freesat

wiogs

Moneyineptitude wrote: »

No one needs to subscribe to Virgin in order to receive Freeview! They want £40 for a box which is no better than the one's which retail in supermarkets for about £20.

The OP cannot receive a Freeview service anyhow.

Virgin can deny access to any of the channels they provide because it is a closed network. As the OP is still technically a customer, she won't be switched off completely and so Virgin are continuing to provide Free To Air channels.

The cable feeds are often left connected when a customer cancels, for ease of reconvention should the customer decide to re-subscribe.

I wasn't suggesting that anyone needs to be a Virgin customer to get Freeview.

Thanks for the other info.

[Deleted User]

wiogs wrote: »

I see they do this - not a cable service

No one needs to subscribe to Virgin in order to receive Freeview! They want £40 for a box which is no better than the one's which retail in supermarkets for about £20.

The OP cannot receive a Freeview service anyhow.

wiogs wrote: »

How does that work? Do they not stop all feeds to the cable or do they just allow some to continue?

Virgin can deny access to any of the channels they provide because it is a closed network. As the OP is still technically a customer, she won't be switched off completely and so Virgin are continuing to provide Free To Air channels. Any non-customer making a connection themselves (with an ex-subscription decoder)will receive (some) FTA channels, but with constant on-screen messages.

The cable feeds are often left connected when a customer cancels, for ease of reconnection should the customer decide to re-subscribe.

wiogs wrote: »

I wasn't suggesting that anyone needs to be a Virgin customer to get Freeview.

That's the "offer" you linked to. It's just Virgin trying to compete with BT and Sky who have much wider geographical coverage than the Cable network.

wiogs

Moneyineptitude wrote: »

No one needs to subscribe to Virgin in order to receive Freeview! They want £40 for a box which is no better than the one's which retail in supermarkets for about £20.

The OP cannot receive a Freeview service anyhow.

Virgin can deny access to any of the channels they provide because it is a closed network. As the OP is still technically a customer, she won't be switched off completely and so Virgin are continuing to provide Free To Air channels. Any non-customer making a connection themselves will receive (some) FTA channels, but with constant on-screen messages.

The cable feeds are often left connected when a customer cancels, for ease of reconnection should the customer decide to re-subscribe.

That's the "offer" you linked to. It's just Virgin trying to compete with BT and Sky who have much wider geographical coverage than the Cable network.

I wasn't suggesting anyone needs to subscribe to Virgin to receive Freeview.

I merely linked to a non cable service they provide, of which I was unaware until I did a search.

Moto2

wiogs wrote: »

How does that work? Do they not stop all feeds to the cable or do they just allow some to continue?

They can control what's viewable though the access control [smart card] so everything still comes down the cable, they just restrict what is authorised for viewing.
In the recent past the VM signal was hacked very easily, leading to an awful lot of people getting all the channels by only subscribing to the broadband to get the feed into their house.
The hackers don't have such an easy task now since the introduction of a new encryption standard [Nagravision 3]

[Deleted User]

Moto2 wrote: »

In the recent past the VM signal was hacked very easily, leading to an awful lot of people getting all the channels by only subscribing to the broadband to get the feed into their house.

Yes, this was one of the reasons Sky and Virgin reached loggerheads and was one of the factors responsible for the removal of Sky "basic" channels like Sky One from the Virgin platform for a time. Unlike Sky, Virgin saw encryption as low priority-mainly because the majority of their profits come from broadband and telephony rather than subscription TV.

macman

millionaire_in_training wrote: »

I have haggled with Virgin and got upgraded and reduced payments by £30 per month so I am very happy with that. Thanks again folks. Help much appreciated.

Even better, after discussing with kids ( teenagers) they will pay their own costs so I am in real terms only paying £10 per month for my portion of television costs.

Freesat apparently isn't so good for us as we are surrounded by lots of trees and the satellite dishes have problems getting a signal. This is the same for freeview although we could get that with digital aerials and boosters but very limited channels ( due to lite transmitter) and no record facility. We all love our telly and internet so I reckon in the end I got the best option for us

Then it's lucky that you didn't go down the Sky route, because the dish alignment for Freesat and Sky is exactly the same, and you'd have had the same signal issues.
You can most certainly have a record facility on Freeview or Freesat-you just need a Humax PVR for either. It won't give you more channels than your relay station can provide-but any channel you can get, you can record.

millionaire_in_training

I'm just showing myself up now as being a technical eejit. My brother just rolled his eyes at me earlier and said I was just to ask him in future and stop making a show of myself. So that's what I'll do. Thanks anyway for all the help and advice from everyone