Television in the UK no longer arrives one way. You can take a full pay TV package with hundreds of channels, subscribe to a handful of streaming services and nothing else, or watch a good deal for free. Most households end up somewhere in between, often paying for more than they watch. This page explains what is on offer and how the options compare.

How TV reaches your home

There are four routes, and the one available to you depends partly on where you live.

  • Satellite. A dish on the wall, feeding a Sky box. Available almost everywhere, including rural addresses where cable never reached.
  • Cable. Virgin Media, delivered over its own network. Roughly half of UK homes can get it, and you cannot take Virgin TV without Virgin broadband.
  • Over your broadband. Sky Stream, Sky Glass, EE TV, TalkTalk TV and NOW all send the picture down your internet connection. No dish, no cable, but the quality depends on the connection you already have.
  • Free to air. Freeview through the aerial, Freesat through a dish. No monthly cost at all, and worth remembering before you pay for a package whose main draw is channels you would get anyway.

What the packages include

Channel counts make useful headlines and poor comparisons, because most of the difference between a mid-tier package and a large one sits in channels few people watch. The things worth checking are sport, films and whether streaming subscriptions you already pay for are bundled in.

Sport is where the money goes

Live sport is the single biggest reason UK TV bills differ. It is also split. Premier League football is shared between Sky Sports and TNT Sports, so following it in full means paying for both, whichever provider sells you the package. If you only want one competition, check which broadcaster holds the rights before committing to two years of anything.

NOW sells the same Sky Sports content on a rolling monthly basis. It costs more per month than a contract, but you can stop during the summer. For a lot of people that works out cheaper across a year.

Bundling TV with broadband

Taking TV and broadband from one provider usually knocks something off the combined price, and it means one bill and one company to ring when something breaks. The trade-off is flexibility. Your TV contract normally runs alongside the broadband one, so leaving early tends to mean paying off both.

It also narrows your choice at renewal. If the broadband deal stops being competitive, moving is harder when your TV service is tied to it. Worth thinking about if you switch providers often to keep costs down.

Working out what you should pay

Add up what you already spend on streaming. Netflix, Disney+, Prime Video and the rest add up quietly, and several TV packages now include one or two of them. If a bundle covers a service you are paying for separately, the real saving is bigger than the price difference suggests.

Then count what you actually watch. Households often carry a sports package through months when nothing they follow is on. Downgrading for part of the year is usually possible, and rarely done.

Once you know what you need, our broadband deals pages show which providers bundle TV, and the provider reviews cover how each one performs on service and price rises.