I have other friends who've had ntl/virgin media before and I know they have had major problems

Yeah, the problem with ntl is the service is only as good as the cable network. I used to work for them (in internet support, actually) so I know that in some places the hardware just isn't good enough to support internet. But they sell it anyway.

Thanks for the info on Sky. Do they have bandwidth limits on their broadband?

I need to find out if we can get the Sky package we'd need with them re. television. That's the real trouble: We'd need three boxes and to be able to watch different channels on all three. I don't know if they can do that. I guess I could live with just freeview, though.

BTW, have friended you so your spn fic shows up on my friend page - hope this is okay!

Of course it's okay :-)