Sky Sports News will be leaving the Freeview lineup on Monday 23rd August 2010.

From this date, the Sky Sports News channel will be a subscription-only channel.

Sky Sports News HD also launches on Sky on 23rd August

The slot on Freeview will be replaced by Sky 3 + 1

We’re conducting a short survey about sport on TV in the UK, and which service our visitors use to get their sporting action.

If you can spare two minutes of your time, your thoughts would be appreciated!

Take The Survey: Sport on TV Survey

Placeholders for Sky Sports 1 and Sky Sports 2 have been added to the Freeview channel lineup today, the 5th of July 2010.

The channels, currently labelled BT 1 and BT 2, are placeholders for the Sky Sports 1 and Sky Sports 2 service to be offered by BT Vision from August 2010. They can be found on channels 41 and 42 respectively.

As a reminder, with BT Vision, you will be able to get Sky Sports from £6.99 a month, as part of their ongoing campaign to offer cheaper sports than Sky. Sports service ESPN is also on BT Vision (free on some packages)

For full information on BT Vision and Sky Sports, go to BT Vision’s Sports site.

If you’re after details of how BT Vision works, try our new 15 minute podcast review of BT Vision – Listen to our BT Vision Review

More on BT Vision at btvision.bt.com

With the 2010/11 football season fast approaching, BT Vision has just announced pricing for their Sky Sports service.

Ofcom recently ruled that Sky has to offer their sports content to other TV services at reasonable prices, and this has allowed BT Vision to be able to offer the most popular sports packages at prices significantly lower than Sky’s.

If you’re happy to get your phone and Internet from BT, you could get Sky Sports from just £6.99 a month.

BT’s price announcement comes on the same day as Sky announced that Sky customers will now have to pay an extra £3 a month for the full sporting package – something that will make the BT Vision option all the more appealing to those looking to get footy at a lower price.

There’s another value offer to BT Vision customers – free ESPN when you sign up to a Vision pack (saving £10 a month).

OK – With Sky Sports on BT Vision, you won’t get Sky Sports in HD or the Sky Sports News (due to be removed from Freeview soon), but you will be able to watch all of the football action at lower costs than you’d pay to Sky, and you get access to hundreds of hours of on-demand TV, plus catch up TV from BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and Five.

If you’ve discounted the BT Vision option in the past, now is definitely the time to take a fresh look, and we can help:

Our podcast team released a full 15 minute review of BT Vision on the 1st of July – Listen to our BT Vision Review

Also, check out the new BT Vision pricing for Sky Sports 1, Sky Sports 2 and ESPN at btvision.bt.com

Customers of the Virgin Media TV service will soon be offered Sky Sports 1 HD, Sky Sports 2 HD and Sky Movies  HD.

Virgin’s HD channel lineup needs a boost, and the addition of Sky’s premium sport and movies channels is something that Virgin’s customers have been calling for, for a while.

The deal between Sky and Virgin for the HD content forms part of a deal that sees Virgin selling off their TV channels Bravo, Virgin 1, Living and Challenge to Sky.

No news as yet on when these channels will be coming to Virgin customers, of how much extra Virgin customers will have to pay for Sky’s HD content. Sky customers currently pay a £10 a month premium to watch the 40 Sky HD channels.

We’ll update you here, and on our digital TV podcast when we have more.

From tomorrow, Friday the 22nd of January, until this coming Sunday, sports channel ESPN will be free-to-view.

The weekend’ sporting action will be free on Sky, Virgin, BT Vision, Top Up TV, TalkTalk TV and Freeview.

The lead event that will be shown free is the Inter vs AC Milan, live on Sunday night from 7pm (David Beckham). Other freebiews include Motherwell vs St Mirren, Juventus vs Roma, UFC Best of 2009, LA Lakers at NY Knicks, and more.

For details of how to watch ESPN, see our ESPN Sports page.

Setanta Sports used to offer subscription to those with a Freeview TV or set-top box. Those with a Freeview TV needed something called a CAM, which is a metal card that slides into the TV set and accepts a subscription card.

Setanta used to sell these cards to customers. When Setanta ceased to offer their service in the UK, ESPN took over to offer a sports service to the UK, but they didn’t offer a CAM to customers. This left many potential ESPN subscribers scouring the net for old Setanta Sports CAMs

Until recently, viewers had to resort to EBay to get an old Setanta CAM, but a month or so back it became possible to get a suitable CAM direct from Top Up TV, who manage the UK ESPN subscriptions.

Now, ESPN CAMs are much easier to find, and you can pick one up quite cheaply online from Laskys.co.uk. These kits come with a CAM and subscription card (plus a month’s free ESPN).

For more details on getting a CAM for your Freeview TV, see our ESPN CAM page.

As of today, ESPN is available on BT Vision. If you’re a football fan, you’ll be aware that Setanta Sports went into administration in June 2009, and ESPN acquired the rights to the English and Scottish Premier League matches previously owned by Setanta.

ESPN now has a UK sports channel to cover the Premier League matches, plus other sporting events. ESPN’s UK sports channel went live on Sky and Virgin on the 3rd of August and is now also available on BT Vision.

BT Vision customers will get ESPN at no extra cost if they subscribe to any one of the Vision packages (Bronze, Silver, Gold). This applies to new and existing customers.

If you don’t yet have BT Vision, BT’s also running on online exclusive deal – if you sign up to a BT phone, TV or Broadband package, you’ll get 3 months of free broadband. Include a BT Vision package for inclusive ESPN. More details: productsandservices.bt.com

Coverage of the Barclays Premier League starts from Saturday the 15th of August 2009 with Everton vs Arsenal. Then there’s the West Ham vs Tottenham Hotspurs match the following Sunday – both exclusively live on ESPN.

Top-Up TV customers can also get ESPN – for a monthly subscription of £9.99 a month. New customers signing to Top Up TV will get the first month for free, then it’s £9.99 a month.

Latest info, prices and links: radioandtelly.co.uk/channels/espn.html

From 3rd August 2009, Virgin Media will be carrying the ESPN channel, which will show the 2009/10 Premier League matches originally intended to be shown by Setanta.

Earlier this month, ESPN came to an agreement with Sky to carry the Premier League matches on a new ESPN channel – now Virgin has signed up too. Both Virgin and Sky will also offer HD coverage of Premier League matches.

ESPN will be free to those on the Virgin Media TV XL package. It’s also available to ‘M’ and ‘L’ package customers for £10 (or £8 if you also subscribe to Sky Sports).

More information on our ESPN UK page

We’ve had a couple of mails from site visitors asking out coverage of the UFC 100, now that Setanta Sports is no more.

We understand that tonight’s Ultimate Fighting Championship event will be shown on Sky in the UK tonight (11 Jun 2009) on Racing World, channel 433. Programming starts from 9pm, with the main event starting at 3am UK time on Sunday.

For details of Sky’s sporting content, go to packages.sky.com/see/SportsMix.aspx.

The event will not be available on terrestrial TV, Freeview or Virgin Media. If you don’t have Sky, you can access tonight’s event at UK.UFC.com.

Discussions are ongoing for a permanent home for UFC in the UK.

Eurosport has joined the High Definition channel lineup on Sky, bringing the count to 19 HD channels as of July 2008. You can get Eurosport without having to sign to Sky’s premium sports package. Eurosport is on channel 412.

Sky’s also recently dropped the price of its HD service. More on Sky HD

News in of prices for the BT Vision Sports service, due to start in August 2007…

For the 2007/08 football season, there’ll be 46 live Barclays Premier League games carried on BT Vision. There’ll also be access to 242 same-day Premier League matches, which will be available hours after kick-off (from 10pm). In addition, there will be 60 live Clydesdale Bank Premier League games, 125 games from the Football League and Carling Cup, live US PGA Tour golf and access to BT Vision’s library of classic sport.

There are four pricing options, as follows:

BT Vision Standard Sports (£4 a month): 242 Premier League games shown a few hours after kick off (from 10pm). 125 matches from the Coca-Cola Football League and Carling Cup. Plus access to a library of classic sport

Setanta Sports (£9.99 a month): Setanta Sports. Including 46 live Premier League games and live US PGA Tour golf.

Total Sports (£12 a month): Both Standard and Setanta packages

Pay Per View: You can watch individual Premier League games for £1.99 per game

With BT Vision Sport, there’s no annual subscription fee. Pay on-demand per game, or subscribe on a monthly basis.

The BT Vision set-top box is currently free, as long as you’re a BT Total Broadband subscriber

More details at www.radioandtelly.co.uk/btvision.html