Readers will have seen adverts for Britbox and ITV HUB+, both want to ‘sell’ the same (or at least similar) service to us. They are subscription channels. You have to pay to see repeats that you have already paid for in one way or another!
They ‘sell’ programmes that have previously been broadcast terrestrially via BBC or ITV (or both in the case of Britbox). But surely, we have already paid for these programmes via the U.K. T.V. licence (which has to be paid ‘by law’ if we want to watch live T.V.) and by watching the advertisements on ITV. I know that the subscriptions are advert free – but why do we have to pay to watch those programmes AGAIN? Why?
For almost a year now, because of Covid-19, our evening entertainment has been limited to whatever we can find to watch on T.V. Prior to Covid, we could go and see friends, go out for a beer or maybe a meal. Of course, we didn’t do that every night, nor every week, but because of the various Covid lockdowns last year and this, those other options for evening entertainment have been restricted.
We rarely watch live T.V. anyway, despite paying the annual T.V. licence as required. This is partly because we no longer have the Humax to ‘freeze’ the live broadcast and also because even with our Smart T.V. we find freezing (pausing) live T.V. impossible. We like to ‘freeze’ a programme whenever we make a cup of tea for example, or when someone phones – otherwise we would miss a great deal of whatever we were watching.
Because of our trips to Spain, where we have no access to U.K. T.V. we have a subscription to Netflix, so that we might watch something on dark winter evenings. We also have a subscription to Amazon Prime, partly because Sharon buys so much online (and Prime does ensure prompt delivery) but also because we can watch their Prime Video service too. Both services have steadily improved over the years and there are some really good programmes to be found on there.
When lockdown #1 started last year, we also decided to subscribe to Disney Channel as it allowed us to watch all of the Star Wars films (and a couple of related ‘series’) and all of the Marvel Avengers films. We’d seen most of the films before but not in sequence and – a big bonus to me as Sharon does not like watching the same film twice – we had agreed to watch them all again – in order (which helped to make more sense of the Marvel Avengers Universe).
Here in the U.K. (but only via VPN whilst abroad), we watch BBC via iPlayer and ITV via ITV Hub. As I’ve said, we rarely watch anything live, so we can choose when to watch programmes and via catch-up we can ‘freeze’ whenever we want. Other catch-up channels are available too, and depending on what we want to watch, these might also be utilised.
But will we subscribe to Britbox and ITV HUB+? No.
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Avengers image via https://www.flickr.com/photos/tales2astonish/6976087418 – with thanks.
Old T.V. image via https://www.flickr.com/photos/potrzebie/6088059547 – with thanks.
Star Wars image via https://www.flickr.com/photos/jasonliebigstuff/2342481284 – with thanks.
Saturday Walks 