Virgin Media

[leestudd30]

I'm looking to go to virgin for my broadband when my current contract ends, been on their website and I can afford the 30MB package. Has anyone got any experience/opinions on them? I live in a rented flat, would they need to install anything?

[Gary406]

you need to check 1st if virgin media are in the block of flats.
my uncle lives on a new build and virgin media wont install on this new estate.

as long as they are it will all be free instalation for new customers ...

[leestudd30]

Cheers! I have a feeling the previous tenant was a virgin customer, shall have to find out!

[robb]

Ihave just had an email off em this week broadband speed upped from 50mb to 120mb which means bugger all to me

[mjb]

They need to drill a hole through an external wall to get the wire in, and they need to attach a box to the side of the house. They also need to get the wire from the street to the building, which may be an issue if there's land or paving in-between

[Gary406]

when i had virgin media a few years ago they pinned the cable from the street to the house to the wooden fence . they said they didnt put them in the ground anymore because workmen were cutting them when digging up the estate when they was refurbishing it. doing new fences. driveways etc.

120meg broadband . i dont see the point . dont they cap the speed once you have downloaded so many gig ? or has that changed now ..

[sirwiggum]

Problems with the "superhub" are well documented

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/04/20 ... hub_snafu/

Virgin Media's customer service are quite frankly disgraceful. No help or knowledge of local outages beyond "turn your router off and on again".

If you get the TV with it, the Pace boxes are slow and useless, the EPG is counter-intuitive, there are many MPEG artifacts on the channels (that don't appear on the same channels on Sky) and they offer less channels than Sky.

Don't line beardy Bransons pockets for inferior products.

[leestudd30]

Thing is, where I live I'm too far from the local exchange, I only get 1.5MB at best with Plusnet, though it was nearer 2MB at the start, and I can't get that fancy new BT Infinity and have no idea if it will ever be available where I live. I don't need the landline and haven't got time for all the channels lol, just love the idea of super quick broadband.

[sirwiggum]

People are still having issues with their superhubs

http://community.virginmedia.com/t5/Up- ... m-p/960345

You might be lucky. To be fair their regular broadband was OK when it worked, just that when it went down customer service were a nightmare.

Be aware too that they traffic shape, will send out letters if they feel you have broken copyright with exact filenames listed in letter, and were thinking of implementing Phorm.

I have Plusnet too, get around 5mb cause I'm on the far outskirts of Belfast, up a hill in the middle of nowhere.
Their customer service in Yorkshire are fantastic and helpful.

[trem1]

ive been with virgin for donkeys years and never had a problem, we had sky installed for about a month but got it removed as we found it worse than virgin with less channels, we pay for up to 10mb and get 9.78ish usually this was today at 16.20

[sirwiggum]

More channels on VM?? When I had it, they didn't have half the channels that Sky does. Sky Atlantic is also great for catching up on Sopranos in HD.


Virgin Media also had poor choice of HD content (indeed the replacement for the horrible Pace box, a Samsung box didn't even offer HDMI out!) which is worth it for a decent HD telly.

This page has a good comparison http://www.digitalchoices.co.uk/ask-our ... in-tv.html

But for broadband, I've heard poor reports about Sky Broadband (probably why it is cheap) and my experience of VM broadband was ok when it worked, but monitored, traffic shaped and poor customer service.

[trem1]

we have the v+ HD box with the xl package and because of my moaning to them we get tv, BB + phone for £30 a month.
There's 25 HD channels ATM with more added all the time. tbh we've been with them so long i know how everything works etc so Sky seemed alien to me. i also didn't like the Sky+ box at the time and the fact you could only watch 1 channel whilst recording another was a bugbear. On VM you can record 2 and watch another or even watch what's recorded plus the catch-up is worth its weight in gold if you've missed something

[sirwiggum]

An outage today

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/01/18 ... al_outage/

Would be interested to know if they have indeed improved since I used them last (when they were basically badge engineered ntl: .)

Is the customer service any better? (TBH, BTs is fairly useless)