Confused - freeview - ntl

Annie_Fanny

Hey there

Sorry if this message is in the wrong forum...

Can anyone clear up my confusion? I currently have a service pack from ntl which includes digital tv, broadband & telephone line for £32.99 per month. Now would I be better to buy a freeview box, (how much do these cost? - I just want the absolute basics and no frills), and ditch the digital tv from ntl. I note ntl have a pack that costs £24.99 for phone & broadband. I am just not very techy and wonder if the freeview boxes are worth the money?

Any help is appreciated!

Annie
Xx

jitsuguy

There arn't too bad. They can cost from 40-50 I think, so you would make your money back in a few months. It depends really on what you watch. I don't watch TV that much so when I do a freeview box is fine for me.

Jitsuguy

oops_a_daisy

Hi Annie - have just been through all this myself. If you cancel your cable TV you are still charged that part of the rental because it is connected with your phone so you would not actually make any saving. Also you get less/different channels with freeview and need an aerial. The bast way to try to make savings with NTL are to phone up their disconnections dept and ask them to check to see if any savings can be made with your current contract or you are thinking of moving etc. The saving that I made was to go onto digital - got more channels for a £3.50 per month saving.

Chortle_2

If you cancel your NTL subscription, they'll leave the box behind, and you'll still be able to watch the freeview channels through it! It works just like a freeview box once you've cancelled your account, so there is no need to buy a new one

Tr@cker

NTL are offering new customers Line rental, broadband and base digital TV at the mo all for 30 quid a month-its a good deal but existing customers like me would have to pay rather more. Ive got their broadband @ £17.99/ month and line at £10.50/ month, if i want the base pack TV i'd have to pay another £11/ month.
Ive had a freeview box for 18 months which cost me £45 and 30 odd channels for nowt ever since-they're very good-plenty enough channels for me and i dont like the idea of paying £8.49/ month more than new customers.

Ceri_2

Chortle wrote:

If you cancel your NTL subscription, they'll leave the box behind, and you'll still be able to watch the freeview channels through it! It works just like a freeview box once you've cancelled your account, so there is no need to buy a new one

Does this work with Telewest?? Have a feeling not. Mom is on about getting rid of telewest tv cos we keep having probs & I think my MSEing is rubbing off. But we would miss sky one & I would miss living tv

roswell

NTL dont leave your box i know because we cancled in jan and i hoped they would 2 days after we cancled they came and took the box

lynzpower

You get living on freeview.

We got a Sagem freeview box from argos for £23 the other day, and Living is on there,. Personally, i think whats on there is pretty pants, but then Ive never bought cable cos I think its pants! Im hoping for some reruns of make me rich on itv2 , and thats it lol

queenofthedump

NTL collected our boxes after we canx our tv too. My friend has freeview and she thinks it is great, we have our phone and broadband through NTL have never had problems with them but we canx tv cause it caused us nowt but grief cause of the boxes have sky plus now its brill but expensive. I would work out the costs and weigh it up before you make a decision. As someone else has stated already as you have tv your phone rental line of £10.50 is included with your tv so if you canx it they start charging it.

RiffRaff

If you cancel your NTL subscription, they'll leave the box behind, and you'll still be able to watch the freeview channels through it! It works just like a freeview box once you've cancelled your account, so there is no need to buy a new one

Whilst this might be true, I believe it's technically against the terms of the contract and possibly against the law. This topic comes up pretty regularly on the Digital Spy Forums at http://www.digitalspy.co.uk - see for example, this thread - Free channels available on ntl without sub . It's pretty lengthy but sums up the issues!

Hope this is helpful.

RR

amosworks

lynzpower wrote:

You get living on freeview.

We got a Sagem freeview box from argos for £23 the other day, and Living is on there,. Personally, i think whats on there is pretty pants, but then Ive never bought cable cos I think its pants! Im hoping for some reruns of make me rich on itv2 , and thats it lol

I'd just like to point out that you don't get fixed channels on Freeview, it's dependent entirely on LOCATION and not which make of Freeview box you get People in Wales can get some Welsh channels and so on. It can also change as much as on a per-county level! Quite simply, different parts of the country receive different channels than others. You can go online to various sites, enter a postcode and they will give you a typical channel lineup.

Also of you're close to a transmitter you can receive all the channels available from that transmitter (dependent of the channels available based of your geographic location), but if you live far away from it and have an old ariel then you might not be able to receive all the channels it's transmitting.

With digital TV it's an "all or nothing" approach to receiving a signal, unlike old TV's where you can tweak the RF to get a better picture. Freeview doesn't display fuzzy pictures like you get on old TV's with RF interference. The decoder either gets a good enough signal to decode perfect quality pictures or it doesn't decode anything. The same for DAB Radio too.

HTH