| Product: |
Sky Digital |
| Date: |
17/08/01 (128 review reads) |
| Rating: |
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Advantages: -
Disadvantages: -
Probably the best digital television service around. One of the best things about sky digital is that they are constantly improving the service, e.g. adding new features, at no extra cost.
The full package costs something like £32, which is £2 cheaper than ON-digital's full package (Sorry it's called ITV-digital now)
Although ITV-digital costs more you get much fewer channels and the interactive services just don't compare.
ITV-digital promotes itself by saying they have all the hot sports channels, including those it has bought from sky-digital. Such as sky sports 1, 2 and 3.
However I don't think ITV-digital has got sky sports news and extra, which are truly excellent sports channels.
Remember that ITV want to charge you more for much less.
Ok, with ITV-digital you may get channels that only they offer, such as ITV 2. And thats great with you're into watching repeats of emmerdale.
Don't get me wrong I think ITV-digital is a good service, but it's simply nothing compared to sky-digital.
I think sky-digital's customer care is excellent and installation is less than an hour's job.
The interactive stuff
Sky-digital have a excellent interactive service, which allows you to shop, bank and play from the comfort of you own arm-chair.
Using interactive doesn't require you to use the telephone line that is connected. So it doesn't cost any money.
However some of the services require you to make a connection, which costs money, e.g. to check your bank balance at HSBC or to send a order to Argos.
Games, games and even more games.
Sky-digital have about 10 games, which you play with your remote control, which you access via their Open interactive service.
This is the main interactive service, where you can shop, bank and play.
But there are now new services popping up, such as PlayJam, which is dedicated to games and doesn
't cost you anything to play.
I think the games on PlayJam are superb and the fact that it's free is brilliant.
If you have a high score, which you want to register for a chance to win a prize you can phone PlayJam to register your score.
However this costs 2 pound.
I've never registered any of my scores mainly because of this high cost factor.
Games of PlayJam include Pub Darts, which is probably the best game on the service.
Others include BOK, quiz-like games and a rather clever racing game.
New games are always being added, but if a new one is added one of the old ones is usually take down. I think PlayJam only have a limited amount of bandwidth, hence the reason for this.
Each week on the standard Open games one on the games is turned into a high score game.
Where you can register a high score, using the connected telephone wire at a cost of 25 pence.
Sky-digital continued -
Sky-digital is the ultimate service for sports and movie fans.
Movies
The full package costing £32 comes with over 12 movie channels. Each month a whole range of blockbusters and premiers are shown.
E.g. American beaty, end of days, american pie, austin powers 2 etc....
Box office movies
If you want to watch the latest movies, such as "gone in 60 seconds" you can order it for £3 by simply going to the box office section and choosing the movie you want. Confirming that you want to order it and thats it. Your order is sent through the connected telephone wire to sky. The £3 will appear on your next months sky bill.
New features
Sky have just improved the service so that you can set reminders for certain programs.
You can even set it up to record your favourite programs if you go away for afew weeks.
Also they have a new customer help/care section, which is a interactive FAQ to your techical problems.
Allow these are rare, if you
have one this section will usually have a answer for you.
If your thinking about getting a digital television service then sky is the best.
Forget ITV-digital.
And if £32 a month is too much for you then you can always go for a cheaper package.
Sorry ITV, but sky win hands down...
Summary:
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