Currently I have Sky+, and pay for whatever Sky calls its all non-premium channels plus Sky Movies. So that must be costing £38 per month. Then there's line rental and broadband (not Sky) costing around £35 per month. From what I can see it would be hard to get Tiscali broadband, line rental and TV to total more than £40 per month - around £33 less than I'm paying now.

But I have no problems whatsoever with any of the services (touch wood) - would I be asking for trouble by switching?

This is only a personal response, and I am sure many people are happy with Tiscali, but my answer would be don't do it. I switched in September due to the price difference and I have so far not been billed correctly once despite frequent calls to 'Customer service'. 3 @ £70.00 and since then around £50.00 a month. All wrong but only promises to sort it out. Also a few service issues that result in missed calls and more phone calls. Today I switched on and my box is asking for an engineer sign on. I have rung and they say an engineer needs to come out to put his details in so my box will work. They can only do Wednesday, but I'm at work. As she said their system won't let her book passed that she said she will get someome to ring me back in the next 5 days (I won't hold my breath as this probably means me ringing back). So no TV again. I know some people have managed good service from Tiscali, but it seems if you get a problem forget it. I can't wait for my contract to finish.
Sorry to be so negative, but thats my experience.

I took up the £24.99 a month bundle in December and am very happy.No trouble with the TV yet( the ondemand is great by the way and with BBC and CH4 catchup you can't go wrong).The broadband side is fine too.
I personaly don't want the 3 pages in the guide of channels in the Sky guide that I never watch so Tiscali tv does me,and with the PVR box its even better.

Simple answers:

Don't switch to Tiscali, as it's an awful service. Stay with Sky.

I had no end of problems with Tiscali and switched to Sky. It's an over priced service. Seriously Stay with Sky!!

Their comparison's are way out as well (clearly in favour of themselves) here

On the TV side of things they fail to tell you that you don't have to have a 4 mix and can have a one mix with Sky which if you look at the channels they quote actually equate to Sky's Variety Mix (which has 23 channels plus 14(+1) services and would also give you 200+FTA channels) - Tiscali only quote 60 channels.

The price they quote for TV + Line Rental is £17.99. Sky would be £16 (Tiscali quote £29.50 for Sky). The info is outdated as Sky now do their own line rental @ £10 per month. So for over 200 TV channels (I know you may not need or want all of these channels but do look closely as one of your favourites might not be on Tiscali) and line rental potentially the price is £26 and it includes the Sky Talk package for FREE evening and weekend calls is included for FREE.

Now that's just inaccuracies on TV alone - need we go on? I don't need to be told that every company will have similar tricks up their sleeve in comparisons - I only want to display how inaccurate some of the 'offers' are and the only person that can a question like "Should I come to Tiscali from Sky?" is the OP as we all have differing requirements.

Slightly off topic but I found Tiscali's website to be very hard to find information on packages/services etc without them wanting my details. I like to browse first before being forced into giving my information. Does anyone else have this issue - or is it just me

To the OP - good luck on your decisions!

EDIT: Off course I want the VoD that Tiscali/Homechoice have and I want it now - if only we could get that on Sky then we're sorted.
Last edited by Captain W : 24-02-2008 at 02:34

Yes, VoD is quite attractive. My Sky+ is an old 160GB model which does not have Sky Anytime so I don't even get Sky's fake version of VoD. I do subscribe to Sky Movies and find that the choice of films is quite poor except that I would hate to lose Sky Movies Indie.

I'll have to look at how I could save money by axing any channels I can and switching broadband and phone to Sky. It's possible that might even fund a new Sky+ or HD box.

never ever ever choose sky over tiscali, sky is a secure stable system with well resourced customer service and technical help, tiscali is a shambles and you'll be lucky if you system stays up for two month before crashing and needing an engineer. AVOID at all costs, also SKY works out cheaper. yes it doesnt have true VOD but you need to weigh up having that over the risks of not having a tv service.

Why aren't you getting BB from Sky?

Long story... when Sky broadband began I was with UK Online. Obviously I thought it would make sense to switch to Sky but they told me that even though Sky BB and UK Online BB were part of the same company there was no way to get a MAC to migrate from UKO to Sky. So I migrated to Madasafish instead. Their service is very good, but now that my contract's finished I'm thinking about moving to a cheaper provider and two of the options I was considering were Sky and Tiscali.

I recommend Sky TV for it's quality service (but not there install service)

I use to have Virgin TV, but with the endless problems they were having in my local town I had to scrap it and go to Sky TV, not had any major problems since.

I prase Channel 4 for there 4OD PC program, it's excellent (far better than 4OD on Virgin TV).

Some may say I'd be biased as we do take all of the available services from Sky - ie Sky+ HD, Sky Broadband Mid (get 6.5Mb), Sky Talk Unlimited and Sky Talk Line Rental and the only thing I want them (Sky) to start doing now is VoD - based on the information from these forums it is very hard to make a decision regarding Tiscali as they do not appear to have a vast amount of customers and are only really setting up their TV service (apart from Homechoice experience - however it sounds like they haven't really taken the experience HC had on board which is a realy pitty) and therefore, like any service just starting up, you will see the problems listed on forums like these before you see any good about them.

I don't know if Tiscali have thought of it but with the amount of content they own after their purchase of Homechoice, it would be an ideal opportunity to re-sell on this content to people like Sky and O2 and Orange when they all launch their VoD/TV services (and even Virgin to enable them to raise their catalogue).

What do people think? If they managed to set it up correctly, it would give them the funds and opportunity to develop as a brand and business and enable them to build relationships with each operator - I'm not sure if it would take business away from themselves or not - all depend on what and how much content they provide (in exchange for £ off course) to their competitors and how they manage to market their own service as a much larger catalogue of content. I reckon for definite, VoD is the next best thing beyond a linear service with HD and an attached PVR.
Last edited by Captain W : 25-02-2008 at 02:23

I think that depends on what you want from the package. If TV is not very important to you, then Tiscali's got to be cheaper. You could go for their broadband (8mb), phone (line rental and free weekends calls included) and TV variety pack for £19.99. Similar package of Sky will cost at least £31 (£16 TV + £5 broadband (8mb) + line rental £10). Sky will definitely have more TV channels even for 1 mix. If you don't want to pay £11 more for more channels, then Tiscali is cheaper.

You may want to think about the non-financial bits, such as support, which Tiscali has p***ed me off big time, but that's another story...

THE VOD service on Tiscali TV is superb and pricewise its also significantly cheaper than Virgin or Sky. There is a big question over support with Tiscali (as there is with Virgin) but of course that is only going to be an issue if you have a problem...

Does the Tiscali web site have a list of current VoD programmes and films (and any films that are included but not on demand)? I couldn't see them anywhere - maybe looking in the wrong place.

I don't know. The list of VOD programs is large and constantly changing. 4OD and BBC being particulary good, but there is also National Geographic, Discovery, FX, HBO and others. The Music VOD is also the best available.

no,

Further to my post above about having an engineer sign on appear, they did ring me on Sunday and promised to fix it in 15 minutes and ring me straight back. They did neither. So I rang next day and a manager promised he would do it himself. I rang today ( Thursday) and was told they had tried but could not fix it. So I asked why they had not bothered to let me know and they said they did not know why. They said I needed an engineer visit, but according to them they now only have engineers visit Monday to Friday 9-5????? I have to say this really suprised me as I have had an enginner previously on both Saturday and Sunday without any problem. So I said I was working and simply could not take time off at such short notice. I said I would rather cancel my whole service TV/broadband/phone/line rental as they could not get an engineer at a weekend and she said fine. After a 12 minute hold I got cancellations who promptly cancelled everything, even though I am only 7 months into my contract. No arguement or alternatives offered and a mac code sent to my mobile. I don't quite know what that says about Tiscali, but they were in no rush to keep my business and as such it is now back to sky TV/broadband for me. Goodbye Tiscali, I'll miss our monthly phone calls (not!)

I had the same thing, 4 years with hc threaten to leave over line rental and they continued my package with a £10 monthly discount. Having problems with my telsey box requested a mac code and was given one no questions asked. MAKES YOU WONDER WHY?

I rang Tiscali to enquire about the TV service and the guy on the other line seemed quite unenthusiastic about selling it to me, I don't know what to make of it really.

I left Tiscali for Sky due to all the problems I had, especially with the move and we only moved from one flat to another in the SAME building. The problems I see on this forum are the same problems we had on a constant basis when Tiscali took over homechoice. I never had many problems with Homechoice, only one major one and they were extremely helpful. Tiscali took over and the service became awful. In fact i am still in dispute with them over a bill and refuse to pay it (long story).
I have had Sky since November and have had no problems (touch wood) and the installer was superb. We already had a Sky dish for the flat we moved in to so we just got the installer to do it through that dish and they stuck another 2 year warranty on the dish. The installer was in my flat for no more than 10 minutes. I also have their multiroom service and Sky +. All of which are fantastic. Also I think I have saved over £30 (and bear in mind that my line rental was with BT when I was with Tiscali as well)!!!
I am a much happy customer with Sky, and at least I am kept updated with changes to the service, unlike Tiscali who tell you naff all!!