Serious question: How does television work in the 21st century?

[DespairingInLondon]

We have not had a television in the house for over 20 years. We usually just watch stuff on our laptops. However, we're thinking of getting a telly now. Serious question: how do they work in this day and age?

Can you just switch it and and get some free channels? Or do you need a cable or satellite connection?

I'm guessing we need a smart tv if we want to connect to the internet and watch iPlayer, etc?

We don't want anything huge, but bigger than a large computer monitor would be nice.

What do you look for when you shop for a new telly?

I would recommend a smart tv which connects to the Internet and an amazon fire stick which lets you access amazon prime, netflix, all catch ups, YouTube and much more.

Like you I didn't have a TV for many years and this is what I went with

Mine is a Bush from argos and works fine.

You can get Freeview (for free) if you have an antenna for it and don't want to pay for a monthly subscription to anything, just to watch TV - although it depends if your house already has an antenna or if the location is suitable for a freestanding indoor antenna. My current house isn't so I had to get a monthly package (currently with Virgin).

Sky Glass

No satellite dish required.

A normal tv plugged into an aerial won't get you anything at all anymore

A normal TV with a 'dongle' (firestick/chromecast etc - a one off usb type thing you stick into the tv) will turn it into a smart tv, so you'll be able to watch the 'main' channels live (BBC, ITV, CH4 etc) and use their catch up players, and also access apps if you want to pay for netflix/disney/prime etc

A normal TV with a freeview box will allow you to watch tv live on about 70 channels (the big ones plus more niche ones ) but won't let you watch catch up

A smart TV will do the same as a normal one with a dongle

A smart tv with freeview will allow you to watch 70 channels and use the catch up services

I would go for the smart tv with freeview, the price difference between that and a non-smart one is negligible. Currys has a 32" one for £150 at the moment. If you wait a week or so the black friday deals are going to start so you'll probably get them even cheaper.

A normal tv plugged into an aerial won't get you anything at all anymore

That's not right. All new TVs have had Freeview built-in for the last 10+ years.

OP, if you have an aerial on your roof (and it is still in good condition) then you should be able to use it to watch TV just as you did years ago. The only difference is you get many more channels now.

We’ve just got Sky Glass. It’s great so far.

Oh interesting @WingBingo

Which size TV did you go for?

Do you want Netflix, Amazon Prime etc? Just buy a smart TV from a reputable seller, go to John Lewis and ask to speak to a person

@FinallyHere the big one ☺️

Our broadband isn't fast enough for Sky Glass, we looked into having one upstairs for DH but because I stream a lot of stuff on the downstairs TV it wouldn't cope with both of us doing this so we are stuck with the old Sky+HD, we have no VM in our street and I checked the BT cabinet speeds and the fastest we could possibly get is 41Mpbs, ours is usually between 33 and 38 which make sense with the cabinet max speed. so only enough for one TV streaming 4K which can use about 25-30 Mbps