Moving Virgin set top box

Surfing_spaniel

I've just been quoted £99 to move a Virgin set top box from one bedroom to the other:eek:. Does anyone know if I have a new box installed in the second room & then in a couple of months cancel the one I no longer want, will it work out cheaper. Would they let me get away with that or would I still get charged a fortune?
Thanks in advance

Kurtis_Blue

Get some other quotes from independent AV / Aerial / sat installers.

jb66

Assuming you have a HD box it would be £40 plus £6.50x12 (12 month contract). So £118

Surfing_spaniel

Thanks for the quick replies, I think I'm going to ring around some aerial installers & see what they say. I'm sure that will save me a bit. Thanks again

Moneymaker

Why can't you simply pick up the box and move it, then reconnect it via an extension cable?
What is there to "install"?

Surfing_spaniel

You're right Moneymaker I spoke to my neighbour & hes offered to do it for me. Just running a cable round the side of the house & reconnecting it. Job done for the price of the cable & a pint lol:beer:

Llerryt

we had to move the box from one side of the lange to another, the guys in-store said it'll be about £100 too, but then told us that once in the building, the cable is only co-ox, and the connectors cost next to nothing, you can pick them up in maplin, or even wilkos! don't know what on earth they can possibly charge that much for.

Surfing_spaniel

We priced up the cables & connector things, came to less than £22 from Screwfix. £99 is a right rip off price.

Nilrem

llerryt wrote: »

we had to move the box from one side of the lange to another, the guys in-store said it'll be about £100 too, but then told us that once in the building, the cable is only co-ox, and the connectors cost next to nothing, you can pick them up in maplin, or even wilkos! don't know what on earth they can possibly charge that much for.

ouch

I hope you realise there are many different grades of co-ax, ranging from stuff that I wouldn't even use for a 3 foot run from a VCR to a TV, let alone for something for which shielding and signal quality is as important as it is for Cable TV.
Even Satellite quality cable (which is an order of magnitude better than TV aerial co-ax), is usually of a lower quality than the cable TV rated stuff.

And that's before you consider that some co-ax is rated at 75ohm and some at 100ohm, and some at 50ohm depending on the intended use, or that some is air core, some foam core etc which all affects the quality.

Good co-ax of the sort that VM will be using can easily reach £1 per metre or more, and that's before you even consider the fact that VM will be paying for the installers time (hence it's a standard charge).

Remember a large part of what you pay for when you get VM to do it, is the knowledge that
1: The job is going to be done with the correct cable (and properly terminated which is very important for Cable*).
2: The time of the tech - they charge basically for a set block of time (at less than my local plumber), and don't charge any extra if the cable run needs to be long.
3: The fact that cabling will be checked and if needed be changed/sorted (a change in the cable can change the signal strength enough to require attenuators to be fitted/removed/changed).
4: The knowledge that next time you have a fault it won't be because of a fault you've created/that the engineer won't be able to recommend a charge due to the improper cable.



*And data as anyone who ever played with thin wire Ethernet will tell you...(and cable TV is closer to that than normal broadcast TV in cabling requirements), anyone who ever had to work with an olde computer network probably still has nightmares about termination of the cables and what happened if you had a bit of damage (or improper cable) on the network, and the fun involved in finding the fault.

spike7451

Be prepared for problems like pixilation,drop outs & low signal levels then.Standard aerial cable is no use for cable installations.The amount of time's I've been to faults on a DIY job as by the time the new cable run reaches the tv/modem point the signal level is none existant & the standard Sky type F connector are not very good either,I've lost count.
If you're going to DIY,best bet would be to blag some cable from the next VM engineer you see,at least then it'll be the right stuff.

Surfing_spaniel

Thanks for all the help it really is appreciated especially as I'm not very techy lol. I'll tell you what my neighbour suggested... PF100 LSF Satellite cable, double screened CAI approved digital cable with 1mm bare copper inner conductor. Does this sound like it would be any good??