New Sky packages

Am I the only one who thinks Sky is no longer good value for money? I would pay £20 for 350 channels, kids 3D and HD. But you are looking at over £30 for access to HD and boxsets per month. That doesn't seem worth it to me. It should all be included for the £20.

There has been no change in Movie or Sport packages either, I really feel Sky have too many movie channels, that are being buffered out with low quality content (as are many of the other channels).

Thank god for Now TV, but I suspect Sky will raise the price of this in the end when the traditional offering starts to degrade.

Considering Now TV is I think £7.99 for the core entertainment channels plus on demand content (which I assume is effectively what's in Boxsets) paying £25/month plus hundreds of channels you'll never watch just isn't appealing. I'm currently paying £99 for the year for Entertainment and Movies via Now TV - now I'll rarely watch the movies, but for an extra couple of quid on the years fee for entertainment alone it was a no-brainer.

Is it a sign perhaps of more and more people dropping the Variety package? Certainly if your main interest is the premium channels, Variety would be the first thing you’d cut from your sub.

Interesting. I've just signed up for Sky Q in January and have taken a new 18 month contract. As part of the upgrade, I agreed to move to their top TV Pack, "Box Sets". I don't really want the kids channels so would be happy enough to ditch those and keep the rest under this new regime.

Quick question, though. Does anyone know if I can downgrade my TV pack options during a contract period? I'm never too clear on that - I understand that I obviously wouldn't be able to make significant changes like dropping broadband or TV altogether - but is there a degree of flexibility around TV pack content while you're within a contract?

Obviously I would like to knock £5 off come January but will I be unable to do this until my contract runs out?

I believe that it used to be the case that you were locked in for 18 months - now you can change your add ons with 31 days notice.

Remember that Red Button content, HD Content and Premium Features such as the Apps Section of Sky Q are only available with box sets packages on Sky Q. If you have variety or original you will lose all of these.

It'll be interesting to see if you still have to have everything to have HD and red button going forward.

Sky must be feeling the heat from the competition both from their own NowTV and the likes of Amazon and Netflix (and no doubt others like BT and Talktalk and others). In an on-demand world the concept of sticking a round lump of metal on the side of the house seems almost like an anachronism.

But yeah, £20 a month is fairly expensive, especially when Freeview is available to many homes via the existing aerials on people's houses (save for a £20 box if you need one but modern TVs have it all built in) and then you can top up your viewing choices via NowTV's entertainment packages (or deals, as I also jumped on the £99/£8.25pm deal) to suit yourself and have access to the Hub/iPlayer/All4 too. When things are that cheap why would you want to go back to Sky?

I mean yes, Sky+ is cool, it has a large catch-up section all in one place, certain services are ad-free compared to other providers, the hardware is reliable (the software less so sometimes based on recent releases) and its a piece of cake to use. But realistically if you have Sky and only watch what's already on Freeview, you may as well just pour money down the drain and I think a lot of people are beginning to realise this.

Ten years after Sky HD launched and they're still charging a premium for it. They eventually jacked in the Sky+ fee, what's stopping them making HD standard?

Indeed, to get Sky Sports in HD for example you need the box sets pack @ €38 p/m and pay the €27 fee for Sky Sports and if you want Ultra HD you need to pay for €12 multiscreen as well.

Having to take a bunch of channels you don't want for €16 more to watch the channels you are already paying for in HD is a disgrace.

I'm not so sure about this.

Clearly the new pricing structure is to mitigate the poor value for money that the Original Bundle had at the same price - and offering more flexibility to viewers' Sky packages.

When taking the Entertainment Pack with HD, Kids and Box Sets, it rounds up to £35 a month - £3 cheaper compared to the outgoing Box Sets Bundle. I like the idea of having a range of on demand programming and channel choice, but when looking at the fact that Now TV offers most of the Box Sets and 12 of the pay channels for £8, as well as the TVPlayer Plus packages, it's a real struggle to recommend Sky.

The recording features of Q are sublime as well as catch-up, but is this enough? It also really depends on whether the pay channels and HD appeal to customers - but £5 for HD channels even at a time when 1080p is the current standard is pretty laughable.

Aside from the likes of the 5 main terrestrials and major Freeview channels such as ITV2, E4, Dave, the BBC News Channel and Pick, I tend to watch the likes of Sky One, Atlantic, GOLD, Comedy Central, Syfy, FOX, Discovery, and Nat Geo - amongst a few others - so NOW TV and TVPlayer work out decently for a good price.

Isn't Now tv all done via broadband? While Sky is via the dish?

Yep - NOW TV is streamed through the Internet, whilst Sky relies on the Astra 2 satellite system for its service.