Better than Sky! (BT Vision)

Member Name: Emmalou28

Product:	BT Vision
Date:	06/08/09 (119 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Great on-demand content, easy to use box, hard disk for easy recording

Disadvantages: Square eyes!

I've had BT vision for over two years now and have enjoyed some excellent entertainmet through it. As a BT broadband customer I only had to pay a £30 lump sum for the box, and for all the features it has, particularly the hard disk and ability to record/pause/rewind live TV, this has proved excellent value for money.

Reliability:
I have heard many negative reviews about it regarding reliability and so on, and in truth a recent TV aerial engineer I had, was very scathing about it, but our box (touch wood!) has so far been completely fault-free. The picture quality, providing you get a good signal, is always crisp.

Cost:
Unfortunately the box only (without a subscription) is now £90. Tv shows are around 99p, older films £1.99 and recent films between £3 and £5. The cheapest subscription is £14.68 for unlimited TV, TV replay and two other services from kids, music, sport and picturebox (a regularly changing selection of older and classic films) The service is only really intended for BT broadband customers, although if you are willing to pay £30.33 a month you can get it without BT broadband.
I had the box only to start with and then added a £6.99 subscription for just the TV but I don't know if this is an option available for new customers.

Installation: It is a while ago since we installed ours but I found it relatively easy with their step by step guide. I seem to recall that you could pay extra for an engineer to install it, but even though I am not particularly technically minded, I had little problem fitting it. If you are with BT broadband using a home hub you do not need a telephone line near your TV, just an extra power socket near the TV and another near your home hub for the two power line adapters which provides the on-demand content for your broadband connection.

On-demand content:
This is the prime selling point of the service, in my opinion. If like me, you like to be able to choose what you watch when you want, then this is an excellent package for you. There are new TV shows and films added every week and new blockbuster films often appear as soon as they are available on DVD. The TV content includes something for everyone with many top rated shows - I became a 'Lost' addict and discovered the joys of 'Desperate housewives' through the on demand service. If you miss your favourite TV shows and don' want to resort to the internet you can also find most current shows on TVreplay.

The BT vision box.
This has a 160Gb hard disk which allows you to record up to 80 hours of content and recording is super fast - just find your program on the TV guide and press the record button. You can also record whole series' if you wish. It is just so easy particularly if you are used to a VCR or DVD recorder as I was previously.

So overall I can say I've had only good experiences from BTvision and in fact it has revolutionised my TV viewing. The only disadvantage is that I now spend more time in front of the box!

Summary: A very good product