Cable TV, satellite TV and digital TV packages Sky Digital
Sky is the satellite alternative
Minimum cost £19.50 a month for one pack of your choice. Additional packs are £1 extra a month.
Pros Sky offers flexible packages and a wide range of standard and premium sports and film channels. Sky has the most HD (high definition) channels.
Cons You're tied in for a minimum of 12 months. This can be an expensive service if you're looking at incorporating premium channels or watching TV in high definition.
What is Sky Digital?
Sky Digital is a subscription service, where you pay a monthly fee and receive a selection of digital TV channels.
It is a great choice for TV addicts, with more than 300 TV channels available. It's good if you want channels of a specific genre, such as news and sport, and it's currently the best option for HD content.
For more on HD TV see the Which? guide to HD TV explained.
Sky Digital TV channels
All Sky’s customers automatically receive just over 240 TV channels with their subscription.
Other channels are grouped into entertainment packs. There are six standard packs to choose from and you can choose any combination. Each pack contains around 15 to 25 channels.
- Variety pack
- Children's pack
- Music pack
- Knowledge pack
- Style & Culture pack
- News & Events pack.
Prices start from £19.50 a month for one of the above packs. Each additional pack you choose costs £1 more. If you take all six packs it will cost £24.
Sky Sports, Sky Movies and ESPN on Sky
When you've chosen the packs you want, you can also add Sky Sports and Sky Movies packs at extra cost. If you want Sky Sports you can choose to buy a pack or an individual channel. Sky Movies also offers a pack with all 12 channels, as well as two individual Movies packs with five channels each.
The prices below show the amount you'll need to add to your basic Sky TV package cost.
Sky Sports is only available in HD TV with Sky
- Sports pack Sky Sports 1, 2, 3 and 4 - £20.25 a month
- Sports pack + ESPN Sky Sports 1, 2, 3 and 4, ESPN, ESPN America - £29.25 a month
- Sports 1 Sky Sports 1 - £12.25 a month
- Sports 2 Sky Sports 2 - £12.25 a month
- Movies pack includes Sky Movies Premiere, Sky Movies 1 & 2 and Disney Cinemagic - £16 a month
- Movies 1 includes Sky Movies Screen 1, Sky Movies Comedy, Sky Movies Classics - £8 a month
- Movies 2 includes Sky Movies Screen 2, Sky Movies Action & Thriller, Sky Movies Drama - £8 a month.
ESPN and ESPN America in HD
You can add ESPN and ESPN America to your subscription for £12 a month extra on Sky. If you have a Sky Sports channel in your package, you’ll pay a reduced fee of £9 a month extra.
Most content shown on both ESPN channels is available in high definition, but you’ll also need to pay an additional £10.25 for Sky’s HD pack. See Sky HD below.
Sky Digital on-demand content
All Sky Digital customers get access to the Sky Box Office library of pay-per-view films and key sporting events, such as boxing matches.
Sky Player also covers content from Sky’s pick of the week’s TV, including films and episodes of popular series. The service is free to customers with a recent Sky+ or a Sky+HD box.
See the Which? online TV guide for how to watch free programmes from Sky, BBC and Channel 4 on your laptop or PC.
Sky Broadband and Talk
You can bundle Sky's broadband and phone services with your digital TV package, but phone and broadband can't be bought as standalone services.
If you love your TV but don't use your phone or broadband much, Sky's free broadband and calls packages could be a good way of saving money. You'll need to be in Sky's local loop unbundled areas to get free broadband.
- Sky offers 20MB broadband with either a 2GB usage or an unlimited monthly use
- Sky has two talk packages offering inclusive free evening and weekend calls, or unlimited calls including 10 international destinations for £5 a month extra
- You can also get line rental through Sky for £11.25 a month, which is cheaper than BT.
Check out the Which? broadband review to see how Sky measures up against other providers in our exclusive customer satisfaction survey.
Sky HD
If you want Sky's HD service bear in mind you'll need an HD-ready TV.
An additional subscription fee of £10.25 a month applies if you want to watch HD channels on Sky. You’ll also need a Sky+HD box, which is currently free of charge for new customers when you're taking Sky TV with the HD pack and paying for setup. Otherwise, the box costs £49.
Sky currently offers up to 46 HD channels, each showing the same or similar content to their non-HD equivalents.
You can watch only the HD channels that correspond to the channels in your standard package. For example, if you want to watch Sky 1 HD, you’ll need to subscribe to Sky's Variety pack.
Sky digital availability
Sky is available to 99% of households in the UK. To watch Sky programmes, you’ll need a Sky box and mini dish.
