Unsubscribed / Subscribed Sky box ?

[joidevie]

Hi all..

Quick one - when buying a digibox on ebay for example, will I need to check if the Sky box I'm buying is Subscibed / Unsubscribed ( under contract ? ) or will any of them work here in France ? I read somewhere that dealers were selling 'cheap' subsribed versions ( even 'with' cards) that would not work here.. ( admitidly this was on a web site selling very expensive boxes.. )

Thanks for any advice. 

[Nick Trollope]

You will find it impossible to discover if the box you are about to buy is still under contract. Depending on how old the contract is, it may not actually be the sellers, to sell. You will have to ask and rely on the answer.

Sky contract cards (including expired ones) remain the property of $ky, selling them (& buying them) without their permission (which you won't get) is illegal. But who cares?

 

[Will]

What Nick says is perfectly correct. You also need to know that any Sky digibox/dish, even without a card, will receive the BBC channels plus the other free to air channels (inluding many radio stations). What you won't get is ITV, Channel 4 and five, although there is a chance that one or more of these may go 'free to air' when the existing Sky contract expires.

[joidevie]

... Thanks, kind of what I expected.

For the record I just went out and bought a French Dig box with a double LNB for Hotbird & Astra19 which works great. Also works for BBC1 but with an 80cm dish, I'm not getting any other UK stuff other than some Shopping channels.

All for around £50 including dish !

Any idea when / if C4 & C5 may leave the SKY package ?

[gpluxgplux]

well done joidevie,

There is no need to pay for a sky package as the BBC free to air are surely enough for everyone.