Does anyone have any experiences with alternatives to SKY? I currently pay £30 for a digibox (subsidised) and the variety package. They have just told me that it's going up by £2 per month which is not a lot but makes me think that I'm paying too much for what I get. I don't want any movie or sports channels just basicish entertainment. Just want to put on the TV and watch whatever is on rather than selecting from a huge menu of available programs to stream. Any thoughts would be most welcome.

Sounds as if Freeview or Freesat is all you need.

kodi box or get an open box all the info found on youtube or google them

If you have sky, you already have the dish and skybox is that correct? if this is the case then just cancel with sky, the box and dish belong to you and you can get all the usual programmes bbc, itv channel 4 and 5 etc free via the sky set up, or if you just have the dish you can get a free sat box, hope this helps

Get yourself a Amazon Firestick with kodi, one off payment and every channel free all sky channels and all sports box sets the lot bst thing I've bought.

Thanks for all the advice, I've never heard of kodi but will look into it and some of the other options.

Someone in Wallasey sells Amazon firesticks loaded with kodi on gumtree. £60 and he comes and installs it and shows you how it works. Sounds a bargain to me and will probably be my next bit of kit.

Dilly just buy the firestick, it is simple to load Kodi yourself, there are umpteen tutorials on youtube that walk you through it, I got my firestick when they were on offer for £25.00, and I ain't no computer whiz.

As Casper has said, just buy a blank Firestick. Never pay for a Fully Loaded one. Pretty simple to do, lots of groups on Facebook with full step by step guidance.

Fully Loaded ones are people taking something that someone has made for free and trying to profit from it.

I've been blocked by numerous groups/people for pointing this out to unsuspecting people.

What you'll also more than likely find with these "preloaded" ones is that a lot of the add ons on them will be out of date so don't work properly if at all.

all you'll really need is -

Exodius for Movies/Tv Series
NJM & Phoenix for sports

There are other addons for the kids and the more 'Adult' themes too

Don't really understand how these work but they sound very good. So what you're saying us you buy this fire stick and then you don't have to pay any subscription whatsoever? You don't have to pay after a certain time or anything like that. I only have a freeview box which suits me really but this sounds too good to be true.

Buy Fire stick, install Kodi, lots of free stuff out there yes. It's by no means a replacement for a service like Sky and requires a little tinkering now and again to keep things up to date but nothing too taxing once you get the hang of it and as has been said, plenty of resource out on t'interweb for guidance. There are also subscription services for live TV which are far more reliable than the free stuff and are available for much, much less than you would pay Sky/Virgin etc. No recording available although I believe it can be set up with other devices, not sure how difficult this is though.

There are downsides to Kodi. Buffering of stuff is a big issue, but that's mainly for live sports. But for watching TV shows and films (providing they're not only just out) its pretty good.

The system does require a bit of occasional tweaking and maintenance though, and decent broadband with no web safe / family filters turned on is a must.

It really is true, they are what is called a streaming device and down load through your wifi, you can buy a dedicated device, a small cube mx box come aready loaded with add ons(look them up on internet) that plugs into the mains and into the hdmi input on your telly, or you can purchase a firestick and add your own programes,
hope this helps