Digital TV & Broadband
This is one of my favourite areas. How do you choose between Sky, Virginmedia, Freeview or perhaps BT Vision. There are other services that are available in selected areas but for now I will guide you through these 4 main options.
Well, this whole area can be complicated as the prices vary depending on other services you want such as broadband etc. The main thing is don't believe any of their websites that state that the same package by one of their competitors is £xx more expensive. They base it on very specific situations and circumstances that will very rarely arise. Read their small print and you will see what I mean.
Basically, there are 2 ways to receive broadband, either via your copper telephone lines (ADSL) or via fibreoptic cable (Virginmedia). ADSL stands for "Anti-symmetrical Digital Subsriber Line" and uses the unused bandwidth available on the line that is not used in making phone calls. The fibreoptic cable is the fastest way to receive broadband. Now in terms of quality, reliability and speed I would go for Virginmedia. This does not mean that you can't get lightening fast ADSL. You can especially if you are near to the phone exchange (normally under 2 miles). Also Virginmedia is by no means the cheapest broadband available. One important thing to remember is that cable broadband is less affected by other users as it used only by Virginmedia. The ADSL lines are used by several companies such as BT, Tiscali, Talktalk, Sky, Wanadoo etc.
Therefore bearing all this in mind, you need to first decide what are your priorities.....is it TV, Broadband or cheap phone calls.
Scenario 1
You don't care about extra TV channels but want cheap broadband and cheap phone calls
In this case I would go for Talktalk as they offer some great deals.
£16.39 includes: phone line rental, unlimited evening and weekend calls to any uk landline number and 36 international destinations plus Broadband of up to 8 Mb download speed and 40 GB download allowance.
There are obviously other packages they offer depending on your exact needs. For example you may want to call an international country that is not on the 36 list of countries. Or perhaps you make most of your calls in the day. Whatever your needs, Talktalk has a package.
Scenario 2
You want lots of TV channels and cheap broadband and cheap phone calls
In this situation I would go with Sky for the TV and then Talktalk for the cheap phone calls. You can get everything through Sky for cheaper but that is only for the basic broadband package (2Mb download speed, 2GB download usage).
Sky Digital TV, Broadband & Phone £21 + £16.39 includes all 6 mixes (100+ non premium channels) plus the Talktalk deal above.
Scenario 3
You want lots of TV channels, cheap broadband but not worried about cheap phone calls
In this situation I would go with Virginmedia.
£30 includes: 2Mb broadband with unlimited download allowance, their 2nd top tv package (85+ channels) and unlimited weekend calls to uk landlines plus your line rental included too.
How to decide whether to go with Satellite or Cable?
There are many factors. I will list the pros and cons of each.
Sky
Pros
Cons
The one off costs are more expensive.
Unfortunately, to have all 14 HD channels (i.e. Movies or Sports you need to subscribe as well to these packages). Don't worry though you can still watch the other HD channels that are included in your normal packages (e.g. BBC HD, Sky One HD, Discovery HD).
Falls short for on-demand programming, especially compared to what is available on Virginmedia and now on BBCi Player.
Virginmedia
Pros
Fastest available broadband in the UK and does what it says on the tin. Less users on cable broadband therefore your download speeds aren't affected as much by other people.
Great on-demand library for music, movies and tv shows.
Has a great little feature called Catch up TV on demand. Here you can watch a select number of programmes for up to 7 days. It's like the BBC iplayer but you can also watch a select number of programmes from other channels too (e.g. Channel 4, E4, Bravo, LivingTV).
Cons