Anyone gone from Sky to Virgin?

Marc

Marc

TPer Emeritus
Suspended / Banned
Messages
34,670
Edit My Images
Yes
Been with Sky for 16 years but have just signed up for a deal with Virgin.

Was just wondering if anyone else had do-ne this recently and how they found switching from one to the other as far as TV was concerned (ie, Sky+ to Tivo). Have gotten so used to how the sky box works, was just wondering if the Tivo box is much different.
 
Yes. The Sky EPG and UI is way better but the Virgin box has more functionality, albeit buried in a fairly annoying UI that requires far too many button presses to do anything. Their internet is excellent.
 
Fair enough. Do you never find yourself pressing "OK" or similar five times when a single press should suffice? Technically it's capable but the ui designers should be beaten to death with the remote
 
landwomble said:
Yes. The Sky EPG and UI is way better but the Virgin box has more functionality, albeit buried in a fairly annoying UI that requires far too many button presses to do anything. Their internet is excellent.
Click to expand...

What functionality does it have that the Sky+ HD box doesn't?
 
landwomble said:
Yes. The Sky EPG and UI is way better but the Virgin box has more functionality, albeit buried in a fairly annoying UI that requires far too many button presses to do anything. Their internet is excellent.
Click to expand...

Can you give me a quick overview of what the extra functionality is?

HuntingMartians said:
I disagree

I disagree.

Having had both. I much prefer Virgin. Only wish Sky Atlantic was there.
Click to expand...

Yes, that was a downside although I was told you can get Sky Atlantic via Now TV.

The upside is that it will cost me £10 less than I'm paying now but with BT Sports as well as the Sky Sports channels plus fee Netflix for 6 months.
 
Better catch up - wind back on the epg and you can get it from on demand (apart from sky channels which don't, although it'll take you multiple clicks to find this out), Spotify and Netflix built in, etc...
 
landwomble said:
Better catch up - wind back on the epg and you can get it from on demand (apart from sky channels which don't, although it'll take you multiple clicks to find this out), Spotify and Netflix built in, etc...
Click to expand...

Sounds good. Currently watch Netflix via the Wii and I hate the blimmin remote for that!
 
landwomble said:
Fair enough. Do you never find yourself pressing "OK" or similar five times when a single press should suffice? Technically it's capable but the ui designers should be beaten to death with the remote
Click to expand...
I can't think of any occasion where I am having to press the "ok" button that many times. In fact I rarely use that button. Mostly it is the directional buttons, up and down and the play button. Never the "Ok" button.
 
I was going to change to Virgin from Sky last Friday, but they reduced my bill to £10 under what Virgin would have cost with their joining offer :)
I'm paying just over £20 for broadband, TV (with extras) and phone line/calls.
 
Had both in the past (currently on Sky HD purely for F1), Found the Virgin menu's to be very slow in comparison to Sky, only downside to Sky is if it snows heavily the picture can be a bit iffy, oh and they try to push equipment insurance once the kit is over 12 months old. No thanks, they'll either fix it for free or off to Virgin we go.
 
I have a Virgin Tivo box. Wanted a further TV box in the upstairs bedroom. Turns out it took 17p off my monthly bill!!
 
Well, it was all installed today and I can't say it'd been the best of beginnings. When I arranged it all on the phone, the guy made it quite clear that I would be getting the same channels as I was getting with Sky. As far as I'm concened, that includes Sky Sports HD. Apparently not as far as he was concerned so a complaint has gone in, we'll see what they're prepared to do to resolve that. Also, he forgot to sort out the free 6 months of netflix although they have now put that through which will take a couple of days. That coupled with 2 broadband outages, albeit only for a few minutes, makes me hope I haven't backed te wrong horse here. :help:
 
I wish you luck

I switched over 2 years ago got a Tivo box it was constantly locking up and needing a reset they brought 2 different boxes each did the same in the end I was told you have to switch off at the socket a couple of times a week it was in cooling off so I sent it back

That left BB when it works it's fantastic the key is when, at end of year 1.5 I was going to switch but decided to get a superhub 2 that was great for 6 months now getting wifi is at best problematic customer service even though the gear is rented requires you do every thing yourself and treats people as if all are masters of tech. I hope you have a PC that is Ethernet ready otherwise good luck getting BB sorted

On the plus side bills are accurate they do free speed upgrades (for me it went slower lol) and calling customer service is free though it's hard getting a fluid English speaking agent. When I ring tech I seem to get a guy who keeps giggling like someone is tickling his feet while he talks

If you join Virgin forums it reminds me of GiffGaff ie a self help area for those who Virgin have failed to help

As mentioned fingers crossed and good luck

Allan
 
Virgin forums are monitored heavily by virgin staff. I had a shocking cabling job done upstairs, wrote a forum entry with images has anyone had a worse install than this and within two hours the area manager rang asking to look at the job.

He took one look, made a couple of phone calls and we had the house relied, with all distribution boxes in the rooms, wired neatly from the outside. Another time we were having real issues with the hd as we had three hd boxes and they ran in a new upgraded thicker cable fed from a direct tap on the distribution. Perfect now.

Add to that the 120mb download 15 mb upload and all channels and I'm happy.
 
every time iv'e gone through the process of pricing up the same package i receive from sky with virgin media it has always worked out considerably more expensive than i currently pay sky

iv'e recently changed my broadband from sky to BT infinity because sky was having trouble switching me over from broadband to fibre at 78mb BT did it with no bother and it's slightly cheaper too for some reason

i'm happy with the sky tv package but there broadband unlimited used to annoy the crap out of me with there DLM chipping away at the bandwidth all the time from 14mbit to 10mbit for no reason it took an argument every few months to have the bandwidth restored
BT infinity has took care of that for now :)

3587038755.png
 
The TiVo box cab be a pain sometimes but I am more than happy with the internet

3587321335.png
 
Virgin broadband = 9/10
Virgin TV = 7 / 10
Virgin Tivo = 4/10
Old virgin HD+ Box = 7 /10
Customer Support (telephone) = 2 / 10
Customer Support (forums) = 8 / 10
Retentions = 9 / 10
Netflix on Tivo = 2 / 10

compared with

Netflix through Apple TV = 9 /10

All based on my personal experience and of course YMMV
 
zlinuk said:
Virgin broadband = 9/10
Virgin TV = 7 / 10
Virgin Tivo = 4/10
Old virgin HD+ Box = 7 /10
Customer Support (telephone) = 2 / 10
Customer Support (forums) = 8 / 10
Retentions = 9 / 10
Netflix on Tivo = 2 / 10

compared with

Netflix through Apple TV = 9 /10

All based on my personal experience and of course YMMV
Click to expand...

What was the issue with Netflix on Tivo?
 
Slow to the point of being unusable and if you could eventually get it to play something then the picture was constantly stuttering and freezing.

Of course others on here may have had a different experience.
 
zlinuk said:
Slow to the point of being unusable and if you could eventually get it to play something then the picture was constantly stuttering and freezing.

Of course others on here may have had a different experience.
Click to expand...

Interesting. I haven't tried to watch anything on it yet but I did load it up in order too log in and it took blimmin' ages!
 
My problem can only be in the Tivo because Netflix work perfectly well on all of my other devices.
 
I left Sky after donkey's years following constant problems with the sticky out bit on the dish that they kept wanting to charge me to fix, roundabout the same time I also binned BT as there was a problem with the line they couldn't find. I have Virgin everything now and only really have two problems with it.....1. The UI is crap compared to Sky, why press one button when 4 will do? and 2. The wireless in the Superhub is crap, as advised by the Virgin engineer I bought a router and use that for the wireless now and the hub as just a modem.
 
Can't comment on transfer but been with Virgin Media for over 10 years since they were NTL World. We only have there phone and broadband, use freeview for TV. The broadband is very good, very reliable and very fast, we literally never have any outages.
 
Had Sky, switched to Vergin = disaster....
lost lots of channels,
help desk is anything but,
monthly bill doubled,
BB speed = 2mb/s = crap but apparently best possible according to them.
had Tivo box fail twice.

12 Months later (4 months ago) paid them off as good ridance & will never go there again.
Sky isn't the best at everything but its fairly reliable, bills are accurate, plenty of deals & channels, help desk is responsive & helpful.
The wireless router (Sky Hub) so needs to be gigabit eathernet its not funny but that is cheap to fix.
 
border_all said:
I wish you luck

I switched over 2 years ago got a Tivo box it was constantly locking up and needing a reset they brought 2 different boxes each did the same in the end I was told you have to switch off at the socket a couple of times a week it was in cooling off so I sent it back

That left BB when it works it's fantastic the key is when, at end of year 1.5 I was going to switch but decided to get a superhub 2 that was great for 6 months now getting wifi is at best problematic customer service even though the gear is rented requires you do every thing yourself and treats people as if all are masters of tech. I hope you have a PC that is Ethernet ready otherwise good luck getting BB sorted

On the plus side bills are accurate they do free speed upgrades (for me it went slower lol) and calling customer service is free though it's hard getting a fluid English speaking agent. When I ring tech I seem to get a guy who keeps giggling like someone is tickling his feet while he talks

If you join Virgin forums it reminds me of GiffGaff ie a self help area for those who Virgin have failed to help

As mentioned fingers crossed and good luck

Allan
Click to expand...
Just thought if anyone searches the thread I had to drop Virgin in the end BB would go off totally any time day or night came down it seems to signal 2 noise issues going to Sky few days time after more than three months trying with engineers and tech to get it working. They have said they will waive last few weeks of contract charges guess it's wait and see on that front

Fwiw if it works it's darn good it's that IF Bit that's the problem
 
if its a noise issue then you may very well have the same issue with other ADSL providers depending where the issue is.

FWIW im thinking of switching to virgin. had a problem with sky for a month or so now where the internet drops/lags. appears to be a noise issue and sky arent interested other than blaming the internal wiring.
 
Hi Neil

It's noise in their distribution boxes not in my home ADSL is over the telephone cable and noise tends to increase with distance from exchange.

I fitted a separate wall filter last time on ADSL that was ok then but I do know it's going to be slow hope it stays on though
 
I have 30mb Virgin and the connection/speed is very variable. Using Speedof.Me shows that I get between 15mb and 35mb depending on all sorts of things. Simple data packet tests all show 30 ish, but they're not very applicable the real world use.
 
border_all said:
It's noise in their distribution boxes not in my home ADSL is over the telephone cable and noise tends to increase with distance from exchange.
Click to expand...
even so if its a fault in the overhead cables back to the exchange the issue will follow between providers. if its an issue in the exchange you may be fortunate as sky lease separate BT kit. not sure what virgin do, i imagine they lease other kit.
 
Neil I live in a cable area the underground cables laid by Comcast don't really have anything to do with ADSL if you are in an area that Virgin offers ADSL then the speed and noise is going to be between Virgin and openreach

Sky and talktalk have bundle service in my area so they control the part of exchange for their customers

If you switch from one ISP and the new one uses different hardware in the exchange you may well get a different service

The noise issue on ADSL is often controlled by the little filter that you plug in suppiied by your ISP
 
The23rdman said:
I have 30mb Virgin and the connection/speed is very variable. Using Speedof.Me shows that I get between 15mb and 35mb depending on all sorts of things. Simple data packet tests all show 30 ish, but they're not very applicable the real world use.
Click to expand...
Not sure if you mean what happens with me but mine often times out even when speed checker says I have 100mb when I check in the hub log it's timed out in there as well it's reminds me of AC current ie off on off lol real shame as really would have liked to have stopped with them
 
border_all said:
Neil I live in a cable area the underground cables laid by Comcast don't really have anything to do with ADSL if you are in an area that Virgin offers ADSL then the speed and noise is going to be between Virgin and openreach

Sky and talktalk have bundle service in my area so they control the part of exchange for their customers

If you switch from one ISP and the new one uses different hardware in the exchange you may well get a different service

The noise issue on ADSL is often controlled by the little filter that you plug in suppiied by your ISP
Click to expand...
Beg pardon I assumed you had Virgin adsl
 
neil_g said:
Beg pardon I assumed you had Virgin adsl
Click to expand...
No worry at all just wish it would stay on even if slow customer support is good it's the way the system is set out that seems even the engineers can't sort

I also think that the network is oversubscribed and instead of going slow it just dies lol

Thanks for your help though
 
border_all said:
No worry at all just wish it would stay on even if slow customer support is good it's the way the system is set out that seems even the engineers can't sort

I also think that the network is oversubscribed and instead of going slow it just dies lol

Thanks for your help though
Click to expand...
Definitely over subscribed.
 
VM's DNS servers are also poo so if you use google or opendns then you tend to find the slow downs don't happen anywhere near as often.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top