F1 HD on Sky

[itz_baseline]

Is anyone else annoyed that they have just taken F1 HD off Sky customers? Turns out they have rolled everyone back to just SD and want another £5+ per month just to upgrade to exactly what we had 24 hours ago?

Annoying......looking at what Virgin have to offer.

[Mashedpotatoes]

I cannot find any info on this do you have a link ?

[voicey]

My channel still says HD.

[itz_baseline]

No links but they have changed the channels around. For example 401 used to be Sky Sports 1 HD. But this is now Sky sports SD. 406 used to be F1 HD. This is now F1 SD. On mine when I find the HD version of the channel (I think it is 439) I get a message saying I need to call to grade to the HD package.

When I call Sky they tell me the HD sport package was only in HD free for a trail period and I have to now upgrade to an HD pack.

[Mashedpotatoes]

Still 406 on mine.
Were you a sky HD customer before April 2013 ?

[pincher]

401 - 406 are all still HD for me.

[Crafty_]

Mine is still ok too.

I'm on an original plan, no sports but do have HD and I get the F1 channel. I know that if I make any changes to my package I will lose the F1 Channel and will have to buy sports as well to get it. AFAIK if you pay for HD you get every channel in HD that you get in SD, so I don't understand why you'd have to pay extra again for a particular HD channel.

Virgin is even more expensive than sky from what I can see.

[Teppic]

Mine is OK - again, no sports but I have the legacy HD pack to get F1.

The only thing I did notice last night was that Ian McShane's voice-over now just says "This is Sky Sports F1" instead of "This is Sky Sports F1 HD". The DOG in the top right hand corner still says HD. The program guide also still identifies it as HD.

[Crafty_]

Sky F1 HD is channel 406
Sky F1 is channel 439

Just did some digging about, if I went to virgin it'd cost me an extra £18 a month over what I pay now.

[itz_baseline]

Yeah i used to be on the old HD package where i got F1 6 months ago but someone decided to upgrade me at Sky and told me i would not lose the F1channel. However, it was a lie, i lost the F1 channel and told me they couldnt switch me back as it was an old package they no longer offered. They they sold me the Sky Sports package in HD......that was 6 months ago. Now they are coming back telling me i need to pay more to upgrade to HD as they have decided what they gave me 6 months ago was an introductory offer.

[evoivboy]

if you have the HD package the standard sky channels are defaulted to HD
if you do not have HD the sky channels are defaulted to standard

[sjn2004]

Slightly off topic but I fancy watching the races that the BBC are only showing highlights of this year and SKY must be joking if they think I'll pay close on £600 to watch 11 races.

Are their any european satellites that you can access for free feeds like RTL etc obviously with a second dish?

TIA

[joewilliams]

sjn2004 said:

Slightly off topic but I fancy watching the races that the BBC are only showing highlights of this year and SKY must be joking if they think I'll pay close on £600 to watch 11 races.

Are their any european satellites that you can access for free feeds like RTL etc obviously with a second dish?

TIA

You can buy a Now TV pass for £10 for the day - so £100 to watch the non-BBC races, or £190 for all of them.

[P-Jay]

joewilliams said:

sjn2004 said:

Slightly off topic but I fancy watching the races that the BBC are only showing highlights of this year and SKY must be joking if they think I'll pay close on £600 to watch 11 races.

Are their any european satellites that you can access for free feeds like RTL etc obviously with a second dish?

TIA

You can buy a Now TV pass for £10 for the day - so £100 to watch the non-BBC races, or £190 for all of them.

If you haven't watched the Sky offering before I wouldn't go mad to for all 19 races, they do some things better than the BBC, some things worse - but it's certainly not worth paying £10 to watch it on Sky rather than BBC.

[scubadude]

sjn2004 said:

Slightly off topic but I fancy watching the races that the BBC are only showing highlights of this year and SKY must be joking if they think I'll pay close on £600 to watch 11 races.

Are their any european satellites that you can access for free feeds like RTL etc obviously with a second dish?

TIA

Should have jumped in at the start, only £300/yr for the early adopters ;-)

I love it how every time this rears its ugly head people slag off SKY, FFS, they run a pay-per-view business model, what do you expect?

The "fault" we lost free-to-air F1 lies solely at the feet of the BBC who traded F1 in for Tennis and moving to the horrible offices in Salford that no one seems to like.


FWIW, There is more to SKY than just F1, obviously depends where you live. For us it meant we went from 16 channels on Freeview to 500-odd channels with 40+ in HD.

Yes, F1 was the driver but we got to enjoy the Olympics in HD and the missus loves all the HD Sky American channels, if your family watches the channels and shows SKY carries the price is spread across you all, not just for the Formula 1.

[P-Jay]

scubadude said:

Should have jumped in at the start, only £300/yr for the early adopters ;-)

I love it how every time this rears its ugly head people slag off SKY, FFS, they run a pay-per-view business model, what do you expect?

The "fault" we lost free-to-air F1 lies solely at the feet of the BBC who traded F1 in for Tennis and moving to the horrible offices in Salford that no one seems to like.


FWIW, There is more to SKY than just F1, obviously depends where you live. For us it meant we went from 16 channels on Freeview to 500-odd channels with 40+ in HD.

Yes, F1 was the driver but we got to enjoy the Olympics in HD and the missus loves all the HD Sky American channels, if your family watches the channels and shows SKY carries the price is spread across you all, not just for the Formula 1.

Can't speak for everyone, but as a new/non-sky customer the price to watch F1 is obscenely high, if like me your a 'legacy viewer' I.E. you're getting F1 HD included in your £10 a month HD package, fair enough I think - but for new customers you need to buy Sports HD or whatever, £30-£40 a month, the lions share of which is going towards paying for football, asking F1 fans to subsidise that shower of wkers is a bit rich I think.

[eybic]

I've just subscribed to Sky again after being with Virgin for a couple of years. I can't get Virgin where I live now but managed to get everything on Sky for £36 per month through an Amazon Local voucher which is 50% off for 12 months on a 12 month contract. I don't want any of the other sports channels and wouldn't have subscribed if I hadn't got the substantial discount.

[P-Jay]

Gaz. said:

P-Jay said:

Can't speak for everyone, but as a new/non-sky customer the price to watch F1 is obscenely high, if like me your a 'legacy viewer' I.E. you're getting F1 HD included in your £10 a month HD package, fair enough I think - but for new customers you need to buy Sports HD or whatever, £30-£40 a month, the lions share of which is going towards paying for football, asking F1 fans to subsidise that shower of wkers is a bit rich I think.

I assure you the football doesn't take up the lions share of the air time. This Saturday between 2pm-3.30pm my planner shows - Scottish Premier League Football, SuperLeague Rugby, Live Test Cricket, Tennis, European Tour Golf, classic golf, English Premier League magazine, 1st winter Jerez test, Ted's notebook & Alain Prost bio. That's just a 90 minute snap shot over 6 channels. Sunday at the same time isn't too different.

It'd be interesting to see how many hours are devoted to each sport, but I wouldn't be surprised to find that it is golf that gets the most air time. I biffed Sky Sports years ago but I never felt I was paying for hours of football.

Time isn't my issue, it's the money - the premier league alone is worth £1bn a year in the UK in TV rights sky pays £760m a year for this share, F1 by comparison costs Sky £40m so about 5% of what it pays for Football - even if we forget about every other sport they show - some of the Golf and Cricket must be pretty pricy and give F1 a 5% as represented by the £35 a month they want for the sports package - F1 costs - £1.75 per month, the rest you're paying for a lot of football, cricket, rugby league and golf - if you're into those things - then maybe it's okay - if like me, you're really not, then it's a bit of a kick in the arse to be asked to pay some of the wages of Wayne Rooney* to watch Lewis Hamilton race*.

Time really isn't an issue, Sky rightly concluded that F1 / Motorsport Fans aren't really the same as Football / Cricket fans so set up a separate F1 channel which only shows F1 stuff.

[MissChief]

Someone said my name?

What's happened is that Customers upgrading to Entertainment Extra+ were given the 'Premium HD' pack for free to begin with when in actual fact is should be an extra £5.25. Now this free period has stopped the premium (i.e. Sports and Movies) channels have reverted back to their SD equivalents and if you want them back you'll need to pay the extra £5.25. Confusing? Absolutely.

[tonyvid]

sjn2004 said:

Are their any european satellites that you can access for free feeds like RTL etc obviously with a second dish?

Yep - I did this last year using RTL from the other ASTRA satellite(got an old Sky dish for free and set it up myself, TV has a satellite tuner) and audio from BBC R5live. The down side is the time delay of the sat signal. If you have the ability to pause the feeds you can eventually get them both in sync but its a PITA!

With all the changes going on theis year I have decided to go to Sky for a year using the uSwitch discount of 25% - I like all the practice sessions and think there will be a lot going on while they sort all the new cars and rules