As a native english speaker, and having resided in Hungary for more than a month, i found very surprised that most Hungarian young people, speak good english.

when it comes to TV most channels are in Hungarian. I went to a TV shop bought a high definition TV and struggled a bit asking around which broadcaster offers english TV channels, like HBO, AXN, MGM, BBC, CNN etc.. I had quite an experience and thus sharing it here in my blog.

If you are looking to install a TV + Internet connection in Budapest, first you have to find out or ask your landlord, which broadcaster is supplying a connection in your area. Then accordingly you have to call the broadcaster. In my case the UPC cable was already setup in my apartment, so all i had to do is call up UPC and on the scheduled appointment time, UPC guys showed up and installed the connection. TV + Internet all in one cable (IPTV i think).

With UPC, i did get the following channels in English :

HBO Premier HD
Cinemabox
MGM
AXN
BBC, CNN, Al Jazeera, Euro News
NatGeo
Discovery
SPEKTRUM
Zone Reality
Animal Planet

and few other channels. Unfortunately, with sports channel Euro Sports, is not available in English.

I took a HD box and the picture clarity was amazing. The modem they gave me had no wireless, so i ended up buying a wifi router. I loved the internet speeds.

Here are the most popular service providers in hungary.

http://www.upc.hu

http://www.telenor.hu

http://www.t-mobile.hu

http://www.telekom.hu/main

http://www.gts.hu/en/index.shtml 

http://english.invitel.hu/

http://www.enternet.hu/

http://www.digikabel.hu

http://www.vodafone.hu (mobile/internet)

I hope this information helps if you are an English speaking expat in Hungary.