Is it worth $10 a month to watch some decent TV?

September 20, 2011 by
Filed under: Cost of living, Life in New Zealand 

New Zealand TV. It’s Crap. I don’t think I know  Kiwi’s who think otherwise – let alone any expats. The channel that used to be Sky One (called Box and now Vibe – why I have no idea but I guess it’s better than Dave which is what the UK version of Sky One is now called) shows crap that is years old – repeat after repeat – rinse and (you guessed it) repeat.

TV1 and TV3 show “new” stuff – we are talking about US shows like CSI versions 1-277, The Good Wife, Criminal Minds versions 1-277, Bones, Law and Order versions 1-277, House. Plus Coronation Street, Shortland Street and new seasons of whatever crapola reality TV is in vogue this week. Vibe shows all of that from years ago.

Prime is the gem for us. This is where Dr Who lives, Torchwood, True Blood. Geeksville in fact. As well as goodies like Broadwalk Empire – after it screened on Sky Movies.

Now we pay for TV. Where we live in the Wairarapa we could not get a terrestrial TV signal (which is exactly the same situation we were in in rural herefordshire. Sometimes moving round the world does not actually change your life that much!) FreeView doesn’t work in our area, and besides – the choice of channels is pretty pathetic – and wouldn’t give us what we want.

We only buy the basic Sky package – I have seen what is offered on the movie channels in hotels here and I don’t think its worth it –   a few hours of good movies , several hours of crap movies,  - rinse and repeat ad nauseum all month. We use Sky Box office instead in the rare case that there is a movie we actually want to watch – at $6.99 a movie its cheaper than the cinema and cheaper than buying the movie packages at 23.80 a month or more ($36.66 if you want Rialto channel as well).

If you want sports channels – that’s gonna cost you as well, about $20 a month.

My Sky – which is the version of sky that means you can record to a built in Hard Drive and will now cost you an extra $15 a month on top of the standard sky box, or you can get it free per month if you pay a whopping $599 up front installation. When we bought it – it was no extra per month and $99 installation- which is why we went for it.  $599 would have made that a hell of a lot harder. But to be honest – for my family – MySky is a must.

The upshot of all that is that we pay about $120 each month for TV here. That is for 2 MySky boxes, one normal sky box, the basic channels, HiDef, and sky sport.

But now we have a dilemma. There’s a new channel coming – SoHo  – which will cost an extra $9.99 a month. Now normally it would be a straight decision – no – I am not paying more money right now for more crap TV. except SoHo looks like its gonna be showing the good stuff – the kind of thing that should get shown on Prime but isn’t. This is the channel that will be showing my current favorite TV show – Game Of Thrones, as well as a loads of other Emmy Nominated TV shows – and stuff produced by HBO. Ive already seen Game of Thrones – because who the hell wasn’t to wait for NZ TV to get with the 21st century. (And no – I did not illegally download it!) Still – a lot of the shows SoHo is showing are repeats of what has already been shown on NZ TV before, but they are saying that the most of their programming will be new US TV that we either won’t get on other channels or will get in about 5 years time.

Looks like a re-jig of the budget is in order.

Related posts:

  1. Buying Soho
  2. How much is your life worth?
  3. Watch those School “Donations” when you move to New Zealand.
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Comments

4 Comments on Is it worth $10 a month to watch some decent TV?

  1. Scott on Tue, 20th Sep 2011 6:22 pm

    2. Yep, NZ TV is crap. I’ll admit all I actually tune in to watch is the news. When I’ve tried to watch shows I get frustrated by the commercial breaks timings. In the UK there is a break every 15 mins, here they follow the USA format with a commercial every 7.5 mins, its just annoying and I’m sure it has something to do with attention spa oh look a rabbit

  2. Avalon on Tue, 20th Sep 2011 7:11 pm

    3. Lol

    The latest absurdity with commercials is that they run the intro – then the opening credits then – BAM! – into a commercial break.

    SoHo are promising no commercials. Which I guess then changes the question to:

    Is $10 a month worth paying to avoid having your favorite TV shows interupted ever 5 minutes with cringingly painful adverts screaming at you at twice the volume your program played at?

    I guess that makes it a much easier proposition lol.

    BTW – unlike in the UK (as I understand) MySky (UK Sky+) Does not allow you to record a program without recording the ads. The ability is there – it is just switched off over here.

  3. Fred on Thu, 22nd Sep 2011 2:10 am

    4. ..isn’t your husband into computers? He should know a workaround…. :-)

  4. Avalon on Thu, 22nd Sep 2011 10:28 am

    5. Lol – but that would be illegal :)

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