Happy New Year & New TV Provider

The Sky TV subscription ended overnight.

Last night, we finished viewing the last few recordings and downloads that were still on the remaining Sky+HD set-top box.

Today's tasks are to disconnect and remove the Sky+HD from the "TV & LAN infrastructure" and pack it away. Will also attempt to rationalise and untangle the mass mess(!) of cables behind the cupboard whilst scrabbling about around the back.

The Humax BT Youview+ DTR-T2110 has been handling recordings from Freeview channels since before Christmas, in parallel with mainly downloads from Sky Catch-Up/On Demand (supplemented with the odd recording).

Over the same period, the TV (2nd Generation) has streamed NOW TV Movies, Netflix and some movies from our collection in iTunes on the Mac mini. Planning to replace it with the new TV 4th Generation soon.

So, Happy New Year! Or should that be Happy New TV Provider?

Coming soon: Pros and Cons, Economics, Picture Quality, Hardware Reviews etc.

Farewell Sky+HD

The last day of our Sky TV subscription looms near.

We shall soon be disconnecting the remaining Sky+HD box and packing it away, to join its sibling Sky+HD box that used to be our Multiroom box in the tech graveyard corner. 

We're going (mainly) "over the top" for a 12 month experimental period using NOW TV & Netflix (maybe also Amazon Video as some stage) and  a YouView+ recorder for recording stuff and watching Catch-Up from Freeview channels.

As far as our customer relationship with Sky is concerned, all is not lost.

We continue to be a Sky Fibre Pro broadband customer and, of course, Sky plc will continue to benefit from the re-direction of our (albeit reduced amounts of) entertainment spending into NOW TV.

No plans to sell my Sky shares at the present time. Why? Because I am confident that there are still plenty of people prepared to stick with Sky+HD, I'm sure there will be reasonable demand for Sky Q when it becomes available and Sky also have the somewhat unique proposition of NOW TV to mop up the rest.

But, in my opinion, the future of TV viewing will be non-linear. For various reasons, it won't be the right solution for everybody, but right now it looks like the right solution for us. 

We are excited to be (at least partially) cutting the cord!

Sky Broadband Unlimited Fibre

I'm sure you will be pleased to hear that, on 31 January 2012, Sky finally announced the launch of a fibre broadband product.

http://corporate.sky.com/media/press_releases/2012/sky_builds_on_broadband_growth_with_increased_coverage_10000_wifi_hotspots_and_new_fibre_launch

The fibre broadband product launches in April, but Sky has already started contacting some customers (who have previously pre-registered an interest) to invite them to join a final trial. A few people are already connected and reporting massive speed improvement.

Obviously I am very keen to upgrade our internet connection to this product! I have pre-registered (both last year and this year) but I haven't heard anything yet. If they ever do call before the product launch, I will accept immediately. Otherwise, it's a case of waiting. In any case, hopefully by this summer, we will have a much faster internet connection.

Super-fast fibre broadband has been available where we live for at least a year now, but I have resisted changing to a different provider - mainly because initially it was quite expensive, but also because other providers restrict their service in many ways.

I'm quite keen to stay with Sky because their internet service is truly unlimited - both in terms of monthly usage and (allegedly) traffic management that can affect the speed of different types of traffic at certain times of day.