NowTV, Netflix and YouView – The Way We Watch TV Is Changing!
NowTV & Netflix
We’ve been Virgin Media customer for around 10 years. When I saw an email from The Money Saving Expert saying that VM prices were set to rise again, I knew we had to start looking elsewhere for our broadband and TV services.
We were already paying just under £85 for phone, broadband and the Full House TV package and the email said we were likely to be getting a £3.99 a month increase.
I was not prepared to pay nearly £90 a month so Ant and I started checking out the prices of other companies.
EETV and Broadband
After a few hours, we had decided on EETV with broadband.
I phoned VM and gave my 30 days notice to cancel. It was very easy to do and they didn’t give me the hard sell. She did tell me what price they could offer by dropping the TV package but it was still more than EE so I declined and went ahead with the cancellation.
I ordered the EETV to be installed on August 29th and VM was going to be switched off on September 1st. It was going to save us about £50 a month but it did mean I’d lose quite a few of the series I watch and our broadband would be dropping from 200Mb to 72Mb with EE. We decided it was worth it to save all that money. All was well until the following day when VM phoned me to confirm cancellation as they’d been contacted by EE.
Virgin Media
After a short conversation with the man at VM, he gave me an offer we couldn’t refuse! We would be dropped down to the basic TV package and 100Mb broadband. VM would pay our line rental for the year meaning we now have a monthly broadband bill of £21.
£21 for 12 months is amazing, especially as we get the 100Mb broadband. Our service for broadband from VM has always been excellent and we get great speeds here. We’ve had a few problems with the wi-fi dropping out but rebooting the box fixed it. VM are sending us a new box now as well so hopefully we won’t have that problem anymore 🙂 As we both work from home and our business is mainly online, I’m happy to be staying with VM.
I have nothing against EE as we’ve never used them but I was worrying a bit about the change. Not only dropping the speed but I didn’t know how reliable they are.
NowTV
Anyway, we decided that seeing as we were saving so much money, we could afford to buy a YouView box on which we can watch Netflix and we thought NowTV. Once it was installed, we discovered YouView only support the NowTV movies. You can’t watch the entertainment, kids or sports channels. Ant was quite annoyed that this wasn’t made clear before he bought it.
We had to nip to Asda last night and pick up a NowTV box. We got one with a 2-month movie pass as I’d already paid upfront for a 6-month entertainment pass.
I have to say that after seeing what’s available on NowTV entertainment and movies, I’m really excited about our new way of watching TV.
If you’d have told me I’d be giving up the Full House TV package I’d have laughed at you! There are so many great shows to watch on NowTV and Netflix, however, that I’m sure I won’t miss any of my other programmes.
Netflix
We’ve been using Netflix for a while now on our TiVo box. There are loads of series we want to watch, including Luke Cage and Daredevil ahead of the new The Defenders show. We’ve watched Jessica Jones and have nearly finished The Iron Fist.
So all in all, although I’ll miss using the TiVo for all my recordings, I’m excited about our new choices 🙂