In order to view the services on Telewest, a subscription is required. A variety of packages are offered and a summary of these are shown in the table below together with how much they cost.

Sub:  

Telewest offer a Digibox and installation for an initial cost of £40. Sometimes other deals are offered for a limited period as well, for example, there might be an option to get free installation when ordering the Supreme package online. Refer to the Telewest website to find out what's currently available.

It is important to know that when subscribing to any services, the subscription must be kept for at least 12 months.

The premium and stand-alone channels, which are shown below the "Asian Pack" prices in the table above, require their own subscription fees in addition to the regular subscription, so the total subscription cost for these is dependant on which package is chosen. Only some are listed in the table and the services own websites should otherwise be observed for more details. It has also been suggested that it is possible to subscribe to single premium channels within the Sky Sports & Movies Packs. Refer to the Telewest website for alternative subscription options.

The Starter Pack is the minimum package available. This one or a higher one is required to access all of the Digital TV services including interactive services, stand-alone channels or the use of Pay-Per-View (PPV) and Pay-Per-Night (PPN) services. Pay-Per-View services are ones where instead of paying a monthly subscription, only one selected film or event is paid for. PPN services can allow either a single nights viewing or up to 24 hours of viewing.

*The Asian Pack includes 8 Asian services for £24 a month, Zee TV or Star for £13 a month or 1 channel for £10 a month.

In Addition to Digital TV, Telewest also offer Broadband Internet and a telephone line.

A phone line can be connected without subscribing to any Digital TV packages. There are three phone options. The cheapest one costs £10.50 a month and this one is automatically included when subscribing to any of the digital TV packages. It allows unlimited calls during weekends, which means that the call charges per minute for national calls is included in the monthly subscription during weekends. For £16.50 a month, unlimited calls during weekends and evenings apply. For £25.50 a month the "Talk Unlimited" package is available which offers unlimited calls at any time. The two latter options can be upgraded to from any of the TV packages. Talk International costs an extra £3.00 a month to one of the 3 phone options and is included with the Asian Digital TV Pack. Refer to the Telewest website for more information.

The cheapest Internet option is called "Surf Unlimited Dial Up" and allows up to 56kb of bandwidth. It costs £14.99 a month but a phone line costing £10.50 a month is required in addition to this. The broadband Internet options from Telewest are called "Blueyonder Broadband". A bandwidth of 2Mb costs £17.99 a month, 4Mb costs £25.00 a month, 10Mb costs £35.00 a month and 4Mb costs £50.00 a month. Sometimes other deals are offered for a limited period, such as 4Mb broadband costing £20.00 instead of £25.00 a month for the first three months. Refer to the Telewest website for more information.

Telewest also offer a feature called "Bundles". These allow combined packages of phone, digital TV and Internet. Refer to the Telewest website for more information.

Teleport is a Video-On-Demand (VOD) service offered by Telewest. This is where TV content can be ordered interactively and viewed almost immediately, at any time of the day. Some of these are free, but most require stand-alone-payments or subscription. The service requires no additional equipment and is available with all subscription packages. The types of content available on Teleport includes Movies, popular TV programmes that were shown within the last 7 days, TV series and music videos in addition to VOD movies from Front Row and events from Sky Box Office. For more information refer to the Telewest website. Teleport is not yet available in all Telewest areas.

TV Drive is a PVR system offered by Telewest that allows features such as live pausing and recording up to two programmes onto an internal hard disk drive in the Digibox while watching a third . For new customers installation is free and is £10 a month with the Supreme Pack and £15 a month with another pack. For existing customers to upgrade, it costs either £50 for installation or has free installation when keeping their existing Digibox for use in another room (this feature costs £5 a month). The PVR system is  similar to that of Sky+, TV Drive requires a Digibox with a 160GB hard disk allowing up to 80 hours of recording. Another feature of TV Drive is High-Definition TV (HDTV), which produces a high resolution picture, that is, very high picture quality. The TV Drive Digibox is compatible with this and soon Teleport will offer HD content. HD channels will be rolled out throughout 2006. As well as this Digibox, a HD ready TV is required with HDMI connections. For more information about TV Drive refer to the Telewest website.