Sky Essentials in HD

[Nickeva67]

Like everyone else I am fed up with Sky's constant price hikes.

I called to cancel my TV package and they offered me to downgrade to the Essentials package for £15/month with which you can still watch and record the freesat channels but only in SD.

Channels List and On-Demand Players | Freesat

Could someone please confirm whether you can actually view/record any of the FTA channels in HD.

[Nickeva67]

Also can anyone confirm if downgrading to Essentials do you loose all your recordings on your Sky Q box or is it just ones you don't have a subsciption for? ie. will FTA recordings still be available

[nigea99]

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@Nickeva67 wrote:

Like everyone else I am fed up with Sky's constant price hikes.

I called to cancel my TV package and they offered me to downgrade to the Essentials package for £15/month with which you can still watch and record the freesat channels but only in SD.

Channels List and On-Demand Players | Freesat

Could someone please confirm whether you can actually view/record any of the FTA channels in HD.

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hi @Nickeva67 

You can record the FTA channels in HD but there are anomalies with catch up.

IIRC with C4 & C5  you can watch (& record ) in HD but you cannot download (or at least watch) HD from catch up  

You can watch existing recordings only from the FTA channels - any recordings still on the box  from subscription channels will give a prompt to upgrade or similar

[Nickeva67]

Thanks for that, the advisor said I couldn't watch FTA in HD and that I would loose all recordings.

I was offered multiroom for £15, would SkyGo still work?

[nigea99]

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@Nickeva67 wrote:

Thanks for that, the advisor said I couldn't watch FTA in HD and that I would loose all recordings.

I was offered multiroom for £15, would SkyGo still work?

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TBH I don't know but I suspect yes 

[Laing1]

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@Nickeva67 wrote:

Thanks for that, the advisor said I couldn't watch FTA in HD and that I would loose all recordings.

I was offered multiroom for £15, would SkyGo still work?

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@Nickeva67 If the recordings are from subscription channels you would lose them 

as @nigea99 suggest i agree that Sky go will still work 

[Nickeva67]

After another call to Sky to downgrade to TV Essentials I was offered Sky Signature with multi room (non-HD) for £36.50 no contract, so I thought I would give it a go as it would have cost £30 on Essentials. 

[peter+mhj]

It's a load of baloney,  showing Sky News in SD when it's available in HD on FTA, and BBC and ITV have stopped SD so they are shown in HD with Sky Essentials. It's called making money, as we expect from Sky.

[nigea99]

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@peter+mhj wrote:

It's a load of baloney,  showing Sky News in SD when it's available in HD on FTA, and BBC and ITV have stopped SD so they are shown in HD with Sky Essentials. It's called making money, as we expect from Sky.

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Just to let you know SKY News HD is not FTA only the SD version is FTA

This is the same for some other channels such  as U&W (in this case part of the UKTV group)

[PandJ2020]

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@peter+mhj wrote:

 It's called making money, as we expect from Sky.

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Other than they're not: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2024/oct/20/sky-doubles-operating-losses-to-224m-in-2023-as-rev...

[TimmyBGood]

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@peter+mhj wrote:

It's called making money, as we expect from Sky.

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As Comcast stockholders expect from their Sky Group division, anyway, given the Comcast Corporation paid out 39 billion dollars to acquire it. 

Kind of the point of being in business, really.