Not sure if this is the right place for this but, I have a Sky+ box connected to my Avant. In the past I had toyed with the idea of cancelling the contract and switching to freeview satellite. I cancelled the contract but then couldn't use the box to record without paying sky £10 a month. So I resubscribed. A month ago I decided to cancell again and then get a Humax box, however I didn;t get round to it and found that when sky cut off the movie channells and the others I was still able to get some of the freeview channells and also able to use the box to record without paying a subscription.

Perhaps Sky have woken upto the fact that if you cancell and keep the box to record on you may go back to them in the future, but if you buy a freesat box it's much less likely.

Thought I'd share this as there have been posts in the past abotu people switching to Humax etc. For me it's ideal as I don't have to upgrade the STBC chip as I can just carry on it using it as normal whereas if I did get a Humax I would need a new STBC.

yes you can use the sky box to watch freeview channels, my folks have done that for 4 years now.  They had to give them £10 to update the sky card a few years back! 

Hi - yes, but i didn't realise you could record on Sky+ now without the subscription