Christmas TV deals are still worth grabbing

Get your festive viewing sorted and save a packet by grabbing a new TV deal.

Have you got your TV viewing options lined up for Christmas?

After a massive feed of turkey, ham and Christmas pud, most adults have little energy for anything other than slumping in front of the TV for a good festive movie.

But can we boost our viewing options over Christmas without breaking the bank – or falling into an ‘annual subscription’ trap that we’ll regret later when the New Year financial hangover kicks in?

Thankfully there are ways to get more bang for your buck for festive viewing.

One is to cash in on the cancel-anytime feature of streaming services and just sign up for a month or two.

Dipping in and out of Netflix, Amazon, Disney and Apple gives you the best of all worlds at limited cost as you’ll soon have watched all the movies that appeal on each platform.

Another money-saver, if you’re out of contract, is to simply switch provider.

If you don’t you'll end up paying up to €106 monthly in the long run.

If you do, you can now save up to €690 a year just by spending a few minutes online or on the phone.

And those savings could easily pay to upgrade your viewing options.

Competition in the TV/Broadband market has cooled slightly as pre-Christmas deals expire.

But it is still pretty hot with deals available from less than €50 a month.

And if you pay just a little more, you can get a lot more bang for your buck with some tasty additions to their standard packages from both Sky and Virgin.

Here’s how to make the most of your viewing options this Christmas:

Eir

Recently, Eir has upped its price slightly and cut its €100 cashback offer to €50. But it's still cheap at just under €50 a month.

It also includes Prime and an Apple TV 4k box as standard.

Eir's 68 TV channels are not the highest number available but do we really use most of the 100+ channels available elsewhere.

Also free with this deal are:

• Home phone line with free off-peak calls to Irish landlines,

• Prime Video a

• Apple TV box 4K

What are the catches?:

The monthly price of your plan will increase each April by the inflation rate plus 3% - mid-contract in other words.

However, Eir’s deal is so cheap that even 5% (current inflation + 3%) wouldn’t send it up by much (<€3) and wouldn’t be a deal breaker.

Other downsides compared to other plans is a relatively small number of TV channels (60).

Virgin

The current (December 2024) €50-a-month offer is cheap - for Virgin. But it's slightly more expensive €60-a-month value-pack deal gives a lot of bang for your buck, according to comparison site Bonkers.ie.

For the extra tenner, you get multi-room viewing too and Sky Cinema thrown in.

“Sky Cinema usually costs €40 a month each, while multi-room viewing usually costs €15 per room, getting all of the above for just €60 is exceptional value,” says Bonkers’ Daragh Cassidy.

 You could can also get Sky Sky Sports plus multiroom viewing for €60 a month.

But both Sky Cinema and Sky Sports together will set you back €74.50.

But beware, like cute puppies, this contract is ‘not just for Christmas’. It lasts a year and there are penalties for breaking it - the offer also could end at any time, so check out the latest details on Switcher.ie

And the cost will spike alarmingly when the 12 months are up.

However, if you’re savvy and switch after a year, you could get 12 months of valuable entertainment fairly cheaply.

Sky

Sky's pre-Christmas offer of Broadband/TV for €50 a month was still on at the time of writing, but it may not last much longer, so check out Switcher.ie

That’s as cheap as it has been in recent memory – with Netflix included – despite rampant inflation.

Sky offers Sports and Cinema packages as add-ons for an extra tenner. But, again, watch out for the massive price spike when the deal is up.Sky's deal on Switcher.ie comes with a free Netflix subscription plus the usual Sky extra channels: Atlantic, Showcase and Skymax.

There’s also no nonsense with mid-contract price increases (yes, we’re looking at you Vodafone and Eir!).

And Sky also has the highest number of channels at 150, although let’s face it, most of those extra ones are rubbish or of specialist interest only!

Vodafone

Vodafone stands out a little from the crowd – for the right and wrong reasons.

First the good news: its TV/broadband deal doesn’t more than double when the sweetheart deal runs out. It merely increases from €45 to €70 and, critically, stays at that level.

So if you’re inclined not to switch, or to leave it late to do so, then this might be attractive for long term value.

For example, if you stick with another provider for an extra year you’ll pay well over €1k – whereas Vodafone will charge €840 a year on an ongoing basis.

Another plus is that customers who have a Fixed Broadband subscription AND a ‘2 Bill Pay’ mobile subscription with Vodafone can get a €20 discount per month on their account.

On the downside, that cheap deal only lasts six months, whereas the other ‘sweetheart’ packages we list from Eir, Sky and Virgin, go on for a year.

Vodafone also does the annoying mid-contract price increase thing at the same rate as Eir.

Vodafone  has a special online deal advertised through Switcher.ie of €45 a month if you sign up online – plus Sky Atlantic, Sky Max and Sky Showcase.

NOW

This is a great way to dip in and out of Sky Sports and Cinema, sometimes very cheaply.  I have NOW’s cinema package for €3 a month because I snapped up a special offer.

With peak Christmas viewing season approaching, such offers aren’t available.

But what is on offer isn’t so bad.  For €4.99 a month you can get NOW’s entertainment package AND one month of Sky Cinema to see you through the festive viewing season.

There are a few catches worth noting.

One is you have to sign up for six months for the €4.99 deal.

And there’s also an annoying ‘additional’ feature called Boost, which you need to watch programmes in HD ( Shouldn’t this be a normal feature in the age of Ultra high-definition TV?).

Anyway, my €3 a month deal wasn’t that cheap when the €5 additional Boost subscription (which was free at first) kicked in.

Another catch is that you have to pay separately for Entertainment and Cinema packages, whereas with most streamers, you get them all in one.

You can go for the ‘fully flexible’ option – which gives you both Sky Cinema and Entertainment for €11.99 a month, which you can cancel at any time.

There’s plenty worth watching on NOW with Dune (part 2), Eddie Redmayne in ‘The Jackal’ and Kate Winslett’s ‘Lee’, not to mention Christmas classics like Love Actually.

Disney Plus

There’s no better time of the year to get DisneyPlus.

A month’s supply of Disney will keep the kids entertained over the holidays and it will only cost you a tenner.

Disney’s catalogue of kids movies is too long to mention.

All the Christmas classics are there from the Home Alone films to Toy Story and Ratatouille.

Apple

AppleTV is forging a reputation for high-quality content - for €9.99 per month or €100 per year.

You get it free for three months if you buy an Apple product – as I did – and I think it’s film and TV packages are impressive.

Worth a watch are: Blitz (starring Saoirse Ronan), Shrinking (Harrison Ford), Slow Horses (Gary Oldman), Bad Monkey (Vince Vaughn), Fly Me To The Moon (Scarlett Johansson), Killers of The Flower Moon (Leonardo Di Caprio) and Napoleon (Joaquin Phoenix).

If you’re savvy and want to snap up some high-quality content over Christmas, you could sign up for a 7-day free trial for new subscribers.

Prime

I’m a long-time subscriber to Amazon Prime, which possible explains why it seems to have run low on compelling content -  for me, anyway.

It has Shrek movies for the kids and the Kneecap film that’s Ireland’s entry to the Oscars – plus an extensive back-catalogue including Christmas films like Deck the Halls.

Amazon also has a seven-day free trial and then costs just €6.99 a month, which you can cancel anytime.

Netflix

Netflix has an annoying way of charging a lowish price – of €8.99 a month – but for low-resolution video quality.

Standard resolution costs €14.99 a month, while you have to pay €20.99 for the top level resolution that we should really expect as standard.

Maybe I’ve had Netflix for too long, but I’ve been underwhelmed by its newest offerings, although its kids section is incredible and you can switch it to various languages if you want them to learn while they watch.

Details correct as at 8.12.2024 and may change. See Switcher.ie for latest updated data.