New series starting soon please?

[JarethTheGoblinKing]

I know Glee is back on the 10th, Good Wife is in a few days, Skins is back 'soon' according to E4.

Any new ones about? We've been looking for CSI/NCIS as well, but can never tell with those.

Anything I might be missing?

sorry to hijack the thread - NetworkGuy - can you tell me about freeview via Sky please? I have sky dish and sky+ box and can't afford the subs any more so was going to just get a freeview box - but can I just tell sky I want to ditch their package, keep the box and keep watching all the usual free channels? and record them still on my sky+ box?

CSI: NY is starting a new season ( 7 ) on Saturday and CSI (Vegas) ( season 11 ) next Tuesday, for anyone who didn't see the trailers during NCIS tonight...

Hi, Hellin. I had the wrong name, and just went off to check. It is actually called Freesat from Sky and they have set up www.freesatfromsky.com which goes to one of the Sky pages.

For someone without Sky/Freesat the cost is 175 quid which includes Sky coming to fit a dish and provide a viewing box and card. Something important is that Sky reserves the right to deactivate a viewing card "from time to time" and a new one needs to be bought. (at whatever they want to charge for it, so it might become an annual fee of 25 or 30 or whatever they dream up).

For me, the advantage would be them fitting the dish and providing a Sky box. However, as you already have the dish and box, you should be able to get the viewing card for 20 quid. If you go for that option, then as your current Sky box can record, it would be worth getting them to confirm, in writing if possible, that you will be able to record when you are using just the 'FreeSat on Sky' viewing card (because comment on the digitalchoices.co.uk site says someone found they were barred from recording with the 'no monthly fees' card).

With a satellite dish, you have lots of options.

Try Sky with the "I want to downgrade to use Freesat from Sky, so can you downgrade me for free" starter question. I've no doubt they will want to keep you paying more, and if that is the case, you could tell them you are tightening your belt and tell them if they cannot offer the FreeSat option, you will consider cancelling and get a Freeview box (a bluff)

After you have been with them for 12 months, you only need to give them a month's notice, and they can cancel completely, but they will hate this idea. Depends where you are whether this is worth doing - if your region has already gone digital then check local Comet / Currys / Asda / Tesco for 'own brand' Freeview boxes at 15 to 20 quid because if you have any older TVs without Freeview built-in, they would show nothing at all.

However, by cancelling completely they will probably offer a better deal for you. I had BSB (which was then bought by Sky in the early 1990s) and therefore had Sky for quite a number of years. When I first cancelled, they came back with an offer of all the channels including the movies and sport, free for 3 months (over Christmas, which was great) and I just marked my calendar and made sure to cancel with about 10 days to go before the end of the 3 months.

Then a couple of years later, they offered all the regular channels plus movies for half price (so I was paying about 17.50 instead of 35 quid) but for a whole year and I was happy with that deal. Sky carries more radio stations than FreeSat which is one of the few reasons I'd consider getting Sky to provide FreeSat (long with the cost of fitting the sat dish).

If you don't get an assurance from Sky that you will be able to record on your Sky Box (and ask them to confirm this in writing, saying once you have a letter of confirmation you will ring back and confirm they should downgrade you), or they want to charge a lot for this card, or you just feel you are about to be locked into another 12 months for Sky Talk and might not want to have much to do with Sky, then you could switch to FreeSat.

FreeSat boxes are available at various costs, from perhaps 50-70 pounds up to 200-300 for models with hard drive for recording.

If you have a suitable TV to handle High Def pictures (and at 300-400 now they are more affordable and likely to be 'common' and cheaper when your TV needs replacing next) then there are differences in what you can get and what it will cost, when you compared Sky against FreeSat.

As far as I can tell, a lot more stations on HD are available via Sky at present, but you would be charged an extra tenner a month for Sky HD (and if more than one room has Sky, they charge a further fee for additional rooms). There are some slight differences in the channels available (but if there are more shopping channels and music video channels on Sky, then not having them is perhaps a benefit if one switched to use FreeSat, anyway!)

With FreeSat (or FreeSat HD) boxes, you have that once-only payment for the box and then hardly anything else to do but plug it in!

As HD TVs come down (or can be bought cheaply on Ebay and free via Freecycle if someone has upgraded to get a '3D' TV) then with FreeSat HD each bedroom could have an HD TV and you would just buy extra FreeSat HD boxes and be without any monthly fees to find...

Not many people would be as fussy about the radio as I am, and for lots of people, just having a satellite box with audio going into a midi system (so you could use the stereo speakers with the TV for better sound, or switch the YB off if you just wanted to listen to a radio station, say).

If you want to use satellite in more than one room, there are easy ways to go from 1 to 4 rooms (or more) but it requires the LNB (piece at the end of the arm fitted on the dish) to be changed to handle extra cables, but each setup will be different (and is really going wildly off topic here!)

wow, thanks for all the info and advice NetworkGuy - going to ring Sky today and see what they say. Being able to record stuff is the key for me so your tip on getting confirmation in writing is much appreciated.

thanks again!

quick update - called Sky, you can pay £10 a month to keep the recording facility. Freesat no cost as I have all the equipment. but then they offered me half price on the current package and reduced my broadband, so I get to keep all my channels for less than I was going to pay just to record freeview & keep broadband. Thanks again NetworkGuy

Jareth apologies for the huge post hi-jack.

Brothers & Sisters starts 20th Jan 10pm