Sky Digital
Sky Digital offer TV, broadband and phone services and are best known for Sky Sports and Movies – the TV channels are broadcast by satellite so you need a dish on the outside of your house and a Sky Box inside. The broadband gives speeds of up to 20Mb, as it uses a phone line the speed will vary depending on the distance between you and the exchange, and comes with the basic Sky Talk phone service for which you need to pay Sky line rental. UK coverage is around 98%, so it’s widely available and as with most providers the best packages combine TV, broadband and landline phone – see the most popular bundles below.
Deal alert! Free £50 M&S Voucher when you join Sky+ or Sky+HD online! £50 offer ends 23rd Feb. Free box and set-up too. Click here for details >> Sky Broadband Unlimited half price for a year – new and existing customers joining with or without TV, ends Feb 16th – click here for that one.
Sky TV Starter Deal
Only £20 a month
Sky+ TV, broadband and calls £20 a month plus £12.25 line rental. Free Sky+ Box with free standard set-up, 2MB broadband, evening & weekend calls.
Sky+HD Starter
£30.25 a month
Get the HD box FREE with free set-up and have fantastic HD quality for £30.25 a month plus £12.25 line rental. Includes broadband and Sky Talk Freetime.
Sky+HD with Sky Movies
£46.25 a month
Movies in HD, 850 different movies a month, Free Sky+HD box, HD pack with wide choice of HD channels for £46.25 a month plus £12.25 line rental.
Sky+HD with Sky Sports
£50.25 a month
The fantastic Sky+HD Box, Sky Entertainment Pack plus Sky Sports! – over 100 sports with exclusive live coverage. £12.25 line rental payable
Sky TV Packages
More about Sky TV
Equipment and Set-Up
To receive Sky TV you need a mini-dish installed somewhere on your property and a Sky TV box - these range from the Sky+ Box to the Sky+HD Box through to the special 1 Terrabyte version of the HD box for those who wish to pay for more storage space. Installation is carried out by a Sky engineer and then the equipment is yours to keep, however if you live in a listed building or rented accomodation you need to make sure you have permission for a Sky dish to be installed. The minimum contract with Sky is 12 months.
What's on Sky?
Sky has up to 160 digital TV channels, as well as over 240 free-to-air channels, and is the leading provider of HD television with 50 channels (and counting) available to subscribers of the £10.25 a month HD Pack. It has also been a pioneer of 3D TV in the UK and has a dedicated 3D channel available to subscribers of the Sky World HD package. Coverage for Sky in the UK is around 98%, which is a very good rate compared to Virgin Media (for which you need to live in a street that's been cabled) and Freeview-based services like BT Vision and Freeview itself, coverage for which still depends very much on area although will get better around the UK after digital switchover. If you subscribe to Sky Digital you'll receive the regular free-to-air channels such as BBC, ITV etc through the dish as well as the channels in the entertainment pack you choose and any premium content you decide to take, such as sports and movies.
Entertainment Packs New Sky TV customers can choose between two TV packages - Entertainment and Entertainment Extra. These are the new simplified packages which replaced the choice of 6 Entertainment Packs on 1st September 2011 - Sky Entertainment is made up of all the channels from the Variety Pack and the Style & Culture Pack and Sky Entertainment Extra is all 6 packs, which is all of this plus the channels from the other four packs News & Events, Knowledge, Children's and Music. More about Sky TV packages here.
What is Sky+?
Sky+ is a recording service that essentially turns the Sky box into a PVR (or personal video recorder) and enables you to record, pause and rewind live TV using the built-in hard drive to store the data. Here are the main features of Sky+;
- Pause and rewind live TV - handy if you need to take a phone call, see to the kids and all the other little interruptions
- Record TV programmes - the Sky+ Box has 2 tuners so you can record 2 programmes at the same time, watch one channel while recording another or watch a previously recorded programme while recording 2 others
- Series Link - lets you record a whole TV series at the touch of a button
- Remote Record - if you forget to set your box to record you can do this remotely using your mobile phone or online
Sky Anytime+
Anytime+ is Sky's broadband-based TV on-demand service - they have a huge library of TV and film which can now be accessed by Sky TV customers via their broadband connection. For this reason although you are technically ready for Sky Anytime+ with Broadband Everyday Lite it is Broadband Unlimited that is recommended for using the service due to the amount of data allowance TV takes up in downloading.