Sky HD / HD TV options

[Pickers]

OMG! how pricy is a sky HD box!!
My dad's just got a new HD TV and is using an old sky standard box of years gone by.
He's been with Sky for about 6 years at £45 a month and now it seems to upgrade to a HD box would cost him £250 + £30 installation.
My dad simply cannot afford that!
We (pheebs and myself) got virgin HD for £45 in Exeter, but in cornwall there is no cable for virgin, meaning for HD TV, sky appear to have him over a barrell. he doesnt need sky sports HD, sky anything HD, just a sky box that will make normal channels a bit clearer via a HDMI connector... :/ Sucks.

[Desmo]

To be honest mate, if he's not going to use the HD channels then I doubt he'll notice too much difference just by using an HDMI connection.

[Pickers]

We notice a hell of a difference when we use our virgin box through scart. The box upscales surprisingly well.

Bah in addition, the sky AV input doesnt seem to auto select between 4:3 and 16:9. The built in decoder swaps automatically so TV is doing its job...

[Belmit]

My dad has also been with Sky for 6 years and recently got an upgrade to HD for free, plus an extra Sky+ box for £50 (yoink! ) Of course it's an extra £10 a month for the subscription but it's the initial outlay that is the big cost. If he gave them some grief he could probably swing it for nothing. Give them the old 'well I've been with you for six years but I'm thinking of cancelling...' ruse.

[FakeSnake]

I love my sky HD

Pickers, I got mine from Comet for £99! as long as I signed up to the free sky talk basic package!
had it installed about 3 weeks ago.. and it rocks!

[Feek]

Originally Posted by Belmit

My dad has also been with Sky for 6 years and recently got an upgrade to HD for free, plus an extra Sky+ box for £50 (yoink! ) Of course it's an extra £10 a month for the subscription but it's the initial outlay that is the big cost. If he gave them some grief he could probably swing it for nothing. Give them the old 'well I've been with you for six years but I'm thinking of cancelling...' ruse.

Interesting, did he get the HD box for free? I've been with them for a long time so it could be worth a blag.

[Toby]

When the inlaws upgraded from Sky SD to HD last year, I was surprised how much better even the SD material & channels looked. It wouldn't surprise me at all if Sky were deliberately squeezing the bandwidth on the SD channels to introduce more artifacts so that, when customers upgrade to HD, all the material looks better, not just the (somewhat limited HD material).

[Belmit]

Originally Posted by Feek

Interesting, did he get the HD box for free? I've been with them for a long time so it could be worth a blag.

I'll ask him later on this evening, but I'm pretty sure he did.

[Dr. Z]

Originally Posted by Vertigo1

When the inlaws upgraded from Sky SD to HD last year, I was surprised how much better even the SD material & channels looked. It wouldn't surprise me at all if Sky were deliberately squeezing the bandwidth on the SD channels to introduce more artifacts so that, when customers upgrade to HD, all the material looks better, not just the (somewhat limited HD material).

Surely that would cost them even more bandwidth (which seems to be at a premuim at the moment?) because they would have to rebroadcast every single SD channel twice! Although its an interesting thought, I just can't see them doing it when they are already having to compress their HD stuff due to bandwidth limitations.

[Pickers]

Originally Posted by Belmit

I'll ask him later on this evening, but I'm pretty sure he did.

This is what I was hoping, but a box is £299 plus installation (pfft) and I was told earlier (without prompting an "I'll leave") that cos we've been with them for 6 years, we'd get 30% discount, which oddly worked out at £249...

I would be really interested to hear if anyone managed to wangle a free HD box - cos thats all we want. don't NEED to take out the subscription, just the HD box.