Digital TV in the UK

What is Digital TV?

Digital TV offers a far wider choice of TV viewing with lots of extra channels, and uses digital technology to reduce the interference that you may experience on analogue TV (the five channels you get via your standard TV aerial).

Digital TV also offers other benefits, such as a greater selection of wide-screen programming, and on-screen electronic programmed guide, interactive services.

What are the Digital TV options?

Freeview is received through your standard TV aerial. All channels are free to watch, there's no installation or subscription cost, no contract, and no engineer needs to visit.

Freeview offers around 40 TV channels and 25 radio stations - the channel line-up is more limited than Sky Digital.

To get Freeview, you either need to buy a special Freeview set-top box and connect it to your existing TV set, or consider getting a new TV that has a built-in Freeview receiver.

In the UK, the digital satellite TV leader is Sky Digital. Sky offers the largest range of channels around, with channels including Sky One, GOLD, Comedy Central, lots of Sky Movies channels and an unrivalled range of sport, music and kids channels.

To get Sky, you sign up on-line, and arrange for a Sky installer to install a satellite dish and hook up a digibox to your existing TV. If you're considering Sky, we recommend you look at Sky+, the digital recorder that will change the way you watch TV...

Offer: Sky Digital is offering the following package: Over 200 digital TV channels, Broadband Internet access (with a free router) and free UK evening and weekend land-line phone calls... all this from just £18 a month. An installation fee of between £30 and £60 may apply, when ordered on-line.

If you live in a part of the UK that's covered by cable TV operator Virgin Media, they may be able to provide you with a cable TV package, as well as home phone and high-speed Internet access. They will install a set-top box and an engineer will call to connect it to their fibre-optic cable.

BT Vision offers free-view TV channels, supports live pause of TV shows, and comes with up to 80 hours of recording time. It also can download TV content over a Broadband Internet connection - for content like movies, TV shows, kids programming and sporting events.

Special box that offers the free-view channels, plus a small selection of TV content that downloads overnight onto the built-in hard-disk. Box supports 100 hours of content downloaded and refreshed every seven days. Shows supplied from GOLD, Comedy Central, Home (formerly UKTV Style), CBS and Warner TV.

You need to be in a Freeview coverage area. The special Top Up TV Anytime set-top box costs from £40, and the subscription fee is £11.99 a month.

TalkTalk TV. Formerly known as Tiscali TV or Homechoice, this service is available in parts of the UK including London, Birmingham and Liverpool, and offers over 70 TV channels via your phone line.

The service also offers 1500 on-demand movies, over 5000 music videos, hundreds of TV series, and a TV rewind service.