Following on from the Sky blackout for Virgin customers, it's also not going to be long before Sky turn something else off. The free months subscription they gave me to "entice" me from my freesat setup, to paying them a huge whack of money every month.

Back in 2004, I wrote an article called Tip Top, looking at the launch of Top Up TV. As a former OnDigital customer, I asked myself the question of whether I should continue to pay money to someone to get all those extra pay-TV channels. At the time, I decided no. It wasn't worth it.

So what about now - two and a half years later? Has a free month of Sky changed my views? Given me an incentive?

Well, lets consider what I watched in the space of a month. An episode of Fraiser on Paramount Comedy 2, and a couple of episodes of The Simpsons on Sky One.

Okay I could probably have found more to watch. And there was some stuff I might have watched had it not been plastered with graphics all over the place (The Naked Gun on Trouble one evening had a whacking great big on screen graphic that covered up most of the top left of the corner!) But I didn't.

In contrast I actually spent most of the month doing what I always do - watching a mixture of BBC and Channel 4, with the odd episode of Columbo on Channel 5.

Of course many people pay good money for subscription TV, which is presumably why Sky gave me a free month - to see what I'm missing. It's just such a shame for them, that what I'm missing seems to be mostly a big pile of crap.