Virgin Media

[Salsa Party Animal]

I am unhappy with Sky overcharging me for my account and talktalk.net for poor internet connection reliability. 105 pounds a month is too much combined. For

Sky HD, Sky sports package, espn and multi room option.

I am considering moving to virgin media.

All I want is to be able to

use HD channels Sky 1 HD, Sky Sports HD channels and be ablke to pick multi match via red button, ESPN HD and BBC HD and ITV HD (if subtitled). Channel 4 HD would be nice as long it have subtitles.

How much would it cost me to have decent broadband package, plus multi room Virgin HD box.

It got to do HDMI and DD 5.1 perferable via co-axial.

I have seen old virgin box and they are crap, but what the new one is like ?

[Baseley09]

For a start there are no SKy HD channels available on Virgin. Or ITV HD via red button!

[Shozuki]

the best combo and the one I use is Sky+ HD and 50MB Virgin Media Broadband

[Salsa Party Animal]

Cheers for information.

[ChrisF]

I have had NOTHING but trouble since getting Virgin broadband a few months back. Their support are terrible and have hung up on me several times. The only way I can get any help out of them was to talk to them via Twitter. I honestly wouldn't recommend them at all. Change to a different ADSL provider if I were you, but just do not get Virgin.

I had Sky previously and as much as I thought the were terrible, they were a million times better than Virgin have been for me.

[wod]

Sky HD, Sky sports package, espn and multi room option.

that is about 70 a month so your paying 35 for internet/phone a month ?

sky sports + 6 mix is ?41, hd ?10, espn ?9 as you have sky sports, ?10 multiroom

virgins vip package is 78.50 a month. see what it includes here

http://allyours.virginmedia.com/websales/product.do?id=11029

[wakka]

I had Sky previously and as much as I thought the were terrible, they were a million times better than Virgin have been for me.

They haven't been great for me either...I have the 10mb service and find speeds incredibly variable. They seem to range from about 200k/s tops up to about 1mb/s, totally randomly. It's annoying :/

[ChrisF]

They haven't been great for me either...I have the 10mb service and find speeds incredibly variable. They seem to range from about 200k/s tops up to about 1mb/s, totally randomly. It's annoying :/

That's exactly that I get... Running speedtest.net gives me anything between 3Mb/s and 17Mb/s... only once or twice did I ever get 19Mb/s... and I am on a 20mb service too.

My mate down the road had the same problem and only after 6 months of complaining did they upgrade his service and now he gets 19.5Mb/s solid. Every time.

I did mention the same things to my "twitter" contact, and they dismissed it. What can you do eh?

All I know is that unless things are resolved by the end of the 1 yea r contract, then we are going right back to ADSL.

[Ajay1986]

We've been with NTL/Virgin Media for over 5 years now for internet and have never had any issues, never even had to ring the support line.

As far as TV goes we switched to Virgin a year a go when we moved house and again haven't had any problems. The boxes are quite a lot slower to use than Sky but the on-demand and catch up services are really good. HD quality is also very good but as has been mentioned you won't get Sky Sports or Sky Movies HD.

[Alex_976]

I've been with Virgin BB for close to 4 years and never had a problem with them. They even rang me up last year to give me a free TV box which i've hooked up in the spare room. Great for the on demand stuff and iplayer. But I wouldn't swap it for my Sky HD box downstairs. If you want HD you need the Sky box.

Ring sky up and tell them you want to ditch all the internet and phone side they will most likely offer you some deal to make you change your mind.

[NekoFever]

I've never had a problem with Virgin broadband. I'm on the 20Mb option and got this when I ran a speed test yesterday:



The supplied router was terrible and would crash if too many people - there are five of us in this house, all with various consoles and computers - were working it, but I replaced it with a better one that I had spare and not had a problem since. Virgin's was running some kind of custom firmware that couldn't be manually upgraded, so I don't know if it was something in there causing it because my parents have the stock version of that router and it's been rock solid.

Not too hot on the TV, though. We only have the basic service because for some reason it was cheaper to get that with the broadband than the broadband alone, and I hate the interface of the box. Sky+ is much better in that respect and I prefer my Freeview recorder box.

Admittedly I've never had to use customer support so I have no experience there, but I stopped expecting good service from someone reading a script on the end of a phone line a long time ago. It's rare that they know any more than what I could tell them.

[Baseley09]

I have the XL TV package and from my experience (sans the box having a gayout now and again), the services are brilliant. Concerning on demand, Virgin is light years ahead of Sky, providing you like your music and tv series, you will really make use of them.

Virgin on demand is the reason I would not consider sky at the minute, we culd do with a few more HD channels, but the upscaling capabilities of the V+ box are superb.

[ChrisF]

This is what I get on my 20 meg connection atm

[Brats]

This is what I get :



No caps on the 50meg service either.

Awesome service imo. Wouldn't change for all the tea in China.

[ChrisF]

The 50 meg servers are fine. If you're on 20, on a server thats been upgraded to be capable of 50 then that's also fine. But they seem to be taking their sweet time upgrading all the other servers... i.e. one I'm on.