Digital TV - SKy V Virgin

d18set

Hi

Have currently got Sky TV at home but will be moving house shortly so was hoping to upgrade my system (potentially Sky + / High Definition etc).

Any advise on which is the best system out of Sky and Virgin (or are there even any other options). A work colleague advised me that the Virgin + system was best but I understand that they do not have Sky One (which I watch a lot). I experienced NTL Digital TV a few years back and was not impressed but I guess they are continually updating it.

Also does anyone know (if I chose Sky option) whether I am best to:

1. cancel my Sky contract and become a new customer in new house; or
2. tell Sky that I am moving house and want to upgrade.

I guess it depends on if they are large start-up costs and what introductory offers they do. Any advice appreciated.

Cheers

poe.tuesday

as sky and virgin as competing for your custom then call sky and see what they can offer you

at the end of the day, if you watch lots of sky one then you are going to have to have sky but that does not mean you can not play sky off against virgin to get your best deal, the other thing you have to remember is that you are not a new customer when you move, can you put the account in a different name to be able to get the new customer deals? if you can then I would do that

as for going for HD or sky +, it's a personal choise, if you don't watch movies or footy then it may not be worth you getting HD but as for sky +, it's fab and you won't know how you have survived without it ;-)

BexTech

Virgin only have one HD channel the BBC HD channel and don't look like they are getting any more any time soon.

Sky have several HD channels.

Sky have more channels than Virgin.

Sky boxes are much faster and not clunky like cable boxes.

Sky HD used MPEG4 so they will have more room for more channels.

Virgin use MPEG2 and is another reason why cable haven't got so many channels, especially in the xTW area they are short of bandwidth.

One good thing about the V+ box is it has 3 tuners so you can record 2 channels and watch another, Sky+ or Sky HD just has 2 tuners so it's watch one channel and record another or record 2 channels.

V+ boxes are very buggy and cable often have outages which means no TV quite often, cable doesn't need bad weather for it to play up. There are issues with juddering pictures on the Sports channels, and they did have issues for over 6 months with the UKTV channels.

I'd opt for Sky+ or Sky HD.

If you go as a new customer then you'll need to use a different bank account and if you use the same name don't tell them your old addresses or that you had Sky before.

H2SO4

As a Virgin Media viewer, I strongly suggest you get Sky. VM is very buggy, loses signal frequently, often needs rebooting, rarely has TV Guide working, and has awful customer service. Plus, they make you get a VM phoneline, and their phone prices are far worse than BT's, and it's very hard to switch.

Planning to switch.

Marty999

I have the Virgin TV/telephone/broadband package and I am very pleased with it. Yes there are the occasional problems with the TV programme guide but the broadband is fast and reliable and I am not looking to change.

OK_Sauce

I am currently on a changeover an actually have both! There are pros and cons for both, especially the HD stuff that's mentioned above. I do believe the picture quality on Sky has the edge over cable. However with the choice of SD channels I believe Virgin wins. True there aren't as many as Sky, but it seems to me Virgin don't bother with many of the shopping channels and other really minority channels.
What I see as the main advantage of each service:-
Sky - Sky One for quality American imports
Virgin - On Demand service is brilliant!

BexTech

I too have both. (Actually all three, have Freeview too).

Don't forget these shopping channels and minority channels you speak of on satellite are actually Free To Air - You don't pay for them. There are over 100 channels free on satellite and an awful lot of free radio channels too. So you can't really argue on the completely free channels point. Plus you can't say Virgin wins when they have less channels, as as said those you mention you aren't paying for anyway.

VOD is OK, it's a good idea but Virgin just can't get it right yet. Their catch up TV can't be relied upon, they could record a programme for several weeks in a row and then when you need it one week they don't record it. There is a limited library of VOD content.

VOD could be the killer service cable needs, sadly it's a let down.

Sky Onc only really show 2 or 3 programmes worth watching per year, back in the late 1980s and very early 1990s they used to show a fair amount more programmes worth watching. The loss of the Sky basic channels on cable hasn't really affected the customer numbers for TV, most people aren't bothered about losing a couple of programmes, they just download them.

The reason Virgin don't bother with a lot of channels is cable works differently to satellite, Virgin Media have to pay the broadcasters for the channels and Virgin control all the EPG data.

With satellite, broadcasters pay SES Astra or Eutelsat for capacity on one of the satellites, pay an uplink provider to send the signal to the satellite, and then if they want to be listed on the Sky digibox EPG they pay Sky a small fee, the broadcasters send the EPG data themselves too. Now if the channel want's to earn a little cash from a subscription fee, then they pay Sky for encryption and then they get a tiny share of the subscription fee.

Lots of channels don't want to pay extra for encryption and simply broadcast in the clear (Free To Air), now proper satellite boxes don't use propriety EPG system like Sky boxes, so if it wasn't for so many people having Sky boxes broadcasters wouldn't need to pay Sky EPG fees as the proper satellite receivers create their own EPG list and still receive the programme details.

Standard cable boxes only come with a useless up to 24 hour EPG, Sky has 7 and a bit days EPG.

Cable EPG / Mini guide etc, is clunky and isn't pleasing on the eye.

I don't pay for my Virgin TV service, comes free with the reduced cost broadband (offer extended, as I told Virgin I was happy to continue as is, but wouldn't pay the normal price).

Virgin Media TV is OK free or very heavily discounted, but not worth paying the full price.