The only way those of us with bad Freeview reception (and no cable supplier) can get digital telly is via satellite. For that reason, I’ve been a begrudging Sky subscriber for some time now. Whilst waiting for the BBC to launch their own Freesat offering, I’d considered switching to Freesat From Sky before, but had been put off by the cost. Then I made a very useful discovery.

This only really works if you’re already a Sky subscriber. Here’s the trick. Call Sky, and tell them that you want to cancel your subscription. They’ll try and persuade you not to, but just say that you’ve decided to switch to “Freesat From Sky” because you don’t watch the extra subscription-only channels. The trick (which they’ll tell you if pushed) is that once the subscription ends, your existing Sky digibox, with your existing subscriber card in it, is a fully-working Freesat From Sky system. No need to pay £150 for the box and dish (you’ve already got both). And more importantly, no need to pay £20 for a Freesat viewing card (as claimed in their FAQs) – your existing subscriber card will do the job just fine.

If you’re not too fussed by E4 and More4, you’ll get a whole bunch of channels for free.

One extra tip – if you’ve moved into a house with a Sky dish, but you don’t have a Sky box, don’t fork out £150 for “Freesat From Sky” to send you one. Instead, get over to your local Freecycle group and put out a request for a second-hand Sky box. Lots of people who are upgrading to Sky+ or SkyHD will have old Sky Digiboxes they no longer need. One of these old boxes, together with a £20 Freesat viewing card, is all you need.

For more info about getting digital telly in the UK, check out UKFree.TV, which is excellent. They have more info about the approach described above too.

Update 6 May 2008: The BBC and ITV have now launched their own Freesat service. So there’s no need to use Sky at all. Which is a good thing.