[Parsons]

think it's like £200+ for the recordable box.

IIRC there is a Sky Q package for around £10/month that basically gives you the free channels only, but allows you to continue to rent the box(es). Some have called it "Sky Q Basic" but unsure if there's an official name. There are reports that it might be tied to taking Sky Broadband. Strangely enough, there's not a lot of official information out there

I’ve seen this and I believe you are correct in that the package is only available if you have Sky broadband. 

I don’t, but i wouldn’t pay it anyway, at £10 a month the freesat box pays for itself in a couple of years,  and on the the basic package the value proposition of SkyQ is non existent.

I’ve long held the view that it was Sky Movies which made the whole thing worthwhile, when my children were little we certainly got our monies worth out Sky Movies Disney etc, but the majority of our viewing always had been on the terrestrial channels, for all those hundreds of channels I find very little to watch. 

I work 50 hour weeks on average so I don’t get a lot of time to watch tv, over Christmas when I had 2 weeks off most of watching was Disney/Amazon with a few bits on the main terrestrial channels. The only film I watched on Sky Movies was Santa Clause the movie (you know, the one with Dudley Moore) - the lineup as been pretty stagnant for a while now.

As @rdd says, this was the rise, more than the others where I took a very serious look at how much we were watching on the channels we couldn’t get elsewhere, and the only thing so far, is re-runs of Friends and Fresh Prince on Comedy Central.