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WillPS · 25-02-2011, 10:38

This post is from a former VM Cable customer, who reluctantly had to give it up to get a placement out in the sticks.

I loved Virgin Media. I loved having a broadband connection that could have 3 students online, with uTorrent active and an iPlayer streaming to boot. I loved the TV service too, On Demand was fab and I thought the V+ box did all I wanted it to.

But I had to let it go, and there was no way my other half would put up with a house without Living, so reluctantly we had to take up Sky, and you know what - later this year I'm not so sure I'm going to drop it when we move back to the city.

When I was with VM I thought we had all the channels we'd actually want - not so, there's a good handful of channels that I regularly use which aren't on VM (notably More4+1, S4/C and the CBS channels). Further to this, VM have actually removed another channel I rather liked - MTV Classic.

Also, our one Sky box happily serves both our main telly downstairs and our bedroom telly with the use of a magic eye. With Virgin, this would involve more equipment and/or reduction of quality (since you can't have HD and RF out).

To all those saying the picture quality breaks up in poor weather - to be honest I haven't seen any evidence of this whatsoever. in fact, we got a lot more random pixelation etc. on Virgin!!

On to the STB itself - obviously, Sky+HD has a significant advantage in terms of storage. Then there's the EPG, and my God, do Sky have the upper hand here; the Sky+HD EPG is simple, clean and speedy. Overall, this makes the V/V+ EPG look seriously neglected, which I guess is true. Before anybody pipes up about Tivo - I'm not interested in paying £149 for equipment I wont own PLUS a £3/month charge - that's not a competitive proposition.

This brings me on to my next point - since I last joined Virgin, they seem to have gone the way of introducing a load of ******** charges. £50 HD activation - wtf is that for? Where does it cost VM to activate HD services on top of SD ones? Total rubbish. Frankly, charging for anything other than the labour involved in installation on a product which you then rent monthly is ridiculous.

Having never had anything other than ntl:/Virgin Media internet, I guess I was a little snobby about it. My modest ~8mbps Plusnet connection seems to do the trick pretty well. I've only been over bandwidth once and that was because I left my torrents open for a week while I was away. I now have them set up to work Midnight-8am and I keep a decent ratio that way.

So, whether I stay with Sky come August when we move back to Sheffield will depend I guess on the offers at the time, but if it were right now I think I'd be minded to stay with them.

25-02-2011, 10:38	#53
WillPS Inactive Join Date: May 2007 Services: VM XXL Broadband, XL TV with V+ and L Phone Posts: 211	Re: sky vs virgin media This post is from a former VM Cable customer, who reluctantly had to give it up to get a placement out in the sticks. I loved Virgin Media. I loved having a broadband connection that could have 3 students online, with uTorrent active and an iPlayer streaming to boot. I loved the TV service too, On Demand was fab and I thought the V+ box did all I wanted it to. But I had to let it go, and there was no way my other half would put up with a house without Living, so reluctantly we had to take up Sky, and you know what - later this year I'm not so sure I'm going to drop it when we move back to the city. When I was with VM I thought we had all the channels we'd actually want - not so, there's a good handful of channels that I regularly use which aren't on VM (notably More4+1, S4/C and the CBS channels). Further to this, VM have actually removed another channel I rather liked - MTV Classic. Also, our one Sky box happily serves both our main telly downstairs and our bedroom telly with the use of a magic eye. With Virgin, this would involve more equipment and/or reduction of quality (since you can't have HD and RF out). To all those saying the picture quality breaks up in poor weather - to be honest I haven't seen any evidence of this whatsoever. in fact, we got a lot more random pixelation etc. on Virgin!! On to the STB itself - obviously, Sky+HD has a significant advantage in terms of storage. Then there's the EPG, and my God, do Sky have the upper hand here; the Sky+HD EPG is simple, clean and speedy. Overall, this makes the V/V+ EPG look seriously neglected, which I guess is true. Before anybody pipes up about Tivo - I'm not interested in paying £149 for equipment I wont own PLUS a £3/month charge - that's not a competitive proposition. This brings me on to my next point - since I last joined Virgin, they seem to have gone the way of introducing a load of ******** charges. £50 HD activation - wtf is that for? Where does it cost VM to activate HD services on top of SD ones? Total rubbish. Frankly, charging for anything other than the labour involved in installation on a product which you then rent monthly is ridiculous. Having never had anything other than ntl:/Virgin Media internet, I guess I was a little snobby about it. My modest ~8mbps Plusnet connection seems to do the trick pretty well. I've only been over bandwidth once and that was because I left my torrents open for a week while I was away. I now have them set up to work Midnight-8am and I keep a decent ratio that way. So, whether I stay with Sky come August when we move back to Sheffield will depend I guess on the offers at the time, but if it were right now I think I'd be minded to stay with them.