only works on selected ‘sky approved’ devices), max 2 devices at a time…

They survive by exclusive rights to stuff but that’s going away as more companies start their own streaming platforms (which is a different issue).

I still have a dish on my wall and it feels like a relic of a bygone era.

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£82???

I just took a contract out and pay £39 for Entertainment, Cinema and UHD TV. :confused:

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7

I have my fun and games of contract ending in December, luckily I have Virgin Media serving the house, so use them as a stick to beat Sky down. Going to see if I can get Glass thrown in and the price kept the same. Managed Sky Q for free a couple of years ago

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You could say they’re doing that with Sky Glass.

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No, it’s just Sky Q multiscreen (with one other mini-box) TV stuff including Netflix, the UHD/HD pack, and Sky Cinema. Don’t have Kids or Sports packages. I’m pretty sure that when I threaten to cancel I might get a better deal, but even then I think it’ll be better to pack it all in and just stick with the streaming apps.

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What annoys me about their NOW TV service is having to pay £5 extra for variable HD content - dependent on what platform you use. After all these years, you’d think Sky would have done a better job of this, but nope.

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11

If only HBO Max would drop the exclusivity with Comcast/Sky and launch independently here in the UK…

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12

I think that’s the plan when the current contract expires. At which point Sky will become more or less pointless (except for sport?)

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13

I only use NOW and cant see myself sticking around when HBO Max comes and takes the HBO and Warner content. I do think they are going to have to do something to fill the content gap as there’s no way people will pay separate £9.99 subscriptions for entertainment which will mostly be Sky Originals (which to be fair, are normally good, but not as good as the HBO shows) and cinema which, at the moment, is mostly Warner Bros for the bigger films.

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14

They are planning to launch here in 2025. Only a few years left to go…

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15

I’m aching for them to lose the F1 contract. I hope when their deal lapses F1 will just bring their own F1TV service over here, but Sky’s money is too attractive to them.

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I don’t know what they are planning, but when Liberty took over F1, they acknowledged that the U.K. pay per view deal was a bad idea and they’d have preferred a free to air partner.

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17

Oh I hope so. F1 is a very costly sport to watch in the UK if it’s the only live TV you want to watch.

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18

Yes - we were with Sky Broadband for five years, but left as prices just kept going :up:

Wouldn’t budge on price, so we sacked them off and went elsewhere, they then range us up 5 days later and just started throwing numbers about, too late by then.

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19

The current Sky/F1 deal expires in 2024. So I guess we’ll find out then (or late 2023) if more races end on on free-to-air TV. I think once the prospective deals are on the table then Liberty might realise that choosing between more free-to-air coverage and Sky’s money is a more difficult choice than they thought. Especially given the prospective selloff of C4.

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I always play the “I’m going to have to cancel, it’s so expensive” card when my contract ends but the deal I get/accept/give up fighting is creeping up year on year.

But come the end of the year, Sky are going to have to fight to keep people. I’m sure they know lots of people like myself, it’s just a ploy and I will sign up again, I just want a bit off. So we do the dance and carry on. But when the next energy price rise comes, £40/50/60+ for Sky, is going to be something people really have to think about.

I’m hoping this means they’ll fight a bit harder to keep people and give better deals.

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