You may or may not have heard of Sky Songs – it’s a music download service with 2 different monthly subscription rates, £6.49 for unlimited streaming of their 4 million-plus song bank and 1 album or 10 songs to download per month and £7.99  for the same but 1 album or 15 songs. Well, throughout March you can listen to the Sky Songs Album of the Week free as a promo accessed throug Sky Anytime. Sky Anytime, if you’re not familiar with it, is a kind-of on-demand service included with Sky+HD – press the red button and you get a selection of Sky’s top movies and TV entertainment every week including episodes of new Sky series, movies etc (as long as the content is part of a package to which you subscribe). You simply save them to your Sky+ or Sky+HD Box and watch them when you want.

The first Album of the Week in March was The Family Jewels by Marina and the Diamonds (Marina pictured – the Diamonds don’t really exist, a bit like Florence’s Machine) and there’ll be albums from Ellie Goulding and Robbie Williams featured in the March promo too, so check it out while it’s free!

We have several new additions to our series of locally-focused TV switchover pages, all of them concentrating on the South West of the UK – Sedgemoor in Somerset and two for Gloucestershire (one for Stroud and surrounding towns and one for South Gloucestershire). All three of these areas switch in two stages on March 24th and April 7th and it’s hoped that these pages will give you an idea of the channels and services you’ll be able to get both before and after the big switch.

If you’d like us to focus on your area and we haven’t done so yet, please let us know!

Virgin Media seem to be working hard on the HD channels at the moment, trying to keep up with Sky of course, and have announced that Discovery HD will be available on Virgin TV packages from this spring. Discovery has over 1500 hours of HD programmes to offer and and will be available 24-7 to Virgin XL TV users, offering science, history and natural history shows and of course Bear Grylls:Born Survivor.

Virgin already offer the following HD channels

• BBC
• Channel 4
• ESPN
• FX
• Living
• MTVN
• National Geographic

Plus the Eurosport HD channel coming soon, and is constantly adding to its archive of HD on-demand.

Sky TV recently announced that the Sky+HD Box would be the standard-issue box from now on for all new customers, and that if it was taken with the HD Pack (£9.99 a month) the box (normally £49) and the set-up (normally £30) would be free. Without the HD pack you would pay the standard £79.

Great news (for those who don’t want to get the HD pack) – they’ve just gone one better and waived the £30 set-up fee when you buy online whether you take the HD Pack or not. So as long as you buy online you can get the Sky+HD Box for £49, free set-up fee and whatever monthly the fee is for the bundle you want.

Check out Supertelly here…

For full details on Supertelly click here

There have been quite a few changes at Sky TV this week – they’re calling it Supertelly! It’s all about HD now, and the Standard and Sky+ boxes have all but disappeared in favour of the Sky+HD Box, which is now the box you get with all new contracts, you then choose whether or not to take the HD Pack which gives you the HD channels.

The HD Pack costs £10 a month but if you take it out the Sky+HD Box is free with free set up (normally £49+£30), so over a 12 month contract it’s only £41 more expensive – worth considering. The Standard Sky Digibox is still available but only as part of a Multiroom package, whereas the Sky+ Box has gone – history. One to look out for if you’re really into your telly is the new Sky+HD 1TB Box – it has a terabyte of storage for video (240 hours of HD) and costs £249, more on that in a future post.

Click for more about Sky Bundles.

Have the people at Pixmania been spending too much time on eBay? The sale they’re running this week finishes at 11pm on Thursday 28th and the offers are counting down in real time – click here to see them (we like the real time countdown effect very much, by the way). The star offer is a Samsung LE32B541 LCD TV for £379 and there’s a range of other TVs as well as camcorders, DVD players and accessories. Blu-Ray players feature too, including a Samsung BD-P1580 for £99.

Up at the top end – both in terms of price and discount – is the Hitachi UT37MX70 37 inch LCD TV, a full HD model reduced from £1311 to £999, a saving of 23%, but if you’re after more mundane stuff like TV wall brackets and remote controls it’s worth checking out too.

1. Get Freeview

The first money-saving option to consider for digital TV has to be Freeview – the clue is in the name! It really depends on which channels are important to you and whether you want a landline and broadband in a bundle, but if you’re currently paying a monthly fee for Sky, Virgin or BT TV and you only ever watch the main channels (BBC, ITV, 4 and Five) then you may as well invest in a Freeview box – it may even be built into your TV or recorder. If, however, you need a landline (you possibly do) and broadband (you probably do) then a bundle may make it worthwhile as it could cost the same for the whole lot as it would just for the broadband and phone. Think about the on-demand services though, you might miss those…

2. Look for Special Offers

It may sound obvious but if you’ve decided to take out a subscription with one of the digital TV providers make sure you time it to take advantage of any limited period offers they have. For example at the time of writing Sky TV are giving away £50 of M&S vouchers when you sign up online. Virgin Media recently gave new customers a £50 credit into their account for the same reason, and BT Vision are currently giving a discount for the first 3 months on the monthly fees for their Viewing Packs – every little helps!

3. Use Voucher Codes

Whenever you need to upgrade your TV or buy a Freeview box, hard disc recorder or any other electronic gear don’t forget there’s a wealth of voucher codes out there to save you money. If you’ve never used a voucher code (sometimes called discount or promotional codes) they are the web equivalent of cutting out a coupon and getting money off in a shop, except the discounts on a large item like a TV can be a lot more worthwhile than 10p off a tin of beans…

4. Get a Bundle for TV, Broadband and Phone

If you know you want TV, broadband and a landline phone then make sure you get all 3 in a bundle with the same company. Don’t be tempted to think “Oh, I’ve been with BT for years and I don’t want the hassle of changing my phone line” – if you’re going to do all 3 with BT that’s fine, just be aware that if your services are spread over more than one provider the chances are you’re paying too much.

5. Get ESPN from BT for No Monthly Fee

Sports fans – if you’re just choosing who to go with for your TV then consider BT Vision. If you take out one of their Single Packs or Value Packs (which you would if you were getting BT Vision) you get the sports channel ESPN for no monthly fee, just a one-off £9.99 card fee. Now we think that’s what you call a……..

What a lovely new offer from Sky… If you’re a Sky+HD customer you can grab yourself a free Sky Box Office movie and £10 M&S voucher by arranging a Sky+HD party – all you have to do is visit the special party page, sign up for a party and invite some friends to attend (they have to be over 18 and not from your own household). If you can get 3 or more friends to accept your email invitation by 5pm on November 17th Sky will give you one of these movies free from Friday 11^th to Sunday 13^th December…

• Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
• Angels & Demons
• The Hangover

Plus a £10 voucher for Marks and Spencer to get some food and drink!

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince and The Hangover are showing in the same week as their release on DVD, making it even more of a scoop.

Find out more about Sky HD here or click here to visit the Sky site.

How Your Home Cinema Will Look! (If your name is Steve...)

If you’re wondering which HD service to go with then you should take a serious look at this Virgin offer. Until the 31st December the Virgin V+HD installation is reduced from £99 to £75.

“But I can get Sky HD for £49 at the moment!” you say – true, but there is one difference worth considering. The V+ box is the only one with 3 tuners, meaning you can watch 1 programme while recording 2 others. Now that’s serious telly watching but I know there are people out there who would use that regularly, and even the non-TV junkies among us find that good TV shows are like buses and they tend to come 3 at a time.

To check out the deals available visit our Virgin TV page or go straight to Virgin here.

I noticed as I was renewing my TV license that it states you need to buy one to watch TV in any form, whether through a television, mobile phone or computer. Now there must come a point where someone who uses their PC to watch TV but never watches any net versions of terrestrial channels will challenge this, which will be an interesting debate but no doubt the TV licensing people (ie the government) will have it all covered in the small print.