SKY vs Virgin Media

giggles_alot

Hiya, I was an exisitng broadband customer, i got the deal through retentions as i was looking to change my broadband provider. They offered me the full package and i ended up changing the lot.
I paid £75 for the V+ box, (my video was on its last legs so needed to buy some kind of recording equipment anyway). I've been using this since August and i would already say it is worth every penny of the £75.

i_need_help_3

Thanks Giggles. Think i will look into a bit more.

h4zel

Well I am most chuffed with myself... the young man at VM was very polite and has agreed to me having the V+ box for £30 and I'm now getting the XL TV, 2mb Broadban & telephone with free weekend calls for £33 a month AND they're coming to install an additional telephone socket FREE for me when they install the V+ box NEXT WEEK!! :beer:

easyhome

hi all,

We have Virgin broadband and phone at the moment, with sky TV.

We're looking to swap to one provider to save money, we're happy with the ntl phone and net but we've tried their tv before and i cannot get on with it.

So, it looks like we are going to swap to Sky for the net and phone, do's anyone have any opinions to offer? :-)

TIA

james

ellives

Just doing this myself.

Bear in mind if you have no BT line (which is needed for Sky) you may have to pay the full connection fee of approx. £125. Having said this it is much more likely that you can get it connected for £29.35 (which I did and the engineer is fitting this morning - fingers crossed), but you'll have to sign up to an 18 months contract (with a monthly fee of £10.50ish for free evening and weekend calls and paperless billing with BT).

FYI - a simple reconnection (of an existing line in good order) is free.

I managed to get the very recent Sky plus box, free fitting, cashback, M&S vouchers and basic tv for £16.50 per month.

As an existing o2 customer I get a pretty good discount off of their broadband fees, and they come highly rated, so that's where I'm going next, again, BT phone line needed here too.

All in all, tv, phone and broadband for approx. £36/m and some cashback etc along the way!

To be honest I had a bloody good deal with Virgin and so this will only match what I was getting, but I felt like a change and if it goes pearshaped then it's a lesson learned.

Good luck.

smcaul

What was the problem with the TV? We changed from Sky to Virgin in December, apart from the V+ box being slower to change channels then the Sky+ box we find it better. Get all the same channels as we did on sky plus the on V+ plus all the on demand stuff that you can not get on Sky.

Also the deal we got meant that basically we now get the TV for free compared to what we were paying.

glen8

DO NOT, I repeat, DO NOT move from Virgin Broadband to Sky broadband

Sky use broadband via the BT ADSL network whereas Virgin use their own Fibre Optic network. We moved house last year to a house not covered by Virgin and saw my download speeds drop from 20mb to 512k (if im lucky). You can even get 50mb with Virgin now.

Most days it barely works!!!!

The perfect solution is Virgin Phone+Broadband and SkyTV.

Sky are rolling out a new EPG planner this month which will make their service much better than Virgins.

BexTech

smcaul wrote: »

What was the problem with the TV? We changed from Sky to Virgin in December, apart from the V+ box being slower to change channels then the Sky+ box we find it better. Get all the same channels as we did on sky plus the on V+ plus all the on demand stuff that you can not get on Sky.

Also the deal we got meant that basically we now get the TV for free compared to what we were paying.

You don't get all the same channels, there are many channels on satellite not on cable. Not only are there quite a few missing channels, if you like sports you miss broadcasts due to some games being on the red button.

If you want HiDef then cable is a big joke.

The VOD on cable is very good, as are the three tuners in the V+

The V+ box is slow and clunky.

It is a difficult one as if you not worried about VOD then satellite is the better TV service, however cable is the better broadband service.

Cable is a rip-off for the phone service, been dearer than BT for around 7 years for calls etc.

Now if you don't bother with multi-room, you could dump the landline and have cable broadband and use VoIP (use Vyke and Sipgate through MYSIPSwitch for example) and then decide whether to have cable TV (if you don't mind the fewer channels) or have satellite. Nothing stopping you having cable TV and then use satellite for the free channels (which is what I do).

I only stick with cable TV simply because I do not pay the full asking price, if I had to pay the full price and choose between the two, then satellite wins that easily.

ellives

glen8 wrote: »

Sky are rolling out a new EPG planner this month which will make their service much better than Virgins.

What do you mean by this? I am about to change VM b/b (2mb) for o2 b/b - I was nervous about going from cable to ADSL - should I feel more hopeful due to your comment?

Samknows suggests this is what is available to me:


Congratulations, you are in a broadband enabled area. The following services are available in your location:

BT Wholesale ADSL
BT Wholesale ADSL Max
O2 / Be LLU
Bulldog LLU
TalkTalk (CPW) LLU
Virgin Media (Cable)

glen8

The EPG is the TV planner guide and has nothing to do with the broadband service.

You should NOT switch from Virgin to 02 as ADSL is far far FAR inferior

believe it or not but the thin BT phone cable coming into your house is not the problem. The issue with ADSL is the BT exchanges. They can't cope with the demand and the further your house is the worse it gets.

Unless you live right next to the MAIN exchange (dont confuse the exchanges with the green boxes on your street) you won't get very good download speeds.