The Best on-demand Entertainment Services Available

When it comes to entertainment, we’ve come a long way. A far cry from the days when our viewing choices were restricted to a handful of channels, all pedalling similarly awful shows, we’re now presented with a veritable plethora of choices, all available on-demand and at the touch of a button.

In the last few years, the market has become littered with on-demand entertainment services, ranging from television package deals, right through to film and box set-only monthly subscription services, and everything in between.

To save you the trouble of going through them all, we’ve decided to take a look at our top 3 of the best on-demand entertainment services available on the market.

Films and box sets

If you’re a film and box set junkie, Love Film Instant offers a pretty solid library of over 5,500+ films and television shows, as well as some exclusive box office content. And with Amazon now running the ship, you can bet there’s some pretty innovative stuff coming up in the not too distant future.

Like most on-demand entertainment services, Love Film Instant is available on a monthly subscription, with no contract. The basic Love Film Instant package will set you back around £5.99 per month, with an extra charge if you still prefer to receive physical DVDs, rather than simply streaming online.

You can enjoy Love Film Instant on your PC, Mac, iPad, Kindle Fire HD, PS3, Xbox 360, Wii, smart TV and set-top box, so it’s a pretty all encompassing affair.

The hybrid

Powered by Sky, Now TV also has a pretty wide array of content, available at the touch of a button. As with Love Film, you can stream their films and box sets on the most common of devices, such as the Xbox® 360, PS3™, Roku or the new NOW TV Box, an LG Smart TV or on the go on your PC or Mac, iPad or iPhone.

Now TV’s biggest selling point is the quality of its content. Indeed, Sky pay huge amounts of money to secure films during the first so-called “pay TV window,” which means that they often obtain rights to show films up to a year before any other on-demand entertainment service provider.

While the quality of Now TV’s content may be high, they do, however, have a rather limited streaming library, which only consists of around 1,000 films at any given time. They make an effort to make up for this with their catch up TV service and by giving users access to 10 of the UK’s best pay TV channels.

The complete package

If you love films, box sets and TV and you want it all in one easy and convenient package, Virgin Media’s monthly packages are really tough to beat. And given that the quality of on-demand entertainment service depends greatly on the speed of your broadband, Virgin Media’s up to 120Mb download speeds, as well as their ability to boast being able to offer the UK’s fastest average broadband download speeds widely available to customers, means that you can enjoy all their services without fearing that buffering will ever become an issue.

With virgin media power of the network, you not only get access to 200+ TV channels, including 56 channels offering HD, but you also get a free 6 month pass to Netflix, which gives you access to over 1,000 on-demand films and 400 TV series.

In addition to a great variety of movies, box sets and access to catch up TV, virginmedia power of the network means that you can also stream all of your favourite content on up to 6 devices, more than both Love Film Instant and Now TV.

Decisions, decisions

Which on-demand entertainment service to choose can rarely just be determined on the basis of price, although it must obviously play a role in the decision making process. While Now TV and Love Film Instant both offer relatively low monthly subscriptions, one must not forget to factor in the cost of broadband too.

While Virgin Media may cost a little more than their competitors on a monthly basis, they have a range of packages to suit every budget and award winning broadband speeds, as well as a convenient one stop solution, makes Virgin pretty tough to beat as an all around package deal.