TV Turnaround

In 1945 my Dad was 'demobbed' from the army and got a job with a new company called Visionhire. He was, in fact, their first employee. He had to drive around in a van, erect aerials and install TV set for the majority of people, like himself, who could not afford to buy them. As a result, born in 1950, I have had a lifetime of TV, starting with Watch with Mother, and early access to the changes in the technology as it occurred: bigger sets, 625 lines, colour,remote control, extra channels, VHS recording and widescreen, (I still have Dad's 24 inch which works most of the time).
When I moved into this part of London, some 24 years ago, I found that TV reception was very poor, so only used the set for watching hired videos. When asked to pay for a TV licence, I refused and no more was said until they changes the rules, so that mere posession of a set capable of receiving transmission required a fee, by law.
So when cable TV came down my street, I signed up, so that I could actually watch what I was paying to see, and phone line worked reliably too.
But when Freeview came along and Film 4 was free, I upgraded my aerial, fitted a signal booster and digital box, which paid off handsomely, as I now no longer needed the cable subscription, as I got perfect reception on most of the 50 channels available, even if most of them had crap content. I could even watch TV in bed too.
By this time, Telewest had become Virgin Media and I signed up to their fibre optic broadband, and got a discount for having all 3 services, so I was compromised. Nonetheless the total monthly bill was sometimes up to £60! When Sky came up with an offer to slash this to £20, the principle of not wishing to pay Rupert Murdoch was balanced against paying Richard Branson and Bill Gates even more money, so I signed up. The latest quad stream dish was installed along with an HD recording receiver for free. But it was all downhill from there. One of the sat cables was duff and the box of tricks broke down within 48 hours. They couldn't get an engineer out for 7 days. I would go back to the bad old BT line and preserving my phone number couldn't be guaranteed, nor my email address. So I cancelled. The duff box was taken away, but they left the dish. I went out and bought an HD Freesat recorder/receiver and got 200 free channels with perfect quality, so I contacted Virgin to cancel the TV subscription. Suddenly things changed. I could now have all 3 services call inclusive with upgraded broadband for £37! And without the TV which I neither needed or wanted? £27. When the billing all got sorted out, they had given me a £13 monthly loyalty discount too, even though I cancelled the TV subscription. Furthermore, they gave me a SIM only mobile phone contract for £5 a month with 300 minutes of voice calls and unlimited texts on a 1 month rolling contract!
By now, the only TV I was watching was stuff I had programmed to record up to a week in advance and no live TV at all. Everything was upscaled to HD by the Freesat box. Then Virgin, desperate to get me back on TV subscription, offered me a £6.50 deal on their basic package, including many HD channels, plus £3 for their latest HD, 3D capable 500 gb. recording box of tricks on a 1 month rolling contract, and no installation charge, so I went for it, as the Freesat box was starting to misbehave.
It has to be said that the quality of picture and sound via fibre optic is even better than satellite. It's just a shame that the content is mostly rubbish.
After all that, I no longer watch any TV. The only use I have for the 40 inch HD flatscreen TV is playing Skyrim on the xbox 360. Much more entertaining!