to Cable Forum, Lynn.
You will get as many opinions as we have members, so read them all carefully but make your own decision when you're done!
My personal experience of NTL is that when it works it is superb, but when it breaks down your experience with Customer Services can be frustrating (long telephone queues, far too many CSRs who don't seem to know how to process your problem or forward you to the right person if necessary).
There are not as many TV channels on NTL as on $ky, but don't let numbers fool you - almost all the extra satellite channels are utter dross, shopping and gaming channels you will never watch. All the channels you have heard of are on NTL.
NTL is introducing Video On Demand, so you can watch pay-per-view films and other selected TV shows when you want, not just at start times selected by the service provider, as with Sky.
NTL's biggest weaknesses are:
1. Its red button interactive service. It is slow and prone to crash the set-top box and links to interactive services don't even exist for many channels. Sky's is far cleaner, faster and more reliable.
2. The fact that you can't get cable TV without them forcing you to take a phone line, which you pay about £10 a month for. NTL phone lines don't allow you to access most alternative service providers, which is a blow as unless you use your phone very little indeed, almost every other service provider will save you money. You need a BT line to access those services and some people end up with a BT line (another £10.50 a month) in order to get the telephone service they want, but with another NTL phone line that they are paying for but not using.
That said, I am not a heavy phone user and I just stuck with the NTL line.
Cable Broadband internet is the best thing about NTL. It is faster and more reliable than ADSL in my experience. You will find 1MB more than adequate for web browsing and email.
Overall, I was happy with NTL. I had phone, TV and internet with them and rarely had any trouble. On the couple of occasions it went wrong I had lengthy waits on the phone to talk to someone but the problems were always swiftly resolved once I got through.