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Free Sky+ HD Box & £50 M&S Voucher
Choose different Entertainment Packs such as the Variety Pack, Knowledge Pack, Music Pack and many more. Premium channels include the Sports Pack and Movies Pack.
Sky HD allows viewers to watch broadcasts in High Definition (HDTV) including Sky Movies HD & Sky Sports HD. Sky recently expanded its services and now offers broadband internet access - Sky Broadband and Sky Talk which offers free evening and weekend calls.
Online Exclusive - Free Sky+ HD Box and £50 M&S Voucher with any Sky TV Package
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Record, pause and rewind live HD TV Choose from 6 TV packs. HD channels - Sky 1, Channel 4 & BBC. Add Sky Sports & Movies HD. Free Sky+ HD Box £50 M&S Voucher Free Broadband & Calls | Experience Sky Movies in HD Up to 37 HD channels including Sky Movies, Channel 4 HD, BBC HD & more. Free broadband & calls Free Sky+ HD Box £50 M&S Voucher Free Broadband & Calls | Includes Movies Pack, Sports Pack & HD Packs All 6 TV packs. Movies, Sports Packs & HD channels. Up to 2Mb broadband. Free calls. Digital TV, Free Broadband & Free Calls Six Entertainment Packs Sky Sports, Movies & HD Packs |
Featured Sky packages
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| 12 months | FREE no fee | £28.00 per month | |
The subscription television company Sky, also known as BSkyB or British Sky Broadcasting, are in their 20th year of operation, and have been providing subscription satellite TV and digital television services to the British public non stop, offering the latest innovations and TV broadcasting technologies as well as promoting Sport, Movies and the import of American TV shows to the UK market. They also offer broadband internet to their customers and home phone, and have championed the digital switchover as well as the move to high definition broadcasting. It's easy to look at a huge corporation as it is today and see the obviousness of its success, but if we take a look back at the history of Sky we can see how the evolution of satellite television has been an interesting and not necessarily straight forward one.
The Beginnings
Sky is of course a subscription TV services that uses satellites in order to send and receive programming, and in 1989 the first of the Astra satellites that amongst other things provided the first Sky customers with their service was launched. This first satellite was joined by several more during the 1990s, though the early years saw financial problems, with the News Corporation owned Sky Television, controlled by Rupert Murdoch, merging with British Satellite Broadcasting in November of 1990, an allegiance which confirmed the company's continued operation and which is still strong today.
The main benefits of the merger for Sky was the acquisition of more advertising contracts, which in their early days were hard to come by and the cause of the financial troubles in the first place. This merger also formed the base of the main Sky channels that exist today, with Sky Sports and Sky Movies resulting from the deal.
The Digital Age
In 1997, the satellite Astra 2A was launched with digital broadcasting in mind, and by 2001 Sky stopped the analogue service that it offered in favour of digital TV, which had the potential for hundreds of TV and radio stations to be broadcast. Initially this service was branded as Sky Digital, though this name is no longer used. 2001 also saw another innovation, the Sky+ service which is still around today, consisting of a set top box with built in hard drive facilitating the recoding and storage of programs without the need for tapes or DVDs.
Sky+ has grown in popularity and decreased in price, and set top box hard drive recorders have also been made by third party companies and copied by other subscription TV services.
Sky TV Today
Since the launch of its HD service in 2006, Sky has continued to offer the most comprehensive and flexible selection of digital TV channels and telecommunications services to old and new customers alike. Though their sports coverage has been somewhat diminished from the days of its early dominance, you should still expect that any new product introduced by Sky will in the coming years become adopted and adapted by other companies looking to emulate their success.
Sky have also recently moved away from their satellite roots and into the world of online on demand television services and channels, offering live TV without the need for a satellite dish, and with over 1 million customers signed up to their broadband service this is surely a good move.
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