sky vs virgin media

[Big-Ted]

.


As I said , Sony made getting it cheaper as it was in a consu lthat sold by the million.


As to microsoft they were one of HD DVD's supporters and spent a lot themselves on it, that's what I meant by being closely associated with it.



Not saying HD DVD wasn't better, Betamax was better, just ot the winner in the end.

[Perfect Choice]

Sony got it right in putting a Blue Ray player in their PS3, which being connected to a TV meant their gamers already had a HD DVD player so why buy anything else?

[TheDon]

Originally Posted by Big-Ted

As to microsoft they were one of HD DVD's supporters and spent a lot themselves on it

Not really.
Their only spend was in the HD-DVD support for the 360. They didn't throw any money at the actual format, just their players.

Originally Posted by Big-Ted

Not saying HD DVD wasn't better, Betamax was better, just ot the winner in the end.

Betamax wasn't really better from a consumer standpoint though.

Sure on paper the initial picture quality of betamax was better, but that was on a 60minute tape that was pretty useless for what consumer wanted. When they reduced tape speed to allow 2 hour tapes the quality of the two was nearly identical, and the improvements to VHS meant that it actually surpassed betamax.

[pauldavies83]

Originally Posted by TheDon

Not really.
Their only spend was in the HD-DVD support for the 360. They didn't throw any money at the actual format, just their players.

And even that was an afterthought

[thunderlips]

sky may have more power under the bonet !! but virgin media can carry much more of the load !

http://www.cable.co.uk/news/sky-says...ces-800417050/

[jtaylor06]

Haha, so Sky can't carry iPlayer content.
What a shame ...

Originally Posted by jtaylor06

Haha, so Sky can't carry iPlayer content.
What a shame ...

The bit that made me laugh so much i have not stopped from the link was sky moaning about "restrictive practices" in regards to the BBC i player.! when they are market leaders in restricitve practices themselves.

[WillPS]

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.

[savvychels]

Originally Posted by thunderlips

sky may have more power under the bonet !! but virgin media can carry much more of the load !

http://www.cable.co.uk/news/sky-says...ces-800417050/

I just spit my drink out accidentally when I read that. Some Giant Pots and Giant Kettle there I think!! Can we spell HYPOCRITES!!

[borrissey]

Originally Posted by Marcus125

HD-DVD Was Toshiba's not Microsofts. Sony paid movie studios upto half a billion dollars to release there films exclusively on bluray. HD-DVD was actually the better format.

I fear you may be one of those people with a little bit of info on a lot of things. A little bit of information is a dangerous thing.

Oh and I would assume once open reach have laid all there fibre sky will just re-sell it under there own brand offering VOD with it.

Nah blu ray was and is the better format HD DVD were too small in capacity compared to blu rays.

Only advantage HD DVD had was you didn't need a whole new machine to produce them.

The better format definitely won through.

[jtaylor06]

Originally Posted by richard1960

The bit that made me laugh so much i have not stopped from the link was sky moaning about "restrictive practices" in regards to the BBC i player.! when they are market leaders in restricitve practices themselves.

Haha!

[WillPS]

HD DVD was a step forward for consumers (in terms of access to the content they paid for/lack of DRM).

Blu Ray was a retrograde step.

Sony spent an awful lot of money getting exclusivity from distributors in the hope they'd make it up in the long term from licensing. Ironically, they've bought themselves the victory of what will probably be the last physical media format war - the future is in online streaming etc.

[muppetman11]

Could there be any truth in these stories

Only 1 multi room charge with Sky no matter how many boxes

http://forums.digitalspy.co.uk/showthread.php?t=1482436

1TB boxes already confirmed at £49.00 for existing customers taking the HD pack

http://www.sky.com/shop/boxes/1TB

These moves would seem logical as Sky multi room is expensive in comparison to VM however it could well just be forum speculation.

[denphone]

Originally Posted by muppetman11

Could there be any truth in these stories

Only 1 multi room charge with Sky no matter how many boxes

http://forums.digitalspy.co.uk/showthread.php?t=1482436

1TB boxes already confirmed at £49.00 for existing customers taking the HD pack

http://www.sky.com/shop/boxes/1TB

These moves would seem logical as Sky multi room is expensive in comparison to VM however it could well just be forum speculation.

l think it is just pure speculation and anyway it does not matter what box Sky have as the tivo is the superior set top box to anything Sky have.

[muppetman11]

Originally Posted by denphone

l think it is just pure speculation and anyway it does not matter what box Sky have as the tivo is the superior set top box to anything Sky have.

Look at the thread title Den I cannot counteract that claim as I haven't used TIVO , then again I'm betting you haven't used Sky+HD seeing as your anti Sky