The Sky's the Limit

While alot of the house is still no longer visible I do remember that there are quite a few phone and television points so of course I wanted to get the PVR and TV plugged in and running so as not to miss all that wonderful winter programming (or probably more entertaining would be the Christmas adverts).

But something was wrong. Couldn't seem to get a signal at all from the main connection. Hmmm, I thought about this for a while and then happened to be in the back garden where I could see wires tacked to the wall - I assumed these were for the satellite dish ... and some were, but others were for the TV sockets ... and they were just connected together, no aerial in sight! It seems this house is limited to receiving programming from Sky!

So I need to look into the options: there is obviously Sky which is ridiculously over-priced, there is now FreeSat which seems better in that you simply need a receiver (though I's need to replace my PVR and some channels aren't available), I could also get an aerial fitted and stick to FreeView. All of these require money and complexity that probably aren't justified given the amount of TV I watch.

There is one other possibility on the horizon and that is SeeSaw. From the news report in the Guardian it seems that project Kangaroo has been resurrected and this could, if it aims to have the same content, offer an alternative to watching programmes over-the-air. It may also have the knock-on affect of increasing competition and driving down the costs of the likes of Sky and could maybe even lead to interesting home entertainment systems in the future.

For now, I think I'll just have to stick to iPlayer or my collection of DVDs for viewing entertainment, until I can save up to implement an alternative plan after some extensive research into the available gadgetry.