Do you think it’s worth paying money for a few extra channels on Pay TV? I’m in the process of deciding…

I’ve just moved into a new home and haven’t had Foxtel installed. There are a few reasons – for one, it’s expensive, and secondly when we did have Foxtel, there never seemed to be anything on. Often I’d be stuck with reruns of Scrubs, Law and Order, or I’d be outvoted and Fox Sports would be turned on. We decided that reruns probably weren’t worth $60 per month – after all, if there was a series we really liked, we could just borrow the DVD, right?

Most of the time, I’m perfectly satisfied with the offerings on free to air. I love Desperate Housewives, Brothers and Sisters and Packed to the Rafters (which is back on TV in mere weeks!) and Masterchef on Channel 10 has proved a great alternative to Top Chef on Arena. I’ve also been watching more interesting documentaries on SBS and ABC which I probably wouldn’t have noticed if I’d had more channels to plough through. However there have been some hitches.

Live sports is one of them. I’m a bit of a soccer fan and last week the Socceroos played Qatar at an ungodly 2am. With no Fox Sports and not wanting to grace a pub at such an hour, I thought I was going to miss out on witnessing history (we qualified for the 2010 World Cup for those who missed it). Fortunately, a generous friend taped the match and replayed it at her house at a far more palatable 10:30am the next day. Crisis averted!

Secondly, the borrowing DVD plan has come unstuck. When you go to Blockbuster, you usually can only keep a DVD for a week, so for an entire TV series, that’s a bit of a rush. Sometimes I have other things to do apart from watch TV like play sport, see friends and … oh yeah, go to work.

Finally, I do actually quite like some of the Foxtel offerings! Australia’s Next Top Model was such fun; Project Runway was incredibly inspiring and I loved to marvel at the architectural masterpieces in Grand Designs. To be honest, I even miss Scrubs (I know it’s on Channel 7 however unfortunately it’s on at the same time as Top Gear and yet again, I get outvoted).

So now the question of whether to get Foxtel has come up again. Should we believe the ads and get it because then we won’t go out as much? What shows on pay TV do you think makes it worthwhile? Or should we just wait and hope that something decent comes up on Freeview… What are your thoughts?

Caitlin
Community Manager

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