It’s A Digital Future (BskyB)

Member Name: ansar

Product:	BskyB
Date:	15/11/00 (16 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Many channels, excellent picture quality, many cool features, cheaper than cable.

Disadvantages: Too many channels to browse through, ITV is not available on Sky (so that would be a problem if you don’t have a normal aerial), the remote control seems to be unique (so can’t get a replacement from any Sunday market).

We used to have Cable in the home before. We had it for over 5 years. It had come to the stage where the price was increasing, but the amount of channels weren’t increasing all that much.

We had got used to cable, and were therefore worried about what the picture quality would be like on Sky Digital, because with cable the picture was always perfect. However, a few weeks ago one of their salespersons came to our house, we didn’t hesitate and installed Sky Digital.

There was a special offer going on, and we only had to pay £20 for the installation, the dish and Digibox was free. We were given a suitable time as to when the installation was going to happen, and without any problems the installer man came on time and did his job very well. He gave a proper guide as to how to use the remote control. So there were no problems with the installation.

We’ve had Sky Digital now for over a few weeks now, and I have to admit that I am very impressed with it. The set-up is quite cool.

Every time you go on a channel, there’ll be a banner at the bottom of the screen indicating what’s on now and what is coming on next. You can also by pressing the ‘information’ button on the remote find out what the current program is all about.

Whilst watching a program, you can scroll to see what is coming on for the whole day on that particular channel within the banner at the bottom of the screen (without having to miss a single clip of the program you are watching, apart from the where the banner is). You can also, while watching a program, scroll through other channels (within the banner) to see what is on and what is coming on for the rest of the day on the other channels.

There are other cool features available, however, it will make this opinion far too long if I was to explain them all.

Sky News is interactive, by this you can listen to any particular headline of the day, such as s
port, entertainment, latest news etc whenever you want to!!

Sky Sports is also interactive, I’ve not messed about too much with this, but I know you can choose which angle you want to watch a football match from, you can also view all the stats so far for the game.

I’ve realised that the need for Teletext is less frequent as Sky Digital can do most of the stuff you want to view or read.

The remote control can also be programmed to control your televisions remote’s main functions.

As for the picture, well it couldn’t be any better; I’ve read in other opinions on Dooyoo, that some people were having problems with the quality whenever it rained. Well you can’t have any more rain than we’ve had these last few weeks (Oct/Nov 2000) but the picture on our tv didn’t suffer at all. Maybe it has something to do where you live; perhaps some parts of the country have a stronger signal than others? (I’m in Birmingham).

Sky Digital has a lot more channels than cable offered us and at a cheaper price. There are over 10 movie channels (compared with 3 that cable were offering), and apart from the three main Sky Sports channels, there is also a 24-hour Sky Sports News channel. Even MTV has 4 channels (on cable there was just the one). Most of the channels that were on Cable seem to have more channels on Sky.

There are also quite a few Asian channels (for those who are Asians).. some are available for free (about 5-6 of them) and some through subscription

You can also listen to some radio stations through your tv.

With so many channels it can be confusing to find where they are and what’s on, but this can be overcome with the Sky Guide by using the function on the remote control.

There also some games you can play through the Digibox on your tv screen.

I would recommend anyone thinking about Sky Digital to get it now..!! while the spe
cial offers are going around many shops. What are you waiting for, the futures is digital.

Summary: