V6 Box free for all Virgin Media customers

seven-day-weekend

Virgin Media are upgrading our box for free, they are sending the new V6 box out today by courier. They have said we can use our old TIVO box as our second box, which will replace a V HD Box.

We don't pay anything for the second box, this is a deal I negotiated with them at installation when we moved house.

Unless they ask us to return the V Box, this is now spare. Is it possible to connect it ourselves in another room? If so, how do we do it?

[Deleted User]

seven-day-weekend wrote: »

Unless they ask us to return the V Box, this is now spare. Is it possible to connect it ourselves in another room? If so, how do we do it?

It won't work unless you pay an additional multi-room subscription. Contact Virgin and ask them to collect or send you a pre-paid return envelope.

seven-day-weekend

They have sent us an envelope in the box, but in the paperwork it says to 'recycle it responsibly', so they obviously don't want it back. However, if it won't work they may as well have it back!

[Deleted User]

seven-day-weekend wrote: »

They have sent us an envelope in the box,

Just send it back.

seven-day-weekend

Thank you for your advice

MalcolmsWit

I have heard that Virgin Media are updating all customers on a broadband and TV package to a V6 recording box without any additional cost without signing a new contract. We currently have an old V plus box and have not yet received any communication from Virgin Media on this subject.. Is this information correct and should Virgin Media contact us shortly,

[Deleted User]

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/5782999

MalcolmsWit

What happens as i have two v plus boxes, will Virgin Media replace both or will the second one still work with the other V6 box in situ or does it mean I will only be able to use the one V6 box , which is not really what I want.

Nilrem

They'll replace both I think.

We had three boxes (V+, VHD and ancient NTL branded SD box) replaced with V6's.

My suspicion is that they've decided to finally get everyone off the pre TIVO boxes, probably partly to save on support costs, partly to get ready for a switch from MPEG2 based codecs to H264 or H265 (both save about 75%+ of the bandwidth per channel), and partly because the new boxes are probably a lot more secure and don't need a physical viewing card anymore.

The V6's are really nice bits of kit, although at the moment they don't always handle application hangs all that well (I've had ours crash a couple of times when the netflix app has played up).

They can also share recordings from one box in the house to any of the others, and I think (I haven't tried it) you can pair your phone/tablet via an app with your V6's to access recorded content on the mobile etc.

Well_Meaning

If you log into your My Virgin account and look at the free upgrade section it clearly states you will only be entitled to one free V6 box even if like us you have two V plus boxes, so you ned to consider which one you want replacing. We have not yet been contacted by Virgin Media about our free upgrade and have no idea how or when they will do so. We want an engineer to come and doour so when we do eventually receive a communication from them we will expect a significant wit before the engineer arrives.

Nilrem

I'm not sure if that applies in all cases.

We got one initially due to an upgrade letter, then we got another two about a month later after another letter that specifically stated that as a "sky sports HD*" customer we needed to have all our boxes upgraded to continue receiving those channels but the website stated if you had more than one eligible box you had to ring (basically any boxes that were not upgraded would lose any ability to receive Sky Sports HD).

When we rang up to query it there was some confusion with the customer services person who seemed to only be aware of the one box offer, but the engineer came out with two and a new superhub.

So it could be there are two offers, one that applies for any customers, and one that only applies (at the moment) if you subscribe to packages including Sky Sports HD which leads to all boxes being upgraded.


*So I suspect part of the offer is because Sky may be requiring new encryption on their HD channels that older STB's cannot be updated to use.