New Sky thinking

Supertelly has just arrived in our living room.

Ellen and I stayed loyal to Virgin Media, and its predecessor NTL, throughout all of our married lives. And before.

But that loyalty has now come to an end, certainly as far as TV is concerned. We've defected to Sky.

We'd stayed with Virgin Media throughout the infamous spat between Branson and Rupert that saw Virgin customers lose every single one of their Sky channels, while Branson found enough time and money to fly around the world in his hot air balloon and launch spacecraft.

It felt a little like dumping a girlfriend, as we picked up the phone to end our contract with Virgin.

In theory, they'd done nothing wrong.

Since the spat with Murdoch, Virgin had been a perfectly faithful partner. Dependable and not too costly on the pocket, it didn't talk back and always made us laugh.

It had even become an integral part of our family fabric, growing to become a dedicated grandparent to the kids, always available to entertain them during the day and even reading them a story at night before bedtime.

However, loyalty almost always has a price.

Sky's 'Supertelly' offer was simply too good to turn down.

They were offering to give all new customers a Sky+ HD box for free and install it for free too. By comparison, Virgin Media extorted £75 just to "set-up" their equivalent V+HD box.

I watched the Sky 'Engineer' carefully as he went about the "set-up" process.

This feat of 'engineering' took about 10 minutes.

The 'Engineer', erm, opened the box, put the HD box under the telly, plugged it in to the power supply, connected it to the phone socket and then got out his Sky blackberry that only Sky 'Engineers' are allowed to have, fiddled with a few buttons, presumably to send encryption/authorisation codes from our living room back to Sky HQ to activate the box and that was it.

How the heck can Virgin justify charging £75 for that?

It was still a tough decision to switch.

New Supertelly offer aside, there wasn't much between Sky and Virgin Media as far as price was concerned.

In terms of television bundles, they were both fairly evenly matched as far as I could see. Quantity was an entirely different matter. Sky surged into the lead with its abundance of digital channels - 264 compared to Virgin's 65 - and even further into the lead with it's superiority in the HD market.

At the moment, Sky gives you 37 HD channels. Virgin gives you 7.

However, Virgin Media hauled Sky back, almost level, with its amazing on-demand service.

This massive database lets you enjoy a week's worth of pre-recorded 'Catch-up' TV as well as storing hundreds of hours of great programmes and series of the past and present in all genres, alongwith a massive music database with old and contemporary music. All this for free. And...its gives a free karaoke facility and movies too.

It was a wrench giving up Virgin Media on-demand, and it simply dwarfs Sky's extremely limited 'Sky Anytime' on-demand service and sweeps Sky's other on-demand service - 'Sky Player' - aside with ease, which only allows you to watch on-demand tv on your, erm, PC.

If that's not a contradiction in terms, then it certainly is a step down in viewing experience.

Despite this, I'm more than willing to give Sky a go. That's why I agreed with Ellen's suggestion to swap. I'll happily kick off my slippers, sit back and see what 'Supertelly' has to offer.

But if Sky can get their on-demand service sorted, it'll be time for the Competition Commission to intervene surely.

In the meantime, there no chance of our new relationship hitting the rocks anytime soon.

We're tied into a 12 month contract.