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How would you prefer to watch the weekend football from your home, on your comfy sofa or from a small, highly uncomfortable office chair?

Recently, for the first time in British history, watching a live England football match was not available to anyone who wanted to watch it in their living room, on television from the luxury of the beloved sofa. Instead, billed as an exciting development in broadcasting, it was available only to those with access to the internet, and then at a price in addition to their internet costs.

This screened out, literally, millions of people who cannot afford, or choose not to have, the internet. It also made it uncomfortable for those who chose to pay then watch it on their desk-top PC, from the discomfort of an office chair. Viewers with laptops were at least able to watch the game while sitting on their sofas, but most laptops have small screens, so their viewing experience would have been compromised.

Most loyal football fans already pay out a lot of money to follow their own and their national team; many of them must now be concerned that online screening of matches will become the norm, pricing it beyond their reach. Looking forward to watching a match is one of a football fan’s greatest pleasures; being able to watch one in comfort used to be taken for granted.

The internet has improved and enhanced the life of many thousands of people, putting the world and all it has to offer merely a keyboard click away, at any time of the day or night. It has made global communication instantaneous and it carries information in a form easily accessible without the need to have thousands of books.

Online streaming is just one of the many benefits of the internet, but we need to remember that people watch televisions as a way of unwinding at the end of the day and, for the elderly or housebound, it’s even more than that. It seems that one thing has to be compromised at the expense of another – you can watch your big screen from the comfort of your armchair or sofa, but not everything you want to watch is available via television; or you can view through online streaming, again from your sofa but on a small laptop screen, or from your desk-top PC, which will generally be in an office environment, a long way from your comfy sofa – at present, no way is perfect.

While online streaming would be the perfect solution were it the only medium by which programmes could be screened, for most people, being able to watch something on an easy-on-the-eye screen, from the comfort of their comfiest sofa, is the greatest viewing luxury of all.