Sky switch over offer from Virgin

[lovejoy]

I've been a Virgin Media customer for around 5 years, moving from Sky and I've never looked back.

In that 5 years I've had cause to call their helpline (which is free and answered quickly) once! This was when my TV signal disappeared. It was rectified within 30 minutes.

I had the V+ box up until last night, and although the box was a bit clunky to navigate, picture quality was very good, especially with HD and knocked the built in Freesat HD on my Panasonic LED for 6.

The broadband is also excellent, and (again up until last night) I was on their 10Mb connection. In every speed test I did, it never dropped below 9Mb. That's pretty impressive.

Last night I had the new Tivo (500GB) box delivered along with a SuperHub and a 30Mb broadband connection. They're doing silly deals on the upgrades at the moment and I'm only going to be paying an extra £9/month for the improvements.

The first thing that struck me was the picture quality on the Tivo box. The V+ was good, but this is in another league! Contrast and detail levels are amazing, so get a good HD broadcast and it's seriously involving. Even the crappy low bitrate channels like Dave don't look bad at all.

The Tivo box is way faster and more responsive than the V+ as well, but what I love most about it is that you can give it a list of things/people/subjects you like and it'll happily record anything containing the keywords you give it. For example, I did a search for Rhod Gilbert and not only did the box pick up his stand up show, but the fact that he was appearing on Just a Minute on Radio 4 extra. How ace is that?

The SuperHub so far seems pretty whizzy. I'm hoping it will happily replace my Airport Express, but I'll give it a week or so before I decide for sure. My house is long and narrow with the router at the very front and I always had trouble going to the back of the house, so this will be a good means of comparison.

Oh yes, and I can now set Tivo box recordings from wherever I am via the Virgin website - coming soon to mobile devices (once they've fixed a couple of bugs).

In all, I can't fault them and wouldn't dream of going anywhere else.

[chelsea]

Have had sky,virgin and bt.

Would take sky for tv virgin for broadband.

[Mr.Ian]

I run BT for phones, VM for internet and Sky for TV probably the most expensive option about but at least it works. I have tried other combinations in the distant past.

VM. It was NTL back then but bills were always wrong and correcting was a nightmare. recent experiences of trying to get VM to honour price matches for new customers suggested little has changed. The NTL digi box was very very slow to respond to button presses - might be wortb checking this out with the newer boxes.

Broadband is very fast and pretty reliable - not 100% reliable but almost - drop out problems are usually short lived day at most but frustrating when they occur. Speed for me is way way better than any other provider - but I am some way from the exchange

Sky. Premium rate call numbers for virtually everything is bad bad news but fortunately I seldom need to call them. Lots of hidden charges on phone calls relative to BT means the costs are not as cheap as I expected. I am some way from the exchange so 1mb is best I can get internet wise. Problems when they do occur have always been fixed fast.

BT. apart from some dubious third party sales calls all seems fine but I only have the phone.

[synsei]

I can't comment on VM tv as I use a plain vanilla Sony freeview box, but I'm on VM's 10mb BB and I can echo everyone else's experiences, it is very reliable, hardly ever drops below 9mb and off peak can sometimes reach as high as 12mb (dunno how that's possible but I ain't gonna call them to find out just in case they 'fix' it ).