See some Sky this Summer

Posted on 25th July 2007 at 21:23 Tagged under Entertainment

If you're fed up of staring at dank, grey cloud this summer, we here at Shopping Place can help. No, we haven't got some super neutron machine we borrowed from James Bond that can melt away the clouds (that's for later), but we can at least help you to see some sky. Unfortunately we're not talking about the blue, natural stuff, but something just as good all the same. Sky is here to entertain you this summer, with their excellent mix of TV, broadband, and phone. And it's not as expensive as you might think.

Sky TV used to be reserved for the upper class in society, the people who could spare a bit of money aside each month for the luxury of multi-channel TV. However in recent years, Sky has become more and more accessible to the masses. You can now get all three products - TV, broadband, and phone - for an amazing £26 a month. That's the equivalent of a packet of cigarettes a week, and Sky hasn't yet been scientifically proven to kill you (as far as we know).

"26 pounds," I hear you say, "I bet that'll only get me the cheapo, basic version of Sky!". But there you are wrong. The £26 a month gives you all the Sky channels, except for the Sports and Movie channels which you can pay a small fee to upgrade to include. You also get free UK weekend and evening calls, and up to 8Mb broadband with a huge 40GB per month usage allowance (equal to over 800 music albums). All aspects of the see, speak and surf offer are upgradeable and downgradeable, meaning you could end up paying even less than £26 a month. Sky are even kind enough to lob in their standard Sky box for absolutely free, but you can upgrade to the infamous Sky+ box for a one off fee of £99, or to the new Sky HD box for a one off fee of £299 and an additional monthly fee of a tenner. Cheap as chips.

The benefits of Sky are innumerable, far too many to list on this page. It might be the best £26 a month you ever spend, you could live your life through the power of the Sky box, never to leave your couch again. Let us explain.

You wake up at eight in the morning, realising that you fell asleep on the sofa the previous night munching on a packet of Doritos watching Lost. No problem, you scrunch up the half-eaten packet and lob it in the bin. Realising that you fortunately recorded the episode, you turn on the Sky+ box and resume where you left off. At about eleven following a morning of Bones on Sky One, you decide it's time to fit out your house with some new furniture. You browse to Sky Active, and order everything. From a new toaster to a new desk, it's all at your fingertips. Come one o'clock following all that shopping, you start feeling peckish. Again you browse to Sky Active, and order a pizza from Dominos. It gets delivered a short time later, and you tuck in whilst guiltily watching the Disney Channel. You join in with an interactive vote - who would win in a fight, Tigger or Pooh?

In the afternoon, you feel quite lonely, and so decide to use Sky TV's dating service to have a bit of a flirt with someone from the opposite sex in Aberdeen. You later find out they're actually someone of your own sex. In the evening you laugh at the new series of The Simpsons, and inform yourself with Decoding the Past, before settling down to watch the big mid-week Premiership match on Sky Sports. You place a bet with your remote through SkyBet whilst the two teams are battling it out, and cheer loudly when your backed team wins. Receiving the prize money, you realise that you have enough money to pay for Sky for the year, and can do the whole thing again tomorrow.

So while we wouldn't recommend it, it probably is possible to survive with nothing more than a Sky box and a couch (if you like pizza a lot). Good news is that with the new technology coming along, you'll be able to book yourself in for a GP's appointment when you've become too fat to leave the house.

So whatever you choose to do with it, we reckon Sky's deal of broadband, TV, and phone for only £26 a month is one of the best deals around, and definitely something to pick up on whilst it lasts.

For more information and to place your order with Sky, click here.