TV setup advice

[what_no_pies]

Recently binned Virgin due to ludicrous price hikes. I have a firestick and am personally happy just using that.

My Wife wants the user features we had before - live TV guide, ability to track progress through series etc (better still would be full recording but shes accepting that might not happen).

She was about to fork out £20pcm for a sky streaming box. Apparently our lack of aerial limits options to get the features she wants.

We've had a further look around and TV's with freeview built in appear to be an option, negating the need for an aerial. We're also looking at indoor digital aerials.

I'd rather buy a new telly and put the current one in the spare room or give it to somebody as an update than pay Sky £20 per month indefinitely for a convenience that is surely available elsewhere.

Can anyone advise on possible solutions and reflect on some personal experience of how good these options are please?

Freeview
TV guide
Recording

If buying a new TV I would take the opportunity to upgrade to one with premium sound and picture for sports and movies. No bigger than 44 inch ideally. Currently have a Sony 44 inch which has been great but don't even think it's 4k - the horror!

Any advice gratefully received. Ta.

[aggi]

This may be what you're looking for. Freeview style TV through broadband rather than aerial.
https://www.freely.co.uk/
I've been following it but there's not been that much in the way of coverage of it

[ElectroClaret]

I've just bought a Hisense TV and that has Freely on it, guy in Curry's pointed out the benefits
of it. Brilliant picture, still got my aerial plugged in, can confirm it's good, watch
programmes on playback through it.

Recommended.

[BurnleyMickSouth]

Hi, iv just bought a brand new 50 inch Hisense smart Qleg TV, it has all the TV channels that you need fantastic picture great sound has 3 HDMI, also USB and you can set any channel to record to a good USB flash drive up to 256 GB, freely is better than freeview to be honest along with about 200 other channels that you don't get with freeview TV, when i bought mine it was just short of £400 I bought it from Amazon, and they have the same model in 43 inch, connect ether etc cable instead of an ariel and your good to go, I love mine, hope this helps. Mick.

[ArmchairDetective]

Since we moved in three years ago we've got by on our TV's inbuilt free view and using various apps on the TV to track series (iplayer, Netflix, Amazon, Disney, Now TV). We tend to have one or two streaming subscriptions at a time). The only thing we don't have that I'd like is a sports subscription. Aside from that we've never missed Sky/Virgin etc.

Can't offer any advice re the aerial though.

[Fretters]

Did the same, binned off Virgin to save us £65 a month and haven't missed it all due to all the apps. I did sign up to Now for sports but that's no contract so that'll stop over the summer.