The subscription-free alternatives

Now that the digital switchover is almost complete, 90% of the UK can receive Freeview, and more than four million HD boxes had been sold as of December 2011. Freeview can’t compete with Sky and Virgin on the sheer number of channels, but it does include satellite favourites such as ITV2, BBC Three and Four, More4, Dave and more. Numerous text services and radio stations are also included.

New TVs have Freeview built in, but it’s possible to buy a box for as little as £20 and be watching in minutes. Bear in mind, however, that cheap boxes eschew all luxuries, with scart rather than HDMI connections and no additional services. If you have the budget, there’s much more to Freeview than its basic service.

Freeview+ boxes allow for programme recording and, as with standard boxes, there’s no single box to buy – a minimum specification is licensed to hardware manufacturers. This specification includes series links, recording split programmes as individual programmes, searching and offering to record related programmes, and also offering alternative airings of programmes if there’s a scheduling conflict.

It’s similar to Sky+. Freeview HD, meanwhile, launched in December 2009 with only BBC HD and ITV, but that’s since grown to include BBC One, Channel 4 and regional equivalents. It’s also possible to augment your channel selection with TopUpTV. There’s no contract, and monthly payments unlock channels normally restricted to Sky and Virgin customers, such as Sky Sports channels and ESPN.

Both Freeview+ and HD usually come on high-end boxes. A £150 box typically includes a 160GB or 320GB hard disk as well as Freeview+ and HD, but for anything up to £300 you can get a terabyte or more of storage, twin TV tuners, Blu-ray drives and USB ports. The latter allows you to connect external USB hard disks or thumb drives and export recordings, although you may need to convert the video for playback on a PC, and some programmes may be encrypted. This gives Freeview boxes a potential advantage over Sky and Virgin’s set-top boxes, which effectively disable their USB ports.

Even if you’ve splashed out on an expensive box, there’s still one consideration that’s unique to Freeview: reception. The ongoing deactivation of the analogue signal has freed up precious bandwidth and improved coverage, but you’re still reliant on your signal to receive all the available channels.

The first stop should be a postcode check at the Freeview website. Sites such as UKFreeTV offer transmitter maps, service updates and information on the technical aspects of the Freeview service. The quality of reception also depends on the aerial: external aerials are best, but internal ones cost as little as £10; if you have trouble, spend more on one with a built-in amplifier.

Remote recording & mobile EPG

Freeview has been a little slower to fully embrace the world of apps than Sky and Virgin, but the official Freeview HD app is available on iOS and Android. It’s basically an EPG, with full schedule listings for all Freeview channels, but it has social features too: each information page has a “share” button, along with the ability to flag favourite programmes and set reminders. What it can’t do currently is remotely record programmes on your Freeview box.

To do that, there are a number of internet-connected Freeview boxes, some of which allow you to set up remote recordings via a web interface. Currently only the SmartBox range of Freeview devices can pair up with an app called FetchTV, which includes remote recording.

Hopefully, the Freeview HD app will follow suit, although it’s presumably a more complex task when you’re not tied to a single piece of hardware.

Internet services

If you don’t want or need a TV, you can still watch many channels online. BBC iPlayer, ITV Player, 4oD and Demand 5 are all free to view (although you still need a TV licence to watch live broadcasts), and Sky now offers an online-only subscription to its channels. For £15 a month you can receive the basic entertainment pack with up to 20 channels, rising to £40 a month for the full sports and movies package.

You won’t have the Sky+ features, but you’ll have the flexibility to cancel at any point – and no unsightly dish stuck on the side of your house.

Then, of course, there’s the huge quantity of online video content not tied to an existing television broadcaster. Internet TV has been a buzz phrase for years now, and to a certain extent it’s possible to watch entertaining content that exists solely online. There are many popular YouTube channels, many in Full HD, along with shows that arrive on all manner of websites in regular slots. As traditional TV companies continue to grow their online output, the internet is already becoming a new home for TV – just not quite in the manner many originally predicted.

Consoles

A good example of this is in the world of games consoles. Most family households these days have at least one sitting under the TV, and they’re becoming increasingly powerful entertainment hubs. The Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 both offer streaming content from BBC iPlayer and 4oD, with the Xbox also offering Demand 5 and the PlayStation 3 offering ITV Player. Both consoles have Lovefilm and Netflix apps for streaming movies, as well as some of their own on-demand movies and TV shows.

It’s a major coup for Microsoft, essentially turning your Xbox into a second Sky box

They each have their exclusives. While the PlayStation 3 offers a selection of Sky shows for purchase in its PlayStation Store, the Xbox has a full Sky Go app with which you can either stream the channels in your subscription, or pay as you go. It’s a major coup for Microsoft, essentially turning your Xbox into a second Sky box.

The PlayStation 3 can’t quite match that, but it does have its own offerings. VidZone streams music videos in an array of styles and genres – much like the music channels on Sky, but here you get to choose what song plays next. The Xbox has the similar Vevo. The excellent Mubi, on the PlayStation 3, offers a selection of independent and classic films.

There’s one other factor to take into account: everything on the PlayStation 3 is available for free; to get anything beyond iPlayer on the Xbox you’ll need a Gold subscription, which costs around £30 a year.

Apps

It isn’t only about the living room: the popularity of smartphones means that big TV companies now have their own apps. BBC’s iPlayer is available on iOS, Android and BlackBerry, and Sky has a range of apps to complement its TV offering. ITV has iOS and Android versions of its ITV Player, but Channel 4’s 4oD is available only on iOS. Channel 5’s on-demand service, Demand 5, is also available on iOS, with an Android version slated for a summer release.

Then there are the streaming services. Netflix’s iOS, Android and Windows Phone 7 apps allow direct streaming of movies as part of your subscription, as does Lovefilm’s iPad app. Alas, the Lovefilm apps for iOS, Android and Nokia smartphones only let you browse titles and watch trailers. TVCatchup has free, ad-supported streaming from a variety of channels on iPhone and iPad. Popular American service Hulu has made noises about launching in the UK, too, but its service and app – which works on both iPhone and iPad – hasn’t yet landed on these shores.

It’s also possible to buy TV shows and movies from Apple and Google themselves. Apple’s iTunes serves up the broadest catalogue, with Google Play currently offering only movies, but the firm has registered domains such as www.googleplaytv.com, which could indicate a desire to offer TV shows too.

There are other apps that, while not affiliated with particular streaming services or TV networks, can give your TV viewing a tech injection. IMDb is primarily a movie site, but its seemingly endless database also catalogues the stars, crew and writers of most of the world’s TV. Dozens of apps offer TV listings, news and reviews of current shows, and innovative software such as Zeebox attempts to tap into the current growth in second-screen viewing by linking up with social networks, including Facebook and Twitter.

Finally, it’s possible to use your smartphone in conjunction with media-streaming boxes. Slingbox’s SlingPlayer software is available for iOS devices, Android tablets, Windows Phone 7 devices and BlackBerry handsets, and iOS devices can control Apple TV direct from the smartphone or tablet.