It’s a great time to be a TV viewer in the United Kingdom. Between Freeview (not to mention it’s + and HD variants), BT, YouView, Sky, EE TV, and NOW TV, there are more than enough options to keep you entertained from the comfort of your own home. There is, however, one final option that I didn’t include earlier, and that’s Virgin Media.

As the second biggest pay TV operator in the UK, it’s tasked with keeping Sky on their toes and improving their service to the point where Sky are no longer the first choice for those looking to get great entertainment in their home. It’s not just TV that these two companies offer, either, because both also supply broadband and home telephony. Put simply, they’re quite similar, so why should you choose Virgin Media?

Let’s begin with their TV offering. Virgin Media’s TV is powered by TiVo, a Sky+ like box which allows you to record and manipulate live TV from the comfort of your sofa. Packing a 500GB hard drive (enough for 500 hours of TV) and three tuners, it allows for neat tricks like recording three programmes simultaneously whilst watching a fourth that you recorded earlier. It’s also got some features that simply can’t be found on Sky’s service, like built in Netflix, YouTube and iPlayer, not to mention a dedicated 10Mbps internet connection, so your normal Internet isn’t slowed by your TV viewing.

Through that box, you can get access to over 230 channels, 47 HD channels, 12 Sky only channels and even some programming in 3D. There are five packages to choose from, going from the basic ‘More TV’ package with 70 channels all the way to the fully loaded ‘TV XL’ which also features BT Sport HD. Even better, you can take Sky Sports and Sky Movies on your Virgin Media subscription too, so you won’t feel the sting of not being with Sky. Indeed, the only channel you do stand to lose by switching to Virgin Media is Sky Atlantic, which is home to the likes of Game of Thrones, The Last Panthers and more. However, if the thought of losing out on that is too much, you could always sign up to NOW TV.

Moving on to Virgin Media’s broadband offering, we can truly begin to see the light between the two companies. Put simply, Virgin Media have the best broadband offering in the entire country, with even their most basic offering beating Sky’s most expensive deal hands down. From their Super 50 Fibre with 50Mbps broadband to their VIVID 200 Fibre with 200Mbps broadband, the company offer lightning fast and stable broadband to huge swathes of the country. They also never throttle or cap your broadband usage, so you can stream as much 4K Netflix as your heart desires without fear of bumping up against arbitrary limitations.

Perhaps the most compelling reason to sign up with Virgin Media though is their quad play deals. Because Virgin Media offer TV, broadband, home phone and mobile telephone contracts, they’re the preferred destination for millions of Brits who don’t want to spend their life dealing with bills from different companies. Those quad play deals are also some of the cheapest around, making them a highly attractive proposition for pretty much anyone, as long as they aren’t part way through a contract with another company.

Virgin Media, then, offer a TV package that’s comparable to the one offered by Sky, broadband that blows everyone else out of the water and quad play deals that no other company can match. So, what are you waiting for?

Source by Alec James