Tv rental help

I am coming to stay in Bermondsey for 2 months and would like some advice about renting a tv.
Is it possible to rent a tv and get the relevant liscence and ?sky connection for this relatively short period of time? I understyand that the U.K requires a liscence and in Leathermarket Court the apartment is connected via cable so we would need a set top box/sky decoder to get connected as well.
Can anyone advise us as to who if anyone, could offer us rental for this period of time? We will be doing work on the apartment so having connection and access to news etc would be nice to break the monotony of painting etc in silence.

You have what looks like an expensive problem for a couple of months.
As far as I know a TV licence is only issued on an annual basis for £147.50, but you can then claim back any unused portion.
Sky/Virgin contracts are usually for a minimum of one year.
TalkTalk may do you a TV cable deal by the month.
I don't know if there are any companies who now rent TVs to the public. It could be cheaper to buy second hand , or new, and sell it on when you have finished with it.
Personally I would get the TV licence £147.50
A new smallish TV with built in freeview tuner about £250-300 ,and thats it.
You would have access to about 50 plus channels including 24 hour news, music and films, or as the adverts say 95% of watched British TV.
Claim your refund of £100 plus from your licence fee, sell the TV for about half that you paid for it and you should have only spent about £200.
That's my long winded view. I am sure that the more knowledgable will come up with better solutions. Listen to them because they are usually most helpful and will have your best interest at heart.
Good luck.

Why not just hook up a laptop to the phone line for a couple of months?

Yeah, if the place has internet you can get the BBC iplayer,(all BBC radio and TV channels), 4oD and various other things via a laptop/tablet.

Provided your IP address is in the UK (which it will be here) you'll have no problem. I've had a quick look at
http://www.tvlicensing.co.uk/check-if-you-need-one/ so you may want to drop them a line, see what they say about licensing. As TBH says, you'll be able to claim most of it back.

If you've already got a Sky subscription, you'll be able to use SkyGo on the laptop - it's their web platform (although it uses Silverlight, which is rubbish, so beware). AFAIK Sky won't do you anything less than a 12 month contract, so if you don't already have an account I don't think you'll get them to connect you for just a couple of months.

Hope that helps. This is all just off the top of my head, so take with a pinch of salt, etc.

Go for freeview, which has a fairly good choice of channels to avoid a year subscription to sky or cable. You can buy a TV with freeview from Argos or tesco's on old kent road, for around £100. TV licensing have a weekly cash payment plan, which means you aren't paying too much in advance.

You could also just go for a radio, which doesn't need a licence (but not everyone's cup of tea of course).

I would advise you watch all TV via your laptop.

Renting is a thing of the past.