Sky cuts the cost of HD box - but the £10 fee remains

Does anypone know if i can use the sky card in different sky boxes?

I have multi room with 2x sky+ boxes but want a third HD box for occasional use on my flatscreen (ie football, movies).

If I upgrade 1 service to HD will the HD card work in a sky+ box then in the HD box when I want use use the big screen?  I don't want to payout for another multiroom when it won't be used that much.

Alternatively is there a (HD) video sender that is any good?  I have tried a couple (thanks argos) and they were all pretty useless at providing a good picture

thx

I won't be switching to Sky HD if the £10 fee is still there, but I can't cancel Sky and get Free-Sat either because the Football is too important to me. Oh well, so for the time being, my only source of Hi-def material is through Blu-ray discs. But yeah, I hope everybody just waits and not subscribe and hopefully Sky relents and drops the $10 fee (yeeeah right and the winning numbers for this week's lottery is the same as my birthday)

I too agreed £60 was a rip off for existing customers, and an extra £10 a month was a bit steep. Then I thought logically about it as Mark111 has and I bit the bullet and got HD. In the great scheme of things, £260 (what it cost me 4-5 months ago)is not a lot when compared to a Blueray or even a decent DVD. I was prepared to spend £1700 on a TV and I wasn't getting the best out of it.

Now I have HD, even the extra £10 a month seems very reasonable when I find myself watching in awe at the quality of the picture during the cricket, football, Battlestar Galactica etc. After all, everything in life that is higher quality costs extra. Why should watching TV be any different. If Sky didn't charge these prices, they wouldn't be able to drive the whole market forward in this area and we would all still be marvelling at the quality of ITV!!

Just for watching BBC HD is probably not justifiable to pay the £10 but, for a movie junkie like myself it seems to be well worth it.

With SKY HD and the Movie Mix, the £10 / month to record and watch my TV series and movies in HD, is not a bad deal at all.

With the new content available, I've stoped buying DVDs and BDs are still too expensive. This has reduced my monthly bill for multimedia entertainment even further.

4 pints for £10? Where do you live - we're all headed round!

It is, in some ways, depressingly true that most of us will pay £60 or more for 1m of HDMI cable or substantially more for a run of speaker cable (plugs extra of course!) without thinking twice. Sky know that £60 is generally not a significant element in the cost of putting in an AV system. It is undoubtedly unfair to existing customers but Sky know there is no alternative and so they make the business decision. I suggest it is viewed as simply part of the cost of the box since the total of £210 is very good value for a bit of kit that does what it does. Again, some of us sad individuals used to pay this for a stylus 20 years ago!

The power that we consumers have is to choose to not subscribe to Sky HD until the £10 per month is dropped. Sky have their budgeted revenue for the year and a forecast every month of how things are going so far, against this original budget. The only thing that will make them reduce or eliminate the £10 per month is if they see the budget not being met by a significant margin and they think that the extra volume at the reduced monthly fee will produce a better result.

Sky is clearly not at this point yet.

So, our only realistic option is for all of us to stop subscribing to SKY HD, and, in the longer term, encourage the development of competition either by buying free-sat and/or by lobbying competition authorities to realise what a dominent position SKY actually has.

Alternatively we could just drink 4 pints less per month (saving the £10) and sit back and enjoy the best public broadcasts (BBC) and the best english language films (UK and Hollywood) in the entire world and try not to worry. (At least not until the credit card statement, mortgage arrears notice and gas/electricity bills drops through the letter box!)

@dmroberts

What's even more annoying is that if you have Sky+ and upgrade to Sky HD, the engineers don't have to do anything other than switch the boxes over. Both Sky + and HD run off the same cabling and dish.

Now you may think £60 for unplugging one box and plugging in another is a joke, but if you don't get a Sky engineer to install it they do not offer any kind of support should things go wrong.

Over a barrel? Just a bit...

Huh, skr1?

Sky have hd by the g--- . free- view need to catch up

but Murdoch? new that!

dmroberts - That's a pretty excellent point!

Clare - understood and agreed. apologies for the sudden jerk of the knee.

Andrew, im confused. i definitely paid 99 for my sky+ box and 30 for installation. I have the 2 channel box tho, could that be it...?

So New Subscribers pay £30 for a dish to be installed outside their home, box installed under the telly and all the cables that go inbetween, including all the hardware etc and existing Sky+ subscribers pay <b>£60</b> for a door to door delivery service of the new HD box! We don't need any form of installation! That's the most expensive courier service I've ever heard of!

What ever happened to rewarding people for thier loyalty,shouldn't an upgrade be free installation, after all they want money for the box & £10 a month,twice what freesat will cost in a year,what's it cost for a few meters of cable & transponder.

  They need to drop the monthly charge...

al7478 - my initial comment re 'I wonder how long the standard Sky box would be around' should have been clearer.

I meant the basic, non-PVR Sky box, as opposed to SD

Sky+. With the big advertising push Sky has for Sky+, plus the price cut, it's looking more and more like the entry-level Sky option.

Until they drop the £10 fee, then I won't be moving over. As for the £30 for new customers but £60 for existing? How's that for a kick in the nads for all our custom and loyality. Nah, I'll wait thank you very much.

Yes, al7478 - it is in line with the Sky+ box in terms of the price of that box, taken as it stands without any other Sky services. £150, whether you go for Sky+ or Sky+ HD

"certain people" - forget that bit, was talking nonsense. But the pricing and content still need work.

im not sure what universe the people who are asking "how long will the standard def box be around" are living in. It'l be around until prices become realistic and content extensive. No signs of that yet.

They havent exactly put it in line with sky+ boxes have they? Theyve jsut made it £150 for certain people, which is more than a sky+ box, and what about other folk...?

They'd still need to massively increase HD content to get me interested, even if flat panel TVs had enticed me yet.

I think that is much more reasonable now, and definitely an incentive for me to get it.

Amazingly I phoned up Sky not 2 days ago asking about switching to their broadband. They said that wasn't a problem, and when I enquired about a HD box they said they could do one for £200, and the normal installation.

Cheeky so-and-so's, I'll be phoning up tonight to get a deal on the installation.

I cancelled my HD when the footie season finished.  Still get BBCHD and CH4HD free though (even if not alot of programmes broadcast on these channels are in HD). I was hoping they would scrap the HD charge but ill prob turn it back on when the season starts again because its a must for watchin football!

Shame about the fee remaining, but while the free competition only offers  2 part time channels they don't exactly have an incentive to cut it.

I really was hoping for the £10 / month to disappear, it's simply not worth paying extra for so few channels. Plus £60 for installation is daylight robbery for a 5 min job.

I cancelled my HD sub last month and theres no way I'll be going back, simply not worth it.

I wonder how long the standard Sky box is for this world....