TV

A neighbour said get Sky+, it will transform the way you watch television. We got FreeView instead. A Philips FreeView box to be exact. We stuck with it for two weeks and then returned the box to Sainsbury’s. It kept freezing and would sometimes take 5 minutes to change between two different channels even when the signal strength indicator suggested a strong signal. To date it has been the most frustrating piece of electronic equipment I have ever used.

I once bought a Samsung video recorder that had a faulty design. Some kind of minute spring would fail after the guarantee period was up and the recorder would need repairing. It was a well know problem with that particular recorder. I decided never to buy a Samsung product again. Phillips is now on that list of untrustworthy companies. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t automatically place the companies of all failed products on my list. Just those whose products cause me a level of frustration and anger that I feel justifies the total abolition of the existence of any of their products in the household.

So that’s three. Samsung, Phillips and The Daily Express.

Anyhow, we got Sky+ and it’s extraordinarily impressive. The box is effectively a satellite receiver with an integral hard disc for recording onto but that’s not really what makes it great. It’s the programming. The ease of use. The features just work and work in a way I would expect them to work. The manual is unnecessary.

The channel line up we have is also impressive. Hundreds of them and many of quality. Sky One, Sky Movies 1 & 2, Discovery, History, UK History, Civilisation, kiddie channels, loads of them. There’s always something on.

I now pay about forty quid a month for TV entertainment. It’s a lot of money but we got fed up with the quality of programming on terrestrial TV. We were at the video shop two or three times a month just so that we could spend some relaxing time on the sofa of an evening.

Forty quid. Thirty for the pleasure of always having something to watch whenever we feel like it and a sophisticated piece of machinery that provides us with one touch recording of multiple channels, rewinding and pausing of live TV, linking of a series so it can be recorded in its entirety, a great user experience with an easy to use but sophisticated user interface and a permanent connection between our house and a satellite in Geo-stationary orbit around our planet. Ten quid for various BBC channels that we hardly ever watch and would gladly give up if only the state permitted it.