They've finally worn me down. I love the Eurosport coverage of MotoGP and I refuse to pay 14.99 to Sky for the privilege and the package offered by BT is rubbish. So I heard the other day that Virgin Media will offer BT Sports for free. So I'm now a Virgin Media customer. It's £38.99 for 6 months then £62.99 for 12 months. I currently pay £59 to Sky for everything except sports and movies. Broadband here is fast as we live near the exchange, we never use the home phone for calls; I've only really got it as we need a phone line to have a broadband connection. So In the 18 months of contract I'll pay around £100 quid less, I'll have a better on-demand service (we don't have the sky box connected to the internet as we probably should, as the tv is on the other side of the house from the phone socket) and they're giving us a second HD box for another room in the house and I'll also still have access to Eurosport. Virgin have done a good deal there; offering BT Sports for free. I would never have considered switching if it wasn't for that. I've been really happy with Sky up to now, but I really cannot face paying £60 a month to be subjected to Eastenders, The Real Wives of Beverly Hills and some other crap where people just bicker with each other and not be able to watch the only thing I'm interested in on TV; motorcycles. This has all come about by BT ruining MotoGP in the UK, seemingly, just to damage Sky. Why else would they allow Virgin to show it for free? It's not about getting people signed up to BT it's about taking customers away from Sky!
All the providers really yak me off by saying you need a home phone line at around £15 per month to get broadband... It's simply a rip off. You would need one if it's coming over copper, but my circuit, like many other is FTTC (Fibre To The Cabinet), which put simply means that all the broadband connections are fibre up to the green box at the bottom of my road, then Co-Ax from there to my house. I never use my home phone, yet have to pay Virgin £15 per month as they insist that it's a requirement...
When I had virgin cable I didn't need the phone line, just had the Internet. Depends how its fed to your house from the cabinet.
I got a better deal by taking the phone line than by not having one. I was told I didn't have to have it.
Virgin are only offering BT Sport free to the XL Tv package subscribers....M and L subscribers still have to pay the £14.99 extra :-( Oh hang on.....I have the XL package
Right.......to save me going to the Meerkats............I want Football, MotoGP, fast broadband and Phone all together. And it has to be cheap. Who do I chose?
I am stuck with Sky after deserting BT a while ago but I am still within my contract so I cannot change that easily. I find Sky pretty good and the value is fair despite a recent increase. I also have it distributed throughout the house via a distribution box which for me increase it's value, I will miss motoGP, but will it be the same next year anyway without the Eurosort team.
If you've already got Sky then I reckon it has to be Sky for TV and BT for phone and BB as you will get MotoGP for free with BT. You will also get some football through BT sport, then it's up to you whether you pay Sky Sports fee for the other matches. Personally I wouldn't pay a penny to watch football as it's actually a shit game played by talented yet rather overpaid prima donnas, but that's just me. You will actually get Sky TV and phone and broadband cheaper by putting it all through Sky, but you will have to pay the BT Sports charge on top to get the MotoGP which I think is £12 which wipes out any saving. I hadn't thought about MotoGP coverage at the time so this is the route that I was actually going to go down myself until I realised that in my area, due to lack of equipment in the exchange from Sky, that I would actually get lousy broadband throughput, so I've gone for Sky TV, no sports package, phone and BB with BT so get free BT Sports. Junk Sky movies to save £15 per month and get movies on box office or on demand whenever you want. You'll be surprised how rarely you actually pay for a movie on box office when you realise that most of it is crap. Then spend your savings on a Netflix account and watch loads of great movies and TV series for £6 per month. If you haven't got a smart TV then get a media player like the Roku box. Fantastic value for £50 and turns your dumb TV in to a smart TV.
^^^ Interested in the Roku player and it looks like they are £39.99 on eBay. I might give up my Sky movies subscription and go for this instead.
They are a great bit of kit. I spent another £30 and got the version with an ethernet port as I wanted to hard wire it to my router so I could stream from my NAS. Keep an eye out too for the new Google Chromecast dongle. It plugs straight in to an HDMI port (although it does need power from a USB port, something they don't make too clear in the advertising) and does a similar job. It's out in the States and is just $35. Bonkers cheap for what it does.
Currently got Virgin Media phone (don't bloody use it, but "you have to have it", GRRR!), fibre bb, and TiVo telly with M+ (just above basic) package. Cost is around £47/month. Bt Sport is a £15/month bolt on, or free with the XL tv package which is £20/month upgrade (special offer of £10/month for 1st 6 months, can then switch to bt sport bolt on at £15). Hth.
True but it's getting better. The way it works is that the production companies and distributors want to make as much as possible from the films, understandably, so they milk them at the cinemas, get them out on DVD as quick as possible soon after to keep up momentum, and then about 6 months after that they release them to premium customers such as Sky Box office. They then go on to services such as Sky Movies for another 6 months to 1 year before being allowed on to Netflix and Love Film, so those guys usually get them around 2 years after initial cinema release, unless they are prepared to pay a premium for them. Netflix are huge in the States and have a lot of financial clout so they are beginining to spend money on newer stuff. We watched The Hobbit last night on Netflix and that's only 1 year old. If there's anything we really want to watch then we pay for it on Sky Box office, but that really isn't that often. Sky have wised up to this, probably in response to falling Movies subscribers. Of the monthly amount we used to pay, Sky Movies accounted for £20 of the cost and the rest was the other channels. They've now increased the price of the regular channels by what looks like £5 and reduced the price of the Movie Channel by £5, so if you do drop movies then Sky are only £15 down, not £20.
I have just cancelled Sky movies 2 which is the only movie package I had, I don't watch that many films and apart from the most recent James Bond movie I haven't watched anything from Sky movies for ages, so anything that is a few years old would seem quite new to me!!! I am seriously looking at Roku players or something similar, I didn't realise at first there were different versions of the player, I assume the Roku 3 is now the one to have. Netflix might work for me as I do like TV box sets, there are plenty of series I would like to catch up on.
I bought my Roku about one month ago and the 3 wasn't out here yet, US only. Netflix had a free 30 day trial so give it a go for nowt. We end up watching something on Netflix probably 4 or 5 nights out of 7 as there really is so little on Sky that interests us. Plus, we have a teenager with an android pad, and a PS3 in the playroom, both of which can view Netflix, and up to two devices can be viewing at the same time. Our 4 year old had discovered the Super Mario show and Ninja Turtles from the eighties and is obsessed.
Our lounge set up is a Sony Bravia KLD-46HX753 with a Sony sound bar, Sony 3D bluray player, sky plus hd box and an Apple TV. The TV is Internet enabled but it's so awkward to use; we only use it to demonstrate 3D to non-believers. Everything else digital is consumed on the Apple TV. I'm a massive fan, I bought it on a whim and now love it. If you have a lot of Apple stuff it's worth considering. Even just an ipad or iPhone as you can play what's on your phone wirelessly on the TV. So catch up tv is available, Netflix is built in as is YouTube. And you can control it all from your iPhone or iPad
Well I've just switched from Sky to BT for phone, infinity broadband and tv (all the channels we watch plus BT sports and espn). And allegedly it'll halve my costs. If it doesn't I've told them they can stick it, and they've put it on file as such. We will see.
