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Beware the Scam Broadband Call

Posted on January 15, 2013 by digital-tv-advice

This happened to me today so I thought I’d share it as a word of warning…

scamwarning

I got a call today, not a great line (which was the first alarm bell), from a company called BC – although they probably call themselves a different name every time. The lady on the line (Christie, apparently) said they were working on behalf of Virgin Media and a few other companies and that they could see we had viruses on our PC which was slowing down the broadband, did I have time for them to fix it? I was on my way out so, suspicious though I was, I said to call back in an hour. I was intrigued so had a quick Google for “Virgin Media called virus slowing broadband down” and of course I found a few threads on the scam calls.

When she called back later I carefully asked for the company name again, took down her name and as soon as I asked for her surname she hung up sharpish. What I should have done was to play along for a bit to see which site they asked me to go to and enter log-in details – it would have been good to find out more to tell everyone, but I guess scammers like that are hardly going to have their address in the Whois record for the site.

The main thing is to warn other, not so savvy people – I know one or two who would have happily gone along with that call fearing that a virus was eating up their PC – so spread the word, and beat the scummy scammers!

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How to Set Up Virgin TV Anywhere

Posted on January 14, 2013 by digital-tv-advice

Virgin TV Anywhere

I’ve just got round to setting up Virgin TV Anywhere on my TiVo box and wish I’d done it before – just the ability to watch TiVo on the iPad is worth the effort (the kids want to watch something in their room where there’s no TV, say) but the remote controlling of the TiVo box online is pretty great too. Stop there – I wrote this opening paragraph before discovering what you can and can’t do with the app, so hold that first bit for now…

If you’re like me and just dive in expecting it to work straight away then you’ll come across the same problems I did – it’s not difficult to get going but there a couple of things you need to do to the TiVo box to make it work fully (and a couple of extra things you need to know too).

The first thing you’ll probably do is install the app on your iPad and sign in – install it but I wouldn’t sign in yet. There are 2 or 3 steps you need to take with your TiVo box itself to make it visible to the app and if you do those after signing in it may not recognise it. Having just been through the process, here’s what I would do…

  • * Firstly if your TiVo box isn’t connected to your Super Hub with an ethernet cable, connect it now as it needs to be on the same home network as the iPad you’re using.
  • * Now grab you TiVo remote and go to Home > Help & Settings > Settings > Network Remote Control. Choose ‘Allow network-based remote controls’ (it will warn you about accessibility by others if you’re on a shared network) – you will then need to press the Thumbs Up button on the remote to confirm.
  • * Next go to Home > Help & Settings > System Info > Media Access Key, enter your PIN – default 1234 – and make a note of the Media Access Key number as you’ll need to enter it into the iPad.

They don’t mention this on the instructions page but at this point I would restart the TiVo box by switching off the power for 10 seconds or so, just as you do when there’s a fault. My iPad wouldn’t pick up the TiVo box until I did this so save yourself a few ‘Try Again’ attempts and associated swearing and restart now.

Now go to that new app and sign in with your user name (which is an email address) and password, at which point the app will scan for TiVo boxes, will find yours and show a link saying ‘Not complete’ – click on this and enter the Media Access Key you noted earlier.

One more thing, you need to register your iPad as a device before you can use it for live TV. Click on the little settings cog wheel next to your TiVo box number in the top left of the app and choose Device Registration, then pick a name with at least 6 characters (a bit annoying as all you want to call it really is iPad but you’ll need more than that). You can choose at this point whether or not to make this the primary device – the difference here is that certain programmes like sports and movies can only be watched on your primary device for copyright reasons, but you can change your primary device twice a month so it’s not the end of the world.

You’re now, as waiting staff in the US would say, ‘all set’, so when you’re at home on your own network you’ll be able to control your TiVo box with the app and when you’re online away from home you can use the ‘Away’ mode, which lets you watch some live TV and set your box to record, set up and cancel Series Links etc.

So what can you do with it?

At home

Once you’ve got over the novelty of controlling the telly – not much really. I was hoping to go in the bedroom and watch a programme recorded the other night from My Shows while my wife carried on watching live TV in the living room – ‘fraid not (I suppose that would be like an extra box?). Same for watching live TV in another room, no can do – I went to a programme, clicked Watch Now and all it does is control the TiVo box, ie make that programme come on the TV. Wife not that pleased (sorry, just testing!).

One thing that is very welcome, indeed if you use the iPlayer or YouTube apps on TiVo it’s an absolute bloody relief, is the ability to search for programmes WITH A KEYBOARD instead of the awful ‘select a letter with the arrows and OK it but you’ll probably get one wrong due to the delayed reaction of the remote and have to go back’ method (as it’s known). Having the iPad keyboard to search on iPlayer and YouTube makes them so much more usable as apps and it’s worth getting TV Anywhere for this alone.

Away

To replicate going out (I do go out sometimes but didn’t fancy it on a cold Sunday night) I switched to my neighbour’s WiFi (don’t worry, with permission) and opened the app again. It seemed to confuse it so I signed out and back in again (fair enough) and on doing this I saw what I expected – I was now in Away mode. I went to My Shows (Away) and could look through them, delete, explore, see upcoming episodes etc. Now to the Guide (Away) area. I select what’s on on BBC2, it’s the snooker. I can record it, possibly handy when you’re out, how about watching some live TV? I select ‘Watch now’ and the next button is ‘Watch on TV’, so I click this only to be told I need to be at home connected to my network to watch it on TV. I knew that, so how do I watch it now while I’m ‘out’, on my iPad?

Maybe it’s a restricted programme, let’s try Family Guy on 3 – same thing. Not that happy now – my iPad is showing as the Primary Device, I’ve signed out and in again, where’s my live TV?

streaming1

I go back to the instructions (there’s a lesson there) and see that only programmes with the little streaming symbol can be watched live, which explains it. I now see the dropdown where you select All Channels, Favourite Channels or Streaming Channels and it makes sense. What’s the choice like? Well, it’s fairly late Sunday and I can’t get BBC1 (Match of the Day 2), BBC2 (Snooker), ITV (The Constant Gardener movie) or 4 (Beverly Hills Cop), however I can get 5 and another 24 channels after 5 in the list, Now when I click ‘Watch now’ I have the choice of ‘Watch on TV’ and ‘Watch on iPad’, which makes a lot more sense. Watching is fine too, with volume, pause button and a ‘catch up to live’ forward button.

So there’s choice but first impressions are that the best stuff may not always be on the menu. Also that bit about the kids watching something else in the other room was a bit optimistic. We’ll see though, I’ll keep playing with it and give it the benefit of the doubt – try it yourself too, it’s free if you’re a Virgin Media customer and if you’re not yet with Virgin check out their Collections here.

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Sky Unlimited Offer Extended and More

Posted on August 14, 2012 by digital-tv-advice

Sky TV

It’s time for an offers round-up for Sky Digital – there’s an extension to one deal, a price change on line rental and a few good offers on upgrades that can be combined.

6 Months Free Broadband Without TV

This is available to both new and existing customers – new customers taking Sky Broadband Unlimited without TV and existing Sky customers upgrading to Broadband Unlimited in an offer which was going to end Aug 14th but has been extended until Sept 27th. As well as the 6 months free you can also get a £25 voucher for M&S if you get it by Aug 30th.

All the latest offers can be found on our Sky TV Deals page here.

Line Rental Rise

Sky Talk line rental is to increase on 1st September from the current price of £12.25 to £14.50 per month, not only that but the basic landline product Sky Talk Freetime is being withdrawn on Aug 27th and replaced with Talk Weekends – same deal but with included calls only at weekends and not in the evening. In each case if you are already a Talk customer you won’t be affected, that is no price rise on line rental (not yet, anyway) and if you already have Talk Freetime you will stay on it.

Sky Upgrade Deals

There are 2 key offers on upgrades at the moment – £5 credit on your bill when you add Sky Sports or Sky Movies online and 3 months free ESPN when you add Sky Sports, which is available to new customers too. These can all be stacked together, so you can add Sports and Movies and get £10 credit on your bill plus the 3 months ESPN – you can also stack it with the £25 M&S voucher and 6 months free Unlimited outlined above.

You can find the latest Sky TV Deals for existing customers here.

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New Virgin Media Credits Deal – Up to £60

Posted on May 3, 2012 by digital-tv-advice

There’s a new Virgin Media deal today giving you a credit on your bill – in other words money off – when you take any new product, solus, dual or triple bundle including the Collections. The credits are £20 on a solus product – that is if you take just one of the services – £40 for a dual bundle and £60 for any triple bundle including the new Collections.

6 Months Half Price Too

Virgin Broadband, Phone and TV

If you order before June 30th the Virgin Media Collections are yours for 6 months half price too, and the credit deal is stackable with that – in other words you get 6 months half price plus £60 credit when you take one (remember the credit deal ends 24th May). Add this to the free install deal on any bundle including broadband and phone and you can make a big saving – here’s how it works out on the Premiere Collection with 175 channels, 60Mb broadband and Talk Weekends;

  • Credit on your bill (offer expires 24th May) – £60
  • 6 months half price (offer ends 30th June) – save £135
  • Free installation on any bundle that includes broadband and phone – save £49.95
  • Total saving £244.95

    • The Virgin Media Collections were launched recently and represent the most popular TV, broadband and phone triple packages on Virgin. Accompanied by a TV campaign featuring former Dr Who David Tennant, the collections are

    • The Essential Collection – broadband up to 30Mb average speed, TV with 75 channels through a 500GB TiVo box and Talk Weekends
    • The Premiere Collection mentioned above – broadband up to 60Mb average speed, TV with 175 channels through a 500GB TiVo box plus a V HD box for your second room and Talk Weekends
    • The VIP Collection – everything Virgin has to offer, with broadband up to 100Mb average speed, TV with 175 channels plus Sky Sports and Sky Movies through a 1TB TiVo box with V HD box and Talk Anytime

    Visit site >>

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Half-Price-Tastic on Sky and This Week’s Football

Posted on April 20, 2012 by digital-tv-advice

Sky TV

What a week for Sky Digital offers, first we had the 6 months half price on TV and now there’s a brand new deal on Broadband and Talk Unlimited which is only available through Sky partners like us – 12 months half price for new customers taking Broadband Unlimited and Talk Unlimited. Let’s look at how these two offers stack up if you take a triple bundle (although the new offer on Unlimited is available with or without TV).

Sky Triple Bundle Deal

If you were to take the ‘starter’ triple bundle from Sky it would consist of;

Sky Broadband Unlimited

This would normally cost £20 a month plus £12.25 line rental but if you order before April 26th the TV is half price for 6 months making the bundle only £10 a month for 6 months (the broadband and phone are included in the TV price).

If you wanted to add Broadband Unlimited and Talk Unlimited this would normally cost an extra £7.50 a month for the broadband and £5 a month for the anytime calls – total £12.50 – but under the new offer if you order before 28th June they are both half price, £6.25 a month, for a whole year.

So this is what you would pay for a Sky bundle with TV, Broadband Unlimited and Talk Unlimited;

  • >> £16.25 a month for the first 6 months
  • >> £26.25 a month for the next 6 months
  • >> £32.50 a month from month 13
  • >> Line rental of £12.25 to be added each month
  • >> Total saving in one year £135

To get this exclusive deal click the button below…

More info >>

This Week’s Football

There’s an awful lot of big footie going on this week which could make it a good time to upgrade to SkyHD – here are the main fixtures as shown on Sky;

  • >> Saturday 21st April – Arsenal v Chelsea and Real Madrid v Barcelona
  • >> Sunday 22nd April – Manchester United v Everton & Wolves v Manchester City
  • >> Tuesday 24th April – Barcelona v Chelsea UCL Semi-Final 2nd leg
  • >> Sunday 29th April – Chelsea v QPR and Spurs v Blackburn
  • >> Monday 30th April – Manchester City v Man United

You can find out more about upgrading as a Sky customer here, or visit the Sky site direct here.

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Latest Digital TV Deals

Posted on April 14, 2012 by digital-tv-advice

If you’re looking to take out a new TV, broadband and phone package and haven’t yet decided who to go with then check out the latest deals on offer from Sky Digital, Virgin Media and BT – they all have special offers on at the moment and here is a round-up of what you can get.

Sky Offers

What’s the deal?

Free £25 M & S Voucher – Sky generally have a Marks and Spencer voucher free with their TV packages and while this has been up to £100 recently it is, at the time of writing, £25.

When does it expire?

Unknown – there is almost always a Marks and Spencer voucher on offer from Sky.

6 Months Half Price TV – This is a new departure for Sky Digital, they have decided to offer the basic TV element of their packages, the Entertainment Pack, with 6 months half price – £10 a month instead of £20. This means the Sky+ Starter bundle consisting of Sky TV with Broadband Everyday Lite and Talk with evening and weekend calls is now £10 a month for the first 6 months. If you’re looking for a package with extras like HD or Sky Sports the same £10 discount applies to the Entertainment Pack, so for the Sky+HD Starter (normally £20 plus £10.25 for the HD Pack) you’ll pay just £20.25 for the first 6 months. All of the Sky packages are subject to £12.25 a month line rental.

When does it expire?

Offer ends April 26th 2012.

£50 Credit for Sky Store when you join Sky TV online and take Broadband Unlimited. Sky Store is the new on-demand movie service accessed from your Sky+ Box – the £50 credit is given as £4.25 a month over a year.

When does it expire?

Offer ends April 26th 2012.

Virgin Media Offers

What’s the deal?

6 Months Half Price – Virgin Media have 3 new triple bundles called ‘Collections’ and are offering 6 months half price on all of them. They are the Essential Collection, the Premiere Collection and the VIP Collection and monthly prices with the discount start at £12.50.

The Essential Collection consists of 30Mb broadband, 75 channels of TV and included weekend calls for £25 a month, with the first 6 months at £12.50. The Premiere Collection consists of 60Mb broadband, free Spotify Premium for 3 months, 175 channels of TV and included evening and weekend calls for £45 a month, with the first 6 months at £22.50. Finally the VIP Collection consists of 100Mb broadband, free Spotify Premium for 3 months, 205 channels of TV with Sky Sports F1, Sky Sports 1 and 2 HD and Sky Movies HD and included anytime calls for £90 a month, with the first 6 months at £45. This ‘give me everything you’ve got’ bundle also comes with a 1TB TiVo Box as opposed to the standard 500GB storage TiVo Box – if you’re not aware of TiVo check out our Virgin TiVo page for more details as it’s pretty impressive.

When does it expire?

Offer ends June 30th 2012.

BT Offers

What’s the deal?

BT Vision

4 Months Free Broadband + Evening & Weekend Calls – Broadband + Evening & Weekend Calls costs £13 a month but is free for the first 4 months – if you’re looking at BT Vision this is £4 a month on top of the broadand and phone package so under this deal a TV, broadband and phone triple bundle will be £4 a month for the first 4 months and £17 a month thereafter. Broadband + Evening & Weekend Calls is an 18 month contract, if you take the TV element that is a 12 month contract.

When does it expire?

5th July 2012.

Free £25 Sainsburys Gift Card with Broadband + Anytime Calls – There are 2 offers in one here on Broadband + Anytime Calls, firstly a £25 gift card for Sainsburys and secondly the ‘Anytime’ part of the calls is essentially free for a year as the price per month is £13 – the same as Broadband + Evening & Weekend Calls. This is a 12 month contract.

When does it expire?

26th April 2012.

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Free Set Top Box with Top Up TV Sports

Posted on February 28, 2012 by digital-tv-advice

Top Up TV

Top Up TV have a new offer for sports fans – get a free set-top box and one month free when you take Sky Sports 1 with ESPN on a 12 month contract. The normal cost for the box is £49.99 and the ongoing monthly fee £32.99, so the free box and 1 month represents a saving of £82.98.

Top Up TV is mainly known for offering Sky Sports on a ‘no contract necessary’ basis one month at a time, so how does the one year contract add up against the other providers? Let’s imagine you don’t have a contract with anyone at the moment as if you were with, say, Virgin Media for your TV it would almost certainly make sense to add Sky Sports with them for £14.50 a month extra. If you’re starting from scratch and opt for Top Up TV with this deal your outlay for the year is going to be eleven months at £32.99 plus a £20 connection fee, which isn’t mentioned on the ads but will be there in the basket – total £362.89.

Just a reminder of what you get for this;

  • >> A Top Up TV box, essentially a Freeview Plus box, which enables you to pause, rewind and record all of your Freeview channels and the Sky Sports and ESPN channels too
  • >> Sky Sports 1 and ESPN for 12 months

If you went for Sky Digital on the most basic triple bundle and added Sky Sports 1 and ESPN your monthly costs would be;

  • >> £20 for the TV, Broadband and Talk
  • >> £12.25 line rental
  • >> £12.50 for Sky Sports 1 and 2
  • >> £9 for ESPN
  • >> Total £53.75

Sky give away a voucher for Marks and Spencer to new customers – at the moment £100 but usually £25 – so let’s take that amount into account when looking at the whole year and make it 12 x £53.75 minus £25 – £620.

The difference in annual cost between Sky and Top Up TV is £257.11 but for that you’re getting phone and broadband too (plus a lot more channels on TV and Sky Go on your laptop, iPad or iPhone). So if £257.11, or £21.43 a month, is less than what you pay now for broadband and landline it’s a good deal for you. If you don’t want a landline and broadband, go for Top Up TV.

If you go for Virgin Media on the most basic triple bundle and add Sky Sports 1 and ESPN the figures are very similar;

  • >> £20 for the TV, Broadband and Talk
  • >> £13.90 line rental
  • >> £14.50 for Sky Sports 1
  • >> £6 for ESPN
  • >> Total £52.40

So the same conclusion here – if you don’t need landline and broadband or have a great deal on broadband already but want Sky Sports the Top Up TV deal is definitely worth a look…

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Free £50 Sainsburys Gift Card from BT

Posted on February 27, 2012 by digital-tv-advice

BT Vision

BT have just inproved their Winter Deal by adding a free £50 Sainsburys Gift Card for any new customer taking BT Broadband with or without BT Vision TV. This is an online-only exclusive which can be used in conjunction with the 4 months free offer already running, giving you an effective saving of £114 – not to be sniffed at.

See deal »

4 Months Free BT Broadband Offer

As this is the leading BT Winter Deal let’s have a closer look at what you get with the 4 Months Free offer combined with the £50 Sainsburys Gift Card…

The deal consists of

  • >>BT Total Broadband with up to 20Mb download speed
  • >>Anytime Calls
  • >>Option to add BT Vision TV Essential for an extra £4 per month
  • >>First 4 months free then £16 a month or £20 a month with TV Essential plus line rental
  • >>Free £50 Sainsburys voucher exclusive to online orders

BT line rental is £14.60 a month on direct debit, which is higher than both Sky Digitsl and Virgin Media, but you can opt to pay a whole year upfront by debit or credit card to save money. At the time of writing it costs £120 which is rising to £129 after March 2nd, giving a price per month of £10.75, which is the cheapest of the big 3 with Sky at £12.25 and Virgin at £13.90.

Total Broadband

BT Total Broadband comes on an 18 month contract and gives you speeds of up to 20Mb with a 10GB monthly usage allowance. The BT Home Hub router is their most advanced to date and is really easy to set up, just plug and go, and the package also includes free WiFi minutes on BT Open Zone – handy in a lot of airports, cafes etc if you have no 3G or want to save your bill.

TV Essential

TV Essential is the basic BT Vision package where you add a Vision+ Box (free but with a £40 activation charge) and pay an extra £4 a month to be able to pause, rewind and record your Freeview channels and access on-demand programming on a Pay As You Go basis. The alternative for pausing, rewinding and recording Freeview is to buy a Freeview+ box outright for upwards of £75. The on-demand content comes through the broadband connection and starts from 50p a show, however you can upgrade to TV Unlimited and have unlimited access to their TV shows.

Your £50 at Sainsburys may just go towards your shopping bill but you could, of course, put it towards a new TV or laptop in store or from the Sainsburys website to make the most of your new BT services.

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More Plus Points for Sky Anytime

Posted on February 9, 2012 by digital-tv-advice

Sky Anytime Plus

Good news for Sky Anytime+ users this month, and for this who would like to get it but don’t have Sky broadband, as changes to the service announced at the end of January start to take effect. These include a better range of ITV and BBC content on demand, access to the service through other broadband providers and the arrival of something that up until now has given Virgin and BT a killer edge, the BBC iPlayer.

Thanks to an improved deal with ITV there is already new content from the channel in the main Sky Anytime+ menu including Cold Feet, Lewis and Prime Suspect. There’s a dedicated ITV Player section too but the amount of programmes available will increase later in the year.

The deal with the BBC is perhaps more exciting as the hugely popular iPlayer service has not been available on Sky TV up to now, which always feels like a big disadvantage against their competitors Virgin Media and BT Vision. The iPlayer will be arriving later in the year, no date given yet, but in the meantime there is a selection of archive BBC programmes on Anytime+ including some Doctor Who, Outnumbered and Top Gear.

Anytime+ is currently available free to anyone with Sky TV and Sky broadband as part of all bundled Sky TV packages and is being used by around a million households. Popularity is growing too as Sky have seen weekly usage figures rise by 80% in the last quarter of 2011, and the decision to now open it up to Sky TV customers with any broadband connection will mean over 5 million more homes in the UK will be able to access it.

What you can watch on Anytime+ depends on your Sky TV subscription both in terms of the main package you have – Entertainment or Entertainment Extra – and any added premium channels. So if you have Entertainment with Sky Movies as a add-on you can watch on demand content from any of the 50 or so channels in Entertainment and archived Sky Movies, but not for example the Sky Sports content. It’s not just Sky content on demand but a lot of programmes from the partner channels, including MTV, Discovery, FX, History, Disney, UK TV and National Geographic Channel.

For more general info see the Sky Anytime+ page or click on the button below to read more on the Sky site…

Visit Sky »

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BT Vision Growing – How Does It Work?

Posted on February 7, 2012 by digital-tv-advice

BT Vision

With the Virgin Media TiVo box everywhere and Sky TV offering free movies and M&S vouchers you could be forgiven for thinking that BT are having a hard time recruiting customers to the BT Vision TV service – you’d be wrong. In the last quarter of 2011 BT Vision gained almost as many new customers as Sky at around 40,000 and it was also the fastest growing pay TV service in quarter three. It doesn’t mean BT Vision is taking over, far from it as the service now has just under 680,000 subscribers against Sky’s 10.25 million with Virgin somewhere in the middle, but something about the offering that many thought would never take off has obviously grabbed the British public and BT must now feel like the magic 1 million subscriber number is at least in sight. The fact that they are the biggest UK broadband provider gives them a huge advantage here of course, as the TV service can be added for a very small extra cost if you already have BT broadband.

What are the Pros and Cons of BT Vision?

As mentioned above if you already have BT broadband or have decided that’s the one for you then it’s a cheap add-on if you go for TV Essential at £4 a month – TV Unlimited at £12.50 a month needs more comparison, we’ll look at that in a moment.

Here’s how it works;

The Vision+ Box is essentially a Freeview Plus box, that is it receives Freeview channels and uses the built-in hard drive to let you pause, rewind and record programmes. The difference with the Vision+ Box is that it connects to your BT broadband to download on demand content and catch-up such as the BBC iPlayer. If you have TV Essential the catch-up TV is unlimited and included but the on-demand content is accessed on a pay-as-you-go basis from 50p a show. If you opt for TV Unlimited you can watch the on demand content as often as you like, plus you get free ESPN – well, no monthly fee after you buy a one-off £10 viewing card.

Why not just buy a Freeview Plus box? Freeview Plus boxes start at about £70 and there’s no ongoing subscription charge, however that won’t give you the catch-up and on demand. There is a £40 activation fee for the Vision+ Box (sometimes discounted or waived depending on the BT deals on offer) so it adds up quite well.

BT Vision – Good Bits

The Vision+ Box is HD and 3D ready – there isn’t a huge choice of HD channels but if you just want the main terrestrial channels in HD like BBC, ITV etc it’s a lot cheaper than Sky or Virgin.

BT Vision – Bad Bits

It’s Freeview based so you have to make sure the Freeview reception in your area is good enough to give you a reasonable selection of channels. This includes extras like Sky Sports – if you get Sky Sports on BT Vision it’s delivered to you via Freeview so you need to check availability first. Not great for those who want a huge selection of channels.

Check it out on the BT site by clicking on the button below.

Click here »

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