We've been with Sky for a few years now. We originally had Sky when we lived in Crownhill. Then we had to move from that house (full details in an earlier blog post.) to this house. We opted for Freeview. More out of necessity rather than choice, because there was no Sky dish at this address. Neither was there a decent out-door ariel, which you needed if you were to receive a decent signal from Freeview. We had a Freeview set-top box and had an indoor ariel, but the picture quality was very poor. We did an on-line search through a price comparison site in an attempt to find an alternative television provider. We had intended to set up a Virgin media account, but soon discovered that we couldn't have one basically because Virgin, which is a cable company, wasn't available in Milton Keynes, which seemed a bit strange, considering that the place is so modern, you would imagine that it would have been cabled when the place was built. So we didn't have much of a choice but to go with Sky. We also wanted to switch our internet provider as well as having a land-line telephone, so we decided to have all of these services with one provider. Also, with Freeview, even if there was a decent enough signal, their service was (and probably still is) fairly basic, to say the least. You get BBC1, BBC2, ITV and Channel 4 and a handful of what can best be called 'cast-off' channels. All very well if you don't want to pay for a subscription. We wanted to be able to watch a wider range of programmes and Sky was beginning to branch out and make it's own shows. As I'm not very interested in sport, and neither is Carol, if it comes to that, football in particular, there seemed no point in having any of the sports channels at additional cost. We felt we were missing out as there are exclusive channels they have which Freeview and Virgin don't provide. Such as Sky Arts (at that time they had two Arts channels.) Which is why we set up a Sky account and had a Sky + box as well as internet and landline telephone. It makes it simpler if you have all these services from one provider, meaning only one direct debit payment each month.
We upgraded our Sky service to Sky Q fairly recently. We wanted to have a television in our bedroom, so chose to have a multi-screen service, which means we have the main Sky Q box in the lounge. It is connected via wifi (the router is in the hall near the telephone socket.) We bought an HD television just before we got the new Sky contract sorted out. It was a 39 inch Toshiba. But it didn't last long. It failed to work and it seemed we were going to be without television for a while until we could afford a replacement. I still can't believe that set only lasted four years at most. We now have a 43 inch Hitachi and, quite honestly, it's a better set, which, like the old Toshiba, has a built-in DVD player.
So, why have I waffled on for two paragraphs? Where is all this leading? Well, the other day Carol mentioned that she couldn't get some of the channels to work. You'd get a 'no satellite signal' message come up. BBC1, BBC2, ITV and Channel 4 and 5 appeared fine, which was odd, because if they worked, why not the Sky subscription channels, such as Sky1, Sky Atlantic and the Sky Arts channel? I eventually rang the sky helpline and the on-line man ran me through some self-help instructions, the usual range of options to re-set and re-boot the Sky Q box, but nothing worked. Those channels would not work. We have booked an appointment to have an engineer come and sort the thing out on Saturday afternoon, so, hopefully, it will be back to normal after then.
I'm intrigued by the automated telephone system Sky has when you ring their helpline. It's voice-activated for a lot of the menu when you first call. I think it might put some people off ringing at all, those who don't like using automated systems. But the voice they use is quite realistic, which is probably why it might be off-putting. But I soon got through to a human and there wasn't the usual long wait you often get with call-centres and then listening to awful music for what seems like hours and hours.
We upgraded our Sky service to Sky Q fairly recently. We wanted to have a television in our bedroom, so chose to have a multi-screen service, which means we have the main Sky Q box in the lounge. It is connected via wifi (the router is in the hall near the telephone socket.) We bought an HD television just before we got the new Sky contract sorted out. It was a 39 inch Toshiba. But it didn't last long. It failed to work and it seemed we were going to be without television for a while until we could afford a replacement. I still can't believe that set only lasted four years at most. We now have a 43 inch Hitachi and, quite honestly, it's a better set, which, like the old Toshiba, has a built-in DVD player.
So, why have I waffled on for two paragraphs? Where is all this leading? Well, the other day Carol mentioned that she couldn't get some of the channels to work. You'd get a 'no satellite signal' message come up. BBC1, BBC2, ITV and Channel 4 and 5 appeared fine, which was odd, because if they worked, why not the Sky subscription channels, such as Sky1, Sky Atlantic and the Sky Arts channel? I eventually rang the sky helpline and the on-line man ran me through some self-help instructions, the usual range of options to re-set and re-boot the Sky Q box, but nothing worked. Those channels would not work. We have booked an appointment to have an engineer come and sort the thing out on Saturday afternoon, so, hopefully, it will be back to normal after then.
I'm intrigued by the automated telephone system Sky has when you ring their helpline. It's voice-activated for a lot of the menu when you first call. I think it might put some people off ringing at all, those who don't like using automated systems. But the voice they use is quite realistic, which is probably why it might be off-putting. But I soon got through to a human and there wasn't the usual long wait you often get with call-centres and then listening to awful music for what seems like hours and hours.
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