First of all -- thank you everyone for taking out time to share your advice and offering help. Genuinely grateful.
Will summarise my personal learnings below -- will emphasise personal here as this is strictly my point of view
1 - The solution that I eventually settled for was getting a coaxial cable that plugged into my TV directly from the TV wall socket in my apartment -- didn't need anything else, as my apartment block has a communal aerial (didn't know this was a thing as I am not from the UK). Sharing here as this may turn out helpful for other novices like me. From there -- setting up the channels was easy from settings -> watching tv -> channels -> channel setup -> auto tuning -> Aerial Digital
2 - This reflection relates directly to my original question, which was to figure out watching ITV w/o need for additional hardware. It seems to me that Sony Bravia TVs lag others in supporting free to air channels after just connecting to the Wi-Fi (i.e. without connecting additional cables, etc.). In other words, there are fewer apps that support watching live TV compared to competition (in case of ITV -- while LG's webOS has an ITV app that allows you to watch live TV while ITV app on Sony / Android TVs only supports catch up TV. I was able to workaround this by casting from my laptop, but the quality wasn't optimal)
3 - I didn't go down the route of exploring Roku (or Amazon Fire stick or other smart tv sticks) as I already had a 2nd gen Google chromecast
4 - some people genuinely want to help, while others pretend - they try forcing a solution on you and mock you with sarcasm and non helpful analogies when you say "thank you but the solution doesn't work for me". I have an analogy -- My car already has 4 wheels. Please don't force me to put a few more and convert it into a lorry just because you have only ever driven a lorry.
Peace and respect
PM
