Alternatives to Sky Movies
 

I am looking to potentially ditch Sky Movies and would appreciate some advice. This is our current situation:

1. We have a full HD 42" TV
2. We have Sky HD with Movies
3. We have Sky Broadband but it is very slow
4. Our phone is through Sky as well
5. We have a Dell XPS12 laptop with HDMI output capability.

The broadband is livable but annoying. We don't make full use of the movies, but we will make time to sit and watch good new releases. We don't pay to download box office movies as our internet it too slow; we only watch Movies when they are on Sky Movies HD 1,2,3, etc. We always watch movies in HD.

Overall we are paying a fortune to Sky for a phone we don't use, movies we rarely watch and a broadband service that is like 500-1000k at best!

We are thinking of stripping back to a more basic packaged and getting BT Infinity (34gb fiber). Our phone and broadband would be with BT and would work out cheaper than our current set up. However, I'd want to figure out a way to get movies in full HD. I also wouldn't want to have to wait longer than I already have to wait for titles to work their way onto the Sky Movie channels. I'm a little skeptical about the selection of Movies on Netflix and I find it worrying that you can't seem to browse the full selection unless you sign up.

To summarise, I want to ditch Sky Movies and get BT Infinity as I'll have faster broadband and be better off per month. With that faster broadband I can surely stream/download full-HD movies to the XP12 and HDMI it to the TV. A film I missed at the cinema that will be coming to Sky Movies HD soon is Avengers; if I ditch Sky movies in favour of speedy broadband, how do I ensure I can sit down and enjoy the Avengers (soon) in Full HD.

Also, if I ditch Sky Movies could I still rent films on an ad hoc basis through Sky Box Office? If so, how much is a typical HD new release?

pirate bay...lol

I have both Netfix and Lovefilm. Netfix is alwayin hd add DD where as lovefilm omlly have some in hd. I pay £11 a month for both and each has a different choice of movies and tv programs.
I have never seen any problems with streaming Netflix but Lovefilm can crash.

You could - they used to be £3.99 a few month ago.

Sky movies is rubbish anyway, netflix would be a better option than Sky IMO.

Does netflix get all the new movies though? Whenever I miss a movie in the Cinema I always rest easy that it'll be on Sky Movies a year or so later. I still want to watch said missed movies in full-HD quality and preferably without playing the pirate-bay lottery.

Connect your sky box to the Internet you'll get some movies on demand included in your package iirc.

Netflix is crap if you don't mind watching movies from 3 Years ago

Got the sky wireless box majigger-thingy to connect to our broadband. Happy to pay £3.99 on an occasional basis for those times that we do want to watch a film. I just don't know if we get the same level of access to the pay-per-view movies if we are on a lesser package. It would seem likely that you do; after all, you are paying them money to watch something!

Lovefilm has an option to have internet tv on demand and bluerays sent to your home to watch. Depends on what you pay for how many you can rent at a time.

Netflix does have a 30 day free trial, so could be worth using that to see what is available.

This, Netflix has so much more on it as well. Well worth the subscription I found.

http://hola.org/unblocker.html

Game changer.

There's also Now TV (which is owned by Sky), along with Netflix and Lovefilm. All three do 30 day free trial periods and I've taken advantage of that with Netflix and only to find that they don't enough films I currently want to watch to justify paying a subscription.
I've not tried the other two yet, partly because Lovefilm is/has been notoriously difficult to actually cancel. Now TV is meant to have most of the recent releases over the other two so I might give that a go next.

Get yourself one of these. :norty:
http://satandcable.com/content/openb...te-receiver-v3

Plugs straight into your sat dish and router. Let's just say it works out 'slightly' cheaper than Sky. ;)

thats what i have - basic box but does the job :D

infact that link shows an upgraded box it has more ports on it - it has a S/PDIF Interface port so i can connect it to my amp

do you have the v3 box can you confirm if it has the digital port?

Just had a look and the back of mine's exactly the same as the one in the link. :)

bugger I need that port as the hdmi lead doesnt pass through dolby sound to my amp

what firmware is yours on?

Version AnonymouSX V2 FOR S10

What does that get?

All the sky channels via card sharing , which is illegal if you're the law abiding type

The boxes do , witch the audio out setting to bitrate

the openbox is very basic it doenst give you that option in the menus - my amp detects the sound on all my devices and changes to thx/ dolby etc

but it stays on all channel stereo for the openbox

I have had 3 open boxes and still have one it gives that option .

Even my s9 did

jailbroken apple tv and xmbc is meant to be very good, but id get fibreoptic bb to use it

what setting is it under i cant see it no doubt under my eyes

Under the contrast and saturation part of the iirc, it'll say audio it'll be set to lpcm change it to raw. Ill upload a photo tomorrow evening

ive found a B S setting which im guessing stands for bitstream comes under digital audio i cant test it yet as my amp in in for repair

but please upload a pic so i can double check

thanks again

Yeah that's right if its bs that's bitstream, then when on movie channel press audio on the remote and just check the Dolby digital stream is selected

Or even a Raspberry Pi if you want something cheap to use 1channel.ch and others.

cool thanks