Freeview advice - no aerial. I Want to get another virgin media box

macman

jb66 wrote: »

£40 install fee and £5.50 extra a month if you have a HD box, otherwise its £10.50 a month.

So that's £106 just in the first year! The OP could get an aerial installed for £80-100 depending on the area. Mad to go the VM route just to avoid that one-off cost.
OP, living a village has nothing to do with your signal-most areas require a rooftop aerial for decent Freeview reception.

amyvictoria1992

Yeh, think ill get an aerial lol defo not going to virgin media if they're going to charge silly amounts like that

amyvictoria1992

and i know spike i know all too well about saving money lol

George_Bray

spike7451 wrote: »

You will need to call VM & arrange a second box for your bedroom which is an extra £5.00 a month.DO NOT buy one of E-Bay exc as 1;you are buying stolen property & 2; they won't work.
VM will come out & split the cable signal from the connection in the VM box (ETB) on the outside of your home.They will then mount another of those white boxes (called an Isolator) in your bedroom to connect the second tv box to. As for freeview,you need an aerial fitted,buying a freeview box wont solve the problem as it's the same thing that's built into your TV.

Like you, I would have expected them to fit a second white box in the bedroom and run good quality cable to the bedroom from the Virgin connection somewhere downstairs.

But here's what they seem to have done instead, at a friend's house. Is this acceptable or should my friends call back the Virgin technician?

The bedroom previously had an aerial wire linked to an old aerial on the roof. This provided a perfectly good Freeview picture before the Virgin technician arrived. But he cut off the old coax plug from the end of the bedroom aerial lead and replaced it with a modern plug and 2ft of new cable, going into the back of the Virgin box in the bedroom. I think the 20 year old aerial lead went downstairs before going up to the aerial on the roof. Inefficient, I know. Anyway, it worked to give a stable Freeview picture. My guess is that the Virgin technician saved on a few metres of new cable by making use of that 20 year old aerial wire. My friends paid £40 for the bedroom installation so shouldn't they have expected Virgin to use good quality, modern cable and MAINTAIN the old aerial lead?

Will it be reasonable to ask Virgin to come back and reinstate the old aerial?

spike7451

George_Bray wrote: »

Like you, I would have expected them to fit a second white box in the bedroom and run good quality cable to the bedroom from the Virgin connection somewhere downstairs.

But here's what they seem to have done instead, at a friend's house. Is this acceptable or should my friends call back the Virgin technician?

The bedroom previously had an aerial wire linked to an old aerial on the roof. This provided a perfectly good Freeview picture before the Virgin technician arrived. But he cut off the old coax plug from the end of the bedroom aerial lead and replaced it with a modern plug and 2ft of new cable, going into the back of the Virgin box in the bedroom. I think the 20 year old aerial lead went downstairs before going up to the aerial on the roof. Inefficient, I know. Anyway, it worked to give a stable Freeview picture. My guess is that the Virgin technician saved on a few metres of new cable by making use of that 20 year old aerial wire. My friends paid £40 for the bedroom installation so shouldn't they have expected Virgin to use good quality, modern cable and MAINTAIN the old aerial lead?

Will it be reasonable to ask Virgin to come back and reinstate the old aerial?

What the installer should have done is,using a standard two way splitter,split the feed in the ETB (Connection box on the outside of the house) then ran an RG59 or RG6 external flooded CATV up to the bedroom (Or white internal CATV at a push).Just inside the bedroom he should have mounted a single or double port Quamtec Isolator (The white box) & then taken a spur off that.
Under no circumstances should the installer have cut & used any existing aerial cable for the simple reason that standard aerial cable is insufficient to run Cable services.
It is against VM's policy to re-use customers cabling in this way UNLESS it has been previously installed & belongs to NTL/VM/ect ect...

I would kick up stink & demand the Install Manager come out & rectify it.Chances are the installer was a contractor tho.

Kurtis_Blue

Something Sky installers (wrongly) do as a pretty common practice, very very rare that we see shoddy VM work like that though, maybe as Spike says its an influx of contractors.

George_Bray

spike7451 wrote: »

It is against VM's policy to re-use customers cabling in this way UNLESS it has been previously installed & belongs to NTL/VM/ect ect...I would kick up stink & demand the Install Manager come out & rectify it.Chances are the installer was a contractor tho.

Many thanks for your expert advice. I said the old aerial lead was 20 years old but it could be a lot older than that. It looks like very basic, low quality coax so the Virgin signal is now coming up to the bedroom via approx 15-20 metres of that! My friends only joined Virgin in summer 2010, so there's no way that aerial cable belonged to NTL or Virgin. Previously, the family had Sky downstairs and just a traditional terrestrial aerial upstairs. I'll follow your advice and complain on their behalf. Virgin are also charging £10/month (£12 after VAT) on top of the existing, quite expensive TV package in the lounge for the second V box upstairs. It doesn't record and HD was not enabled for the £40+VAT set up fee which they paid for the bedroom work. It would cost another £50+VAT to get HD enabled. Are these charges fair?

wattywattwatt

I have a FERGUSON AV LINK WIRELESS TRANSMITTER connected to my VM box. This gadget sends the signal to my bedroom tv wirelessly, the transmitter connects to the VM box by scart and the receiver connects to the bedroom telly in the same way. It works pretty well on the whole but we do get a little bit of interference from time to time. I think it was the best solution for us without spending a fortune, it does mean you have to watch the same channel as on your main tv but are able to change channel from the bedroom by remote. I think it cost around 30-40 pounds a couple of years ago from Currys. Hope this helps.