Been meaning to do this for a while, but now my income has taken a hit it wouldn’t hurt to reduce outgoings

Telly. Freeview is a bit of a no-brainer for me, never watch anything other than the terrestrial channels, only reason I have the Tivo box from Virgin is they seem incapable of giving me a decent BB deal without one?

So, I’d need to fit a new aerial, ideally in the loft (I know not ideal), bit of research doesn’t throw up much apart from get a decent aerial and as importantly decent cable.

Internet. VM internet is really good, but now my daughter has left home, it’s pretty much just me, so hopefully I won’t notice the difference. No idea what’s out there for deals, or who is the best ISP?

So collective wisdom of STW, any advice or comforting words of wisdom…

We switched from Virgin 100mb to Vodaphone this year. Now £23 a month and due an Amazon voucher shortly. Signed via Martin Lewis comparison page.
Spent £100 for a company to fit a roof aerial. Paid for by 2 months savings. Getting speeds of 35mb. No issues streaming films and using 2 laptops. Only notice slightly longer times when downloading films to phone to watch later.
Kept same phone number. Engineer visited house and extended old BT socket last used 20 years ago from inaccessible cupboard to place we wanted it in the house.
Should have switched years ago.
Been using Vodaphone 3 months now with 100% reliability.

That’s the sort of comforting words I’m after!

We went to Vodafone too, experience very similar to irc’s. Got our £120 Amazon voucher no bother. BB no different to virgin for our usage, it’s been fine doing teams meetings while WFH and streams films no bother so I’m happy. It was really bad for a day or two immediately after connection but the engineer had warned this might happen and it’s been absolutely fine since. We were paying £37/month for basic virgin, we now have BB + Freeview + Netflix + Disney for pretty much the same cost.

Check out NOW, I have their broadband and landline only and they are extremely competitive price-wise. £18 per month I think.

Edit: go to moneysavingexpert.com and type in your postcode.

Vodafone wifi constantly dropped out here, tbh i think it was their shitey router, Virgin night and day better, but more expensive. Kept the aerial and phone line so can go somewhere else if they get too dear.

Just moved from Virgin to Plusnet. BT to install. Already had an aerial in the roof. Had used a better router with Virgin set up as a modem. Just got Plusnet online, plugged the posh router in to it, and it just worked, and not only that, but my connection is faster. Gone from £56/month to 22 I think.

Do you really need an aerial? We use an Apple TV for all our tv, we can stream all the main channels live through that. I believe an amazon fire stick for £25 will do the same, for a lot less money than an Apple TV. It would certainly be worth trying before splashing out on an aerial.

We are currently having an extension built, and moving our lounge into it. I’m not bothering to have an aerial point installed

Did the same from Virgin to Vodafone, but I use my own router and WiFi. No issues.

House has an old Sky dish and TV has a satellite tuner so that’s what we use. I was planning to get a freesat recorder but thought we’d see how it went without recording (just use catch up services) and found we don’t miss it so haven’t bothered. Helps having an Apple TV that is good for aggregating the different services so can easily see that there’s a new episode of something on iPlayer or all4 or Netflix.

I saw on a previous thread, someone recommend Zen internet. zen.co.uk … I’ve gone with them and it’s been superb. (voted best internet provider by PC World and Which apparently, I mean, yeah I’d vote for them but I only have Virgin and Sky to compare to, so how would I know if they are the best?! 😀 )

+1 for Zen. Was on Plusnet but connection was terrible and line really slow. Zen migrated everything faultlessly, sent me a great new router (Fritzbox), and sprinkled some elven magic at the exchange end. In three years it has been faultless, Ive not even had to reboot the router more than once a year! No idea how they do it, but very happy.

Check out NOW, I have their broadband and landline only and they are extremely competitive price-wise. £18 per month I think.

Just had a quick look at them, yup £18 a month for the first 12 months, then goes to £33.

I saw on a previous thread, someone recommend Zen internet. zen.co.uk … I’ve gone with them and it’s been superb

Like the look of them, no introductory price to hook you in, and price guaranteed to stay the same

You can use a TV stick to at least partly replace TiVo with iPlayer itv player, internet browser etc. We got a fire TV and my parents have a Roku which does similar for them. Both are about £25.

We use Zen, got several thousand devices across the country in constant contact with base servers, only issues seem to be clients unplugging routers and BT lines going down, neither of which is Zens fault. Do you really need an aerial? We have Sky but honestly rarely use it, mostly watching Netflixs, Disney + or prime, all on Fire sticks. We’re already Prime members for other reasons. Recently took down one of our 2 external aerials, will remove the other one when I get the chance.

Zen seem like a great option, think I might give them a go myself. Utterly off topic, but are you still interested in selling the Crosscheck OP?

price guaranteed to stay the same

Yeah, I remember now, I checked loads of providers, and Zen were one of the few that didn’t put the price up after a year.
No complaints about the speed either (there were plenty with Sky!)

Is there a way to see how much broadband you are using? I’d like to see if we need 200mbps that we get now compared to to the zen 79mpbs. We tend to have a ps4 online, tv being streamed and me working at home at the moment and occasionally the kids doing homework:-) add to that the older kids sitting on tik tok at the same time as watching / playing online…