Box office on freesat?

[magnatom]

We currently have Sky+. It's been great, but the box is slowly but surely giving up the ghost. As well as that money is, as always, tight, so any way of saving money is most welcome.

So I have been looking at canceling the sky and getting freesat, making a considerable saving. However, having three kids and limited time, Mrs Magnatom and I don't get out to the movies much, or get the chance to pop out for a DVD (store is a fair distance away). Up until now we use the Sky box office to catch the odd movie.

i know there are schemes where you can get DVD's delivered, but our viewing is very infrequent and so I don't think this is the way to go. Any suggestions as to how I could solve this? Is it possible simple via the internet (legal of course!)? Does freesat have this service? Any other possibilities?

 

[Crackle]

You can use Blinkbox or Itunes for movies and just link your computer to the telly either via a VGA cable and an audio cable (you need the audio cable otherwise you'll be listening off your laptop) or, if you have a modern laptop many have HDMI output. I don't think you can burn it to disc from either but I shall check. Either will pre-download or stream but unless your internet connection is wonderbar (like mine, heh!) then streaming can be jerky, better to pre-download.

And if you buy a Freesat box, get the Humax Foxsat but your Sky box will give you the free channels anyway.

 

[magnatom]

You can use Blinkbox or Itunes for movies and just link your computer to the telly either via a VGA cable and an audio cable (you need the audio cable otherwise you'll be listening off your laptop) or, if you have a modern laptop many have HDMI output. I don't think you can burn it to disc from either but I shall check. Either will pre-download or stream but unless your internet connection is wonderbar (like mine, heh!) then streaming can be jerky, better to pre-download.

And if you buy a Freesat box, get the Humax Foxsat but your Sky box will give you the free channels anyway.

The problem is my TV is an older CRT, and I think it only has scart connections and one s-video. I'll need to check what outputs I have on my laptop to see what connectors i would need.

The sky+ is on the way out. I was looking at the Humax foxsat.

 

[Crackle]

You can get VGA to SCART or Svideo, check e-bay.

I've got the Foxsat, lovely bit of kit and way better than the Sky controller and menu system once you're used to it.

 

[beanzontoast]

We also (currently - about to change) got Sky for the movies and it was novel for a while. However, when I recently kept a note of what movies we watched over a period of a few weeks and what channel they were on, we found we weren't really using Box Office at all and only about 10% of the films were from the normal Sky Movies channels.

So for us, I came to the conclusion it wasn't worth continuing and we're in the process of migrating to Freesat. Probably end up doing a few more dvd rentals and purchases in the coming year - we generally have a couple of dvd's around the place that we've bought but haven't watched yet so when the chance arises, there's something ready. And I think we'd still be ok for films to watch on 'normal' tv at a push!