Sky vs Virgin - Futureproofing..
 

Not intending to start agressing either service.. but just thought it'd be a quite interesting discussion:

Virgin seem to have their system absolutely future-proof. No need for a dish - that single coaxial cable is able to handle 3 HD streams + a HD stream on demand. In comparison, Sky can only handle 2 HD streams (1 for each cable) - (can watch another HD stream via On Demand - but this is done over your INTERNET connection - not the TV cable!)

Virgin also have the advantage that the weather does not affect their service... Unlike Sky.

On the other side of that, Sky box is much leaner and quicker and Sky have a larger fan-base.

My question really is, yes both platforms are usable right now.. but in the long run.. surely Virgin have the upper hand in terms of future use? Sky are limited by their equipment as it does not run over their connection (whereas Virgin from your home is linked to them)

What do you guys think? :)

Re: Sky vs Virgin - Futureproofing..
 

Cables major selling point has always been its two way communication which is perfect for On Demand , satellite doesn't have this luxury so requires the user to use a BB connection to access its progressive download On Demand service.

There are already ways to deliver multiple tuners over one satellite cable , Fibre satellite distribution is one method however currently the cost is prohibitively expensive , another method is SAT>IP using IP-LNB , BSKYB was involved with other companies in its development so I'm sure there looking to the future as are VM with the likes of DOCSIS 3.1.

Re: Sky vs Virgin - Futureproofing..
 

Does VM still use MPEG2, or have they finally moved to MPEG4?

Re: Sky vs Virgin - Futureproofing..
 

MPEG2 as older boxes aren't capable, only TiVo, Samsung V+ and VHD are

Re: Sky vs Virgin - Futureproofing..
 

Unless the VM street cabinet is in view of the sun and then stuff inside has been known to get a tad warm :p:

Re: Sky vs Virgin - Futureproofing..
 

Not aware of weather problems...unless the sky falls down on me...as henny penny would say

http://www.authorama.com/english-fairy-tales-23.html

Re: Sky vs Virgin - Futureproofing..
 

Its amazing isn't it Colin how many times the weather issue gets reiterated on this forum , in my many years of having satellite I can count on one hand the amount of weather related issues I've had , the last one was during the blizzard conditions last year.

Re: Sky vs Virgin - Futureproofing..
 

I agree. Only 3 times in 14 months have i been affected by weather and the total amount of minutes is no more than 30 mins

Re: Sky vs Virgin - Futureproofing..
 

It is a virgin chat forum, so not too surprised things get exaggerated. After all, "coming soon" has new meaning for Virgin :D

Re: Sky vs Virgin - Futureproofing..
 

Loooool

Re: Sky vs Virgin - Futureproofing..
 

I prefer cable to satellite, mainly because there is no dish and the OD selection is (was?) larger. I know Sky use the internet, but I do like the option to download an OD item and have it sitting on the planner waiting for someone to watch it.

Re: Sky vs Virgin - Futureproofing..
 

you can do that with sky i think...ask those who use it

Re: Sky vs Virgin - Futureproofing..
 

Calm down dear as for some people it is a issue and should be mentioned.:D:D

---------- Post added at 06:10 ---------- Previous post was at 06:08 ----------

Such eloquent words for one who serves his master well.;)

Re: Sky vs Virgin - Futureproofing..
 

On that basis, I could mention that virgin is crap for gaming, as that was my experience. And i could use that as a point to convince others that virgin is rubbish. (whilst the weather problem is rarely evidenced, and usually hearsay)

Tv is poor choice (oh, another experience I have had)

That leaves broadband overall. I think lots say that BT infinity is a better experience, (so "I" hear).

So only reason you would choose sky, is like apple uses, you think it is best (despite evidence otherwise) and you will only ever choose virgin.

Best statement to cover that, "Bahhh", sheep :D

Re: Sky vs Virgin - Futureproofing..
 

The weather issue is a none starter that is only mentioned in relation to Sky. It never seems to effect anyone on freesat, or any other free to air satellite set up/system.

Re: Sky vs Virgin - Futureproofing..
 

The weather issue highlights those who (for whatever reason) already have poor quality signal issues.

Re: Sky vs Virgin - Futureproofing..
 

Exactly , usually caused by poorly aligned satellite dishes.

Re: Sky vs Virgin - Futureproofing..
 

Not had any weather related problems since getting sky installed last year.

I think the OP has a different topic title than the question asked. I don't see how installation method affects the future proofing of a service. Sky dishes can be put anywhere with a phone line, which is almost every house in the country, wheras virgin have to dig up streets to add new households.

As said before weather is not an issue.

How many streams a service has now does no mean anything for the future. Methods of using home networking can resolve some issues and upgrading stbs canadd more tuners. But who really needs to recoding 5 channels while watching another.


More Importantly for the future of both services is having tv thst customers will pay for. Sky have more money to inest in tv while vm is loosing out with channels lately. Unless something changes soon, I think vm could lose a fair few tv customers who take their other services awway too.

Re: Sky vs Virgin - Futureproofing..
 

It's swings and roundabouts.. If you have a bad sky install, then weather can affect your signal massively on sky (I've seen several examples of this). But, on the flip side, if you have a bad cable install, you still have problems, just not necessarily to do with the weather.

Re: Sky vs Virgin - Futureproofing..
 

If you have a good cable install you can still have problems, ondemand not available , power levels deciding to go tuts up, a VM tech deciding to stick you on a crap tap at the cab to give a new customer good service....

Re: Sky vs Virgin - Futureproofing..
 

Is it something they could phase in by swapping boxes, or are they just stuck with it for the foreseeable future because there'd be too many?

Re: Sky vs Virgin - Futureproofing..
 

It could be done, but there isn't any pressing reason to do so. VM has more than enough bandwidth free for all current plans. Besides, the saving from changing to MPEG-4 is nothing like as much as some people would have you believe. There are better things for VM to spend money on.

Re: Sky vs Virgin - Futureproofing..
 

VM have plenty of room for channels. Moving to MPEG4 would be costly (replacing boxes, and I'm pretty sure feeds are delivered to VM as MPEG2, so there'd need to be encoding kit), and would only give an advantage in terms of being able to record more onto the TIVO, which is easily solved by offering bigger hard drives to those who want them, for a price.

Edit: it's also not quite the case that a Sky box can only record one thing per cable. Each cable connects to an LNB. Each LNB can only tune to horizontal or vertical, and each of those is split into high and low frequencies. So if you had a box with a dozen tuners, it'd only need 4 cables. The LNBs used for distributing Sky signals throughout a building/block of flats are usually Quattro LNBs, so you can run 4 cables to distribution equipment in the attic, and then run more or less as many cables to as many boxes as you like.

A quattro LNB differs from a Quad LNB in that it has four LNBs, each for one of the 4 tuning states. H/High, H/Low, V/High and V/Low. They NEED distribution kit like multiswitches.

A Quad LNB has 4 LNBs each capable of switching to any of the four states. Quad LNBs are what are installed in single-property residential installs.

Edit 2: And it's technically possible for a satellite tuner to record multiple channels per tuner, if they're all on the same mux.

Re: Sky vs Virgin - Futureproofing..
 

Yes, but not that much.

It's time you looked again ;)

Re: Sky vs Virgin - Futureproofing..
 

Confirmed as 100hrs HD here or 500hrs SD.

http://my.virginmedia.com/discover/t.../tivo-box.html

Re: Sky vs Virgin - Futureproofing..
 

If you have a good Sky install, you can still have problems... The STB or LNB(s) can fail out of warranty. Someone can put a building between your dish and the satellite, or they can let nearby trees grow out of control (this last one actually rendered my friends otherwise good Sky install totally useless). As I said, swings and roundabouts.

That's without the problems that can be introduced by broadband.

Re: Sky vs Virgin - Futureproofing..
 

Personally I believe that breakthroughs in the near future will lead to all internet and tv being delivered via the air eventually. Vast IP networks via radiowave or similar that are perfectly reliable in all conditions with mega amounts of bandwidth available. Its more a case of when than if!

Re: Sky vs Virgin - Futureproofing..
 

I have a good cable install and have never experienced any of these problems.

Didn't you earlier in a post in this very thread kind of say it was wrong to assume everyone with a dish would experience problems in bad weather? So now it's ok to assume everyone on cable will be afflicted by these issues? :rolleyes:

Re: Sky vs Virgin - Futureproofing..
 

I would bet money that a good percentage more Virgin customers have had problems with their tv than sky customers ;)

Re: Sky vs Virgin - Futureproofing..
 

That's probably right if you base that percentage on only the posts within this site. I'm sure you're already aware most members who post here do so because they have cable. How about if I make a bet to see if there are more dissatisfied customers on the Sky User site than there are cable? ;-)

Re: Sky vs Virgin - Futureproofing..
 

Ok you're "one of them" Internet type trolls. I say even a good cable install CAN give problems but you changed that to me saying EVERY CABLE CUSTOMER WILL HAVE ISSUES.

You're not worth bothering with as you will quote out of context an make up complete lies. Enjoy the ignore feature, I know I will.

Re: Sky vs Virgin - Futureproofing..
 

I've had SKY for 5 months now without any signal problems whatsoever. I was previsouly a Virgin customer for about 7 years. During that period I only ever lost my TV signal 2, maybe 3 times but one did last for about 2 days! It wasn't Virgins fault though, British Gas had cut through a cable in the local area.

I would say however that almost on a daily basis I had issues with Virgin when it came to watching catch up or on demand TV. So many times between 10:00pm to 1:00am trying to watch catch up or on demand seemed impossible. I'd say for this reason alone, more people have problems with their TV service with Virgin on a daily basis than do with SKY.

Re: Sky vs Virgin - Futureproofing..
 

Chad do those new glasses fit you.;):D

Re: Sky vs Virgin - Futureproofing..
 

Troll? That's rich coming from you.
As for being on ignore, there's no real no great loss there and I'm sure it's a feature most people have you on here anyway.

Re: Sky vs Virgin - Futureproofing..
 

What, the ones for SKY 3D:p:

Re: Sky vs Virgin - Futureproofing..
 

Definitely not.

Radiowaves will always have limited bandwidth. That's just a fact of physics. They're prone to interference, which is why neighbouring freeview transmitters are on different frequencies, and your wi-fi performance sucks if your neighbours have networks on the same frequencies.

Radiowaves bounce. They're stopped by buildings, trees and the weather. They require a hell of a lot of power, relatively, to go any distance.

Lastly, radiowaves still need backhaul. Fibre or adsl2+ connections being backhaul from mobile phone towers. It'll all be moving to fibre now, so if there's fibre there anyway, why bother with unreliable wireless?

The future is fibre. It's cheap, it's fairly easy to repair, it's small so you can run multiple strands and have redundancy and true futureproofing, and it can transfer a silly amount of data with low latency.