Internet TV?

Even though I’m registered with the telephone preference service, which should prevent me from being pestered by telephone sales people when I’m: (a) just sitting down to my tea (b) sitting on the toilet or (c) having a bath, I’ve been getting a lot of calls about BT Vision lately and why don’t I sign up for it? Now, much as I like keeping up with the latest in computer/info-tech I’m really not interested in Internet T.V.  because I don’t watch that much T.V. anyway. Of the many channels now coming at us on Freeview I can never find anything that makes me want to switch the T.V. on – all right I’ll watch the news occasionally, and now and then I’ll watch a decent drama, but it’s becoming an increasingly rare occurrence. Indeed the last time I tried to actually turn the TV/Freeview box on, number two son had to do it for me because I couldn’t remember how.

But anyway, the first time I got the call from the tele-sales person, I listened with interest to them telling me of all these digi-video marvels that could be squished down my 2 Megabits of bandwidth, and I realised the fatal flaw in their argument – I mean some nights I’m lucky if I can get on the internet at all – okay number one son may already be online, gaming with his PS3, I may be listening to Frisky Radio over WiFi on my iPod, so when I’m also trying to upload my latest bit of nonsense onto Feedbooks or WordPress, it can be like wading through treacle –  so the idea we could actually get any more out of that bandwidth seemed a bit flaky to me, and I said so.

Undeterred, future sales persons seem to have been primed, ready with answers to this one, saying I actually only need 2 Megabits to get BT Vision working, that I have 2.5 megabits you know, because they’ve checked, and as such I’m getting twice the UK average!!!! This last one stumped me. To be honest, I would dispute the 2.5 megabits. I’ve just tested it and it’s definitely 2.1, but who’s arguing? What astonished me was the implication that I was lucky to have what I’m getting. If you’ve paid for “up to” 20 megabits per second and you’re the average UK internet broadband user and you’re only getting 1 and a bit-ish megabits per second (half of what I’m getting) , then you must be really brassed off, and I’ll shut up moaning about my 2.1 megabits because after this evening, far from feeling hard-done-by I’m starting to feel guilty about my megabit affluence.

Anyway. I still don’t want B.T. Vision, because like I said, I don’t watch T.V. that much, and besides, I’ve just checked up and discovered that if someone in your house is watching T.V. over the internet, your crafty little router will prioritise your Vision box and choke off anything else that others  may want to do on the internet, like erm, browse it, or blog on it, or play games on it, or horror of horrors listen to the radio.