Want to get rid of Sky and TalkTalk…or at least try something different for a year and see how it works. My broadband from TalkTalk is sketchy to say the least.

I can’t believe that in 2010 I’m still saying “ah, it always gets a bit slow around teatime” 🙂 Will cable broadband improve this?

Virgin media is in my street so no bother getting it in. Hole already in the wall for cables.

I’ve just got a new HDTV that has a wizz bang internet connection so I can get all kinds of fun through internet TV…iPlayer being the most interesting.

But, having had Sky+, it’s so bloody easy to use. Is Virgin’s TV guide any better than it used to be? Will I just NEVER get used to it? Does series linking work as well and as reliably as Sky?

So, should I give it a go for twelve months? Savings aren’t mahoosive – around a tenner a month less to go with Virgin…but that would include a V+HD box…I don’t have a Sky HD box at the moment.

Sky+ still blows Virgin’s offerings out of the water for ease of use and how it works.

Virgin Broadband, for me at least, has offered 24/7 constant 20MB internet for the last 2 years with no slow downs or problems with retentions and distance from the exchange affecting the line.

Swings and roundabouts son, but would try Virgin as they may have improved the software on the V+/V+HD boxes since I last used them, about 8 months ago.

Virgins cable broadband is bloody brilliant mate. never lost connection and speed is always above 19.5mbps which is truly great when i came from bt broadband which never managed above 3 mbps but was only 5 quid cheaper…

If you’re going with Virginmedia you may want to look at their download limits at certain times of day. They’ll throttle your connection if you exceed it. Supposedly down to 1 MB or something but the couple of occasions we’ve been throttled it it makes our Internet virtually unusable.

download limits dependant on package though 20mb has a 5gb download limit thats a lot of downloading before you get limited…

Supposedly down to 1 MB or something but the couple of occasions we’ve been throttled it it makes our Internet virtually unusable.

Unusable?

The throttling/fair use is a 25% of your maximum speed when it does kick in. So even on their lowest offering, 10Mb, you would still have a 2.5mb line.

Unusable sounds a bit strong.

Anyways, for a concise explanation of what ‘fair use’ parameters there is:

http://shop.virginmedia.com/help/traffic-management/traffic-management-policy.html#table

just keep paying for your sky, you tightwad.

I know it’s meant to kick down to 25% but ours becomes unusable.

I’ve been on the phone to virginmedia when it happens and they’ve tried to get me to go to a speedtest site to test the line and you can’t even open up the page. Or any other page for that matter.

ring up sky, say your leaving they should offer you a better package, including a hd box as they dont make the + boxes anymore

switch the broadband and phoneline to virgin

best of both worlds

2.5mb???

I never see anything like that on TalkTalk.

Hmmm, keep TV with Sky and go to Virgin for phone and bb. Right, off to do some sums.

Someone in the office has Virgin, sounds OK. Personally I wouldn’t change it for what I have with BT Vision. Unlimited broadband use, unlimited calls to landlines, line rental and Vision films, sport, music and tv for £56 a month, plus you’ll get a hefty discount for the first three months.
If you’re in the market for trying something for 12 months, I’d give it a go. That’s what we did, changing from Sky, and we’ll def keep it for another 12.

Traffic management policy here:

http://shop.virginmedia.com/help/traffic-management/traffic-management-policy.html

Basically don’t download anything massive between 10am-3pm and 4pm-9pm. And assuming you’re getting the L broadband at a minium, it is quite a bit of data before you trigger it (3GB in the day, 1.5GB in the evening for L).

On the couple of times I’ve triggered it it’s not been the reduction in bandwidth that’s been an issue (dropping down to 2.5mb/s from 10mb/s isn’t really noticable when surfing the web), it’s the ‘lag’ they seem to introduce at the same time that’s irritating.

However, I’ve had it for 3 years and it’s been more or less faultless. Recommended from me.

To be fair, the rest of the time it has been fine. We’ve only triggered it twice, but both times it meant we had no useable internet for a few hours. It was when we first got it before we were really aware of the download policy, we’d come from an O2 package where this wasn’t an issue so hadn’t really thought we’d hit limits. If we’d have had a BT line though we’d have gone with O2 over Virgin and I still would a year on.

So, if one were to be streaming a TV programme through the interweb to the tellypanel, would it be quite easy to hit this limit?

I batter my 20 meg virgin connection with no problems. Thay said I don’t bother with the telly that much.

Only problem I’ve ever had with Virgin Media was a dodgy connection in the box out on the street. I called about it one tea-time and it was fixed the next morning. Internet speeds are excellent – we’re on 10 Mbit, and it very rarely dips below 8.5 Mbit. Also, I think Virgin Media is about to blow Sky+ out the water: Virgin/TiVo coming early 2011

Well I guess it depends on the quality of the stream and the length of time you do it for?

From the speed test page (http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/diagnostics) the streams are as follows:

TV-HD 3500kbps or 438KB/S or 1538MB / hour
TV 1500 kbps or 188KB/S or 659MB / hour
TV 800 kbps or 100KB/S or 351MB / hour
TV 500 kbps or 62KB/S or 217MB / hour

So
* with L(10mbs) sized broad band watching between 4pm and 9pm you could watch 1 hour of HD or 2hr 16mins of HQ SD TV.
* with XL(20mbs) sized broad band watching between 4pm and 9pm you could watch 2hr 16mins of HD or as much SD as you like (you’ll not hit the cap as you cold watch 5hr 20 mins in the 5 hours of the evening manged time zone)
* with XXL you can watch as much as you like of anything as there isn’t a cap

Incidentally you actually get the speeds quoted as well (unlike ASDL in my experience) – I just got 10mbs from the beeb’s test.

Ewan, thanks for that. 20mB should be enough then.

Been a Virgin customer for several years, faultless in everyway so far for me. Have also been a Sky customer though not in the last 4 yrs.

What i like also about Virgin is you don’t own the box so if there is a prob they respond quickly and usually free, but as said not had any major prob just one issue with the set top box freezing they came out next day and replaced with new.

No issues with reception either during heavy weather.

No unsightly dishes hanging off your house either.

Broadband 100% faultless and has been upgraded speed wise over the years at no extra cost.Consistent speed also.

My Virgin connection is shocking.

Had engineer out twice, new box, still rubbish.

Max 2Mbps at best, after lunchtime less than half that, and unusable in the evenings.

Spent £50+ on phone calls trying to get through to someone who can actually help.

Just want rid now.

Never again, literally THE worst company I’ve ever had to deal with.

HTH

****.

It was only a matter of time 🙂

Don’t look here then DD. 8)

Boooo! Who isn’t shite though?

get a bt line and get BE broadband. Had it 2 years now and no probelms what so ever. 20mb for £18. I download about 100gb a month and never been capped.

Boooo! Who isn’t shite though?

Exactly. Also remember people will come on the internets to bitch, but very rarely to praise.

O2 were great when I was with them. Cheap to ring, quick to sort issues. Just posted me a new box when original one stopped working.

Similar situation with virgin, box broke.
On the phone for 25 mins to get through to tech support.
Arranged an appointment on a Wednesday morning. Told that if I wasn’t in when the technician arrived I’d be charged a fee.

Wednesday morning came and went, no one turns up. Another £10 spent ringing them to sort it out, and no apology.

Most friends who have it (in South Manchester) also report constant problems with the service.

Positive experience here too. Switched just over a year ago. Had Virgin over copper years ago, and that was truly really awful, moved to somewhere with fibre and decided to give it another go.

Best internet I’ve ever had. The install was a nightmare for them though: break in the cable between the house and the box, they did everything they could on the first day, dug up the front garden, no joy. Were back first thing the next day, pulled a new cable to the house and restored the garden as good as new.

Couldn’t praise them high enough.

Maybe I’ve just been unlucky then!

I think they’re all meh until something goes wrong. And then, unless you’re lucky, they’re all shite. 🙂

I think they’re all meh until something goes wrong. And then, unless you’re lucky, they’re all shite.

Stop fannying about and get it ordered. Then you can either bitch or praise with authority

BBC iPlayer doesn’t count towards your Virgin internet data so you can go mad on that.

Don’t sign up with them now – they’re launching a Tivo box in the next month or two which will blow Sky+ (and anything else you can buy in the UK) out of the water for usability.

http://tivo.virginmedia.com/

Darcy, the virgin media (cable) we have here in bristol is the fastest option and can be cheap, too. If you don’t want a landline, you won’t have to pay line rental (£15 odd per month) on your broadband as you would with any other ISP. I’ve looked around and virgin (in bristol) is your best bet, very reliable but the tech support is generally not very good; not that I’ve needed it often.

Sky+ still blows Virgin’s offerings out of the water for ease of use and how it works.

I don’t think it does. We swapped Virgin for Sky and I’m forever coming up on limitations of the Sky recording system (only 2 tuners) and it’s nowhere near as intuitive to use. Sky + box isn’t very reliable either, it keeps messing recordings up. Broadband is OK, but I can see us going back to Virgin when the Sky contract is up

If you don’t want a landline, you won’t have to pay line rental (£15 odd per month)

I’m not sure my mum could understand this concept 🙂

We have virgin media. L broadband, L telly, XL phone. And the HD+ box.

It’s all absolutely awesome as far as I’m concerned. Broadband is blisteringly quick and I’ve never noticed it going slow. Phone is great, free calls all the time (just remember to hang up after an hour and call back – “MRS SAMURI!). Telly is brilliant, iplayer works faultlessly. HD is astounding, the hard drive is a bit small on the box but it just means we have to manage it rather than not caring. We’ve never filled it up yet. The box does sometimes seem to get locked up but saying that I can’t remember when it did it last.
The router is mine and I have full control of it.

All for about 45 quid a month. And they were quite happy to run two cables in, one for the living room and one for the spare room where the computers are.

Oh, and the HD+ box is a doddle to use. Sky must be incredible if it’s better than that because even my wife picked up how to use it in five minutes.

BBC iPlayer doesn’t count towards your Virgin internet data so you can go mad on that.

The tv on demand service that you get through the cable box doesn’t, but i’m pretty certain the internet version (bbc.co.uk/iplayer) does. Unless you have information otherwise?

Stay with Sky – Virgin TV and BB is crap 👿 Only 9 more months ’till I can switch back.

Sky BB was brilliant when I had it FWIW.

Check when BT’s fibre broadband is coming to your area…sold as BT Infinity but other service providers will be reselling it shortly.
http://www.productsandservices.bt.com/consumerProducts/displayTopic.do?topicId=29017&s_cid=con_FURL_infinity

Depends very much where you live but here in Bristol Virgin is great. Internet is always fast (I’ve never had an outage either) and the tv, V+ and phone are all relatively cheap. Also once you’ve been with them for a year, you can get your bill reduced by threatening to go to Sky. We pay 45ish fro two boxes ( one v+ one normal) XL tv and L everything else which includes at least £25 discount for ‘Sky loyalty’ according to the bill.

I still phone sky from time to time to see if I can get a better deal but they can’t even get within £15 a month.

Oh and V+ is not quite as good a sky+ but more than up to the job and having three tuners is surprisingly useful for us as many things we record are on at the same time.