Broadband, digital tv etc

[Sian]

I should be moving into my new house sometime in the Easter holidays and I am wondering about taking the opportunity to set up broadband internet access. I know very little about this field. I looked at NTL which seems to come bundled with a tv and phone package but they do not operate in my area. I have never had cable or satellite or digital tv so I am working in the dark here. Does anyone have any advice?

 

[StephenM]

http://www.adslguide.org.uk/ is a good site for adsl information.

Id get Sky rather than cable personally and they have a special offer on at the moment isntallation for £1

 

[Sue F UK]

We have cable in our area and my sister signed up for it 12 months ago. She recently changed back to Sky as the cable was creeping up in price and she could only get half the channels that I could get on Sky. She went back to good old BT for her phone and says the cost isn't that different.

We looked into getting a second internet line through BT this week and they are offering their 'highway' system which has three lines, one of which is ISDN for £74.99 set up costs and an extra £9 per month line rental. Quite a good deal I thought although I would be interested in anyones comments - I may post a thread......

Anyway I hope all that waffling helps with your decision.

 

[Goofyish]

I have recently changed to Sky Digital from NTL Cable. The number of channels on Sky is far better than on NTL Digital. Also, I have read a lot of reports that the interactive stuff on NTL Digital just does work!. Apart from that, NTL are in major finantial difficulties (£12B in debt!), so I thought I would change before they went under

I still use NTL for telephone and internet though.

 

[squitty]

Hi

We recently changed over to Broadband internet with Telewest, which we found is great. It uses a cable modem leaving your phone line free, therefor you dont have to have a second phone line installed.
We tried Cable TV and found that you didn't get as much as you did with Sky, so we went back to Sky.
However I did take the phone package which is called talk unlimited from Telewest which for £25.00 per month I can talk on the phone for as long as I like without worrying about the bill.

 

[Sian]

Thanks everyone. It doesn't look as if folk are very keen on cable tv. The Telewest deal sounds good but that is not available here either. I will check out the ads and have a look at the BT package. I am quite anxious to be able to spend loads of time on the net without blocking my phone line.

 

[UKDEB]

We have Telewest broadband, telephone and tv. Our telephone bills seem much higher than they did with BT and the tv package just keeps increasing in cost - we're paying an astronomical figure. And the kids keep nagging us to get Sky, but the one thing that keeps us with cable is that you can watch different channels in different rooms - you can rent as many boxes as you have tvs. Unless it has changed recently, you can't do this with Sky.

 

[StephenM]

Debbie you can have extra boxes to watch different channels on SKy-you have to buy another box and pay another £12 a month which then gives you the same channel package that you pay for in your main subscription.We did this last year, bought a Sky+ box you can watch and tape another channel it has a 20hr hd recorder -we probably have only used our vcr once or twice since then -and put our original panasonic box in the bedroom.Do bear in mind though that Sky+ service costs £10 a month. I couldnt imagine going back to watching normal tv now that I have Sky+,it's that good! Sky have a good website whcih explains it all

 

[UKDEB]

Thanks, Stephen. We pay £10 per month per additional box (we only have one, but friends of ours have 3! That's 3 <i>extra</i> ones!), so not much difference there, but we didn't have to buy it. How much do you have to pay to buy the box and how much is the monthly subscription? I think we're paying £80 a month now, which includes the additional box, but still seems like a lot of money to watch tv!

 

[StephenM]

The Sky+ box is £300 and a normal Sky box if you went down the 2 box road wouldn't be much less,IMHO if you are buying a second box get the SKy+ one - a Tivo will cost £200 anyway so for the price you get a HD recorder that works seamlessly with the Sky epg. I think in total we pay £35 for the full Sky package £12 for the second subscription and £10 for the Sky+ services- alot less than cable! Sky+ also has Dolby Digital on the movie channels.

Have a look at http://www1.sky.com/skycomhome/getsky/products/products01.htm

 

[lisag1]

We've had the lot - Sky, On-digital and now NTL broadband/Digital TV & Phone.

We can't have Sky Digital because of the trees in ours and next door's garden - they all have preservation orders on them. The only way around that is to have a ridiculous mast put up on the chimney but I was then warned that if there were any high winds then the chances of interference was quite high. We opted for NTL in the end.

I've not had a problem with NTL at all, in fact I'm quite please so far but it does all add up. We pay £24.99 for unlimited broadband connection per month and £32.99 for digital TV and phone line.

Michelle - Telewest in Liverpool also have the all inclusive call option at £25.00 per month for all inclusive telephone calls and that would be fantastic for us. All our calls are national Husband works in London, family and friends all live in Liverpool. Unfortunately NTL don't have this offer on It would save an absolute fortune. Our BT bills used to be £200 +/qtr - ouch!

Lisa