What channels am I actually going to watch?

I know bugger all about HDTV... but I'll chuck my two penn'orth in anyway. How much telly are you actually going to watch? Normal free TV through the aerial (well, if you don't count the the licence fee) gives plenty of channels. - all the BBCs and ITVs, C5 and all the Channel 4 variations plus loads of extra rubbish thrown in - music, shopping and daft rip-off quiz channels. And some radio. Sky gives you a lot more channels, and presumably some channels with HD goodness as well. But it can be quite expensive. Unless you plan on watching a shitload of footy (which will likely always be on in a nearby pub) then you're probably just better getting the cheapest Sky package you can and rent DVDs or go to the pictures. The BBCs and ITVs and Film 4 have plenty of films on and BBC4's good for documentaries. They do repeat stuff a lot though. Sky One can be a decent enough channel (very American though) but the rest is just thousands and thousands of channels of utter, utter shite. There's never, ever, anything on worth watching. My parents have Sky. I end up insome sort of hellish circular flick trying and failing to find something to watch. Have a look at http://www.digiguide.com/ - I don't know if they have a free trial thing but a subscription is only something like 8 or 9 quid a year. Gives you listings for pretty much all the channels so you can see which ones show the sort of thing you like to watch and buy (or not) those.

HDTV only launched in the UK a couple of months a go and is still expensive and pretty pointless. Digital SDTV looks very good, even on a big screen, because we have a much better SDTV system to begin with. Sky have a very simple system where they've divided all their channels into "mixes" (categories), and there's no overlap between them, so you just get whatever mixes include any of the channels you want. For Drama you want the Variety Mix (especially for Sky One, More 4, E4 and LivingTV). A lot of new stuff is shown on the free-to-air channels first (esp. BBC, Channel 4 and Five), so you don't need to stick with subscription channels. Oh and Sky don't do anything else but Digital (with HD as an optional extra), so you don't need to worry there.

On Sky channel 165 is Bonanza TV. Does exactly what it says. Non-stop Bonanza. "Dun-da-da-da da-da-da da-da-da da-da-daaaa-da..." *stamps out burning map*

Oh, if you're looking for a web-based listings guide, http://www.radiotimes.com is free and good. And feeds the eponymous uk_rt grabber in XMLTV.

Just on the HD thing - there is currently very, very little HD programming available in this country - Sky One, Sky Movies and Sky Sports are all available in an HD flavour and there is a BBC HD channel, which (I gather) just shows clips and Planet Earth. This I have learnt from http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguide/tvradio/story/0,,1877697,00.html, who says about HD: "If I'd paid for it, I'd be disappointed. It'd be like spending a fortune on a flying car, only to discover that under current regulations you're only allowed to fly it to Gwent and back. On Sundays." There will be more to come (of course), but the picture will probably seem a little disappointing for a while if you're used to HD in New York. And you might wonder why you shelled out for an HDTV you're not using to its full potential.

We've had Sky for years, and there's never anything worth watching (in our opinion, at least); there are occasionally programmes on things like Sky One or E4 that we would watch, but it worked out at 3-4 programmes per week. Everything else we watched was free-to-air (i.e. Sky box/dish but no subscription) or on terrestrial broadcasts. Sky movies are expensive, and are repeated frequently - you can easily watch all the movies you want to see, and then have to wait a month or so until they change them around... and even then, only a few new ones are added. It's much cheaper to pop online and buy DVDs, especially in the numerous Amazon/HMV/Play/whatever sales. I've recently had an *extremely* bad customer service experience that has meant that I will never return as a paying customer to Sky. They don't seem to care about individual customers, they don't believe their customers or take complaints seriously, and use the "inertia" technique of continuing a subscription - even if you've tried to cancel, but somehow they think otherwise. Grr. Their customer service people are awful, and the support line is just one huge telephone queue that costs a fortune. More info is available on request! If you're in an area that can get Freeview, then that may be worth it, but Sky? Never again, and I would strongly discourage anyone I can from using them. If only they had some competition...

Assuming you are moving into an apartment which lets you choose which Sky bundle you want, you might want to take a look at the http://www.sky.com/portal/site/skycom/products/packages. Based on what you said you prefer, I'd imagine that the http://www.sky.com/portal/site/skycom/products/packages/variety is a must for you, as perhaps would be the http://www.sky.com/portal/site/skycom/products/packages/knowledge. Although if you want your American-y CNN/MSNBC/Fox (*spit) News, you may also want the http://www.sky.com/portal/site/skycom/products/packages/news. Lost is now on Sky One. BBC America showcases all UK programming, so you'll find your favourite BBC America programmes on most of the domestic free-to-air channels (BBC, ITV, Channel 4). If you tell us which programmes you do want to watch, we can probably tell you which Sky channel it's airing on. We're huge fans of US TV in this country - hell, Channel 5 have just launched a channel dedicated to US TV programmes. Bear in mind that your apartment may be part of the http://www.sky.com/portal/site/skycom/products/about/article?contentid=10504703 scheme which may restrict your choice to all or nothing. As has been previously pointed out, HDTV just enables better-technical quality programming. You won't actually get more programmes. All the HDTV services in the UK as far as I know just rebroadcast certain programmes in HDTV.

Thank you for the very helpful answers and comments. Based on advice offered here about the current state of HDTV, I am not going to buy any HD package at this point. I am going to start out with just "regular" TV and Freeview, and then get Sky as soon as I feel a need for it.