Cable TV is a method of delivering digital TV to our homes. Cable TV is delivered using high speed fibre optic cables capable of handling vast amounts of data. The cable runs under the street and is normally only available in urban areas of the UK. Services such as on-demand digital TV, high definition digital TV, interactive services and ultra-fast broadband as well as home phone are all available on fibre optic cable.

On the Isle of Wight there is a cable service called Wight Cable who provides home phone, broadband and cable TV. But the main supplier of cable TV in the UK is Virgin Media. To get Virgin Media you need to be in a Virgin Media cabled area. You can check to see if you are in a Virgin Media cabled area on the Virgin Media website.

When you sign up to Virgin Media cable TV an installation engineer will connect the fibre optic cable in the street to a Virgin Media cable TV box in your home. The installation will involve routing cables around your house and the engineer will talk this through with you to make sure you are happy with the work. The best thing about Virgin Media is that the cables are out of sight under the street - so you won't need a dish attached to your home like you would need from Sky Digital.

Virgin Media offers a huge range of entertainment to suit all tastes. Features include on-demand digital TV and catch-up digital TV services from the BBC iPlayer, ITV Net Player and Channel 4 on-demand.

Virgin Media offers a huge choice of on-demand movies, music and entertainment available when you want to watch them. There are several channel packages featuring popular digital TV channels such as Sky1, Living, Discovery, MTV and Nickelodeon. You can add Sky Sports or Sky Movies to your package as well if you want to.

You can choose the basic Virgin Media box or you can go for a V+ HD box. A V+HD box lets you record up to 80 hours of programmes, pause & rewind live TV, and record two channels while you watch a third. And of course the best thing about a V+HD box is high definition digital TV. Virgin Media offers many HD digital TV channels including amazing documentaries with National Geographic HD and spectacular sporting events on ESPN HD.