Do I still need an aerial, or should I just stream everything?

The question usually arrives when someone realises the household has not watched a broadcast channel in months, or when a new set is going up and the aerial lead is inconvenient. The useful framing is not which is best but which failures you want to be exposed to, because the three routes fail for completely unrelated reasons and that is precisely their value together.

Step by step

1. Work out what the household actually watches.Live news and sport, soaps and daytime schedules, and radio all still come over the air. Boxsets, films and catch-up come over broadband. Count the hours honestly rather than assuming.
2. Cost each route properly.An aerial already fitted costs nothing to run. Satellite typically carries a subscription unless it is a free service. Streaming costs broadband you were paying for anyway, plus whatever subscriptions accumulate — which is where the money actually goes.
3. Consider what happens in an outage.A broadband fault removes every streaming service in the house at once, and outages are often exactly when people want the news. An aerial keeps working through it, and works in a power cut with a battery set.
4. Check the reliability of each route where you live.Terrestrial reception varies enormously by address and terrain. Satellite is more consistent but interrupted by heavy rain and snow on the dish. Streaming depends on your line speed and, more often, on the wifi reaching the television.
5. Think about who else uses the television.Broadcast channels have no logins, no app updates and no menus that change. For an older or less confident viewer, that is a genuine advantage, and it survives the household's subscriptions being cancelled.
6. Decide whether to keep the aerial before you remove it.Leaving a working aerial connected costs nothing. Removing one and later wanting it back means an installer, roof work and a bill. It is an asymmetric decision, so leave it in place unless it is genuinely in the way.
7. Fix the network before blaming streaming.Most streaming disappointment is a wifi problem at the television rather than a broadband one. An ethernet cable or a well-placed mesh node changes the experience more than a faster package will.
8. Remember the licence position is about what you watch, not how.In the UK a television licence is required for watching live broadcast television by any means, including live streams, and for using the BBC's on-demand service. Dropping the aerial does not by itself change what is required.

Tips

• Free satellite and free terrestrial services both exist without a subscription. If reception is poor and you do not want a subscription, that is the option people forget.
• If the aerial lead is untidy rather than unwanted, a flat cable or a repositioned wall plate solves it far more cheaply than removing the aerial.
• Streaming apps on a television are the part most likely to be abandoned by the manufacturer. A stick keeps that risk off the screen you paid for.

Common mistakes

• Removing the aerial to tidy the wall — It is cheap to leave and expensive to reinstate, and it is the one route that survives a broadband outage.
• Assuming streaming is free because broadband is already paid for — The subscriptions are the cost, and they accumulate quietly. Add them up before comparing.

If it doesn't work

Questions people ask