[KevinPedrick]

Eurosport HD has just quietly appeared on Sky HD and its very welcome! So is it coming to Virgin..? Of course not

http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/cable/a1...-launches.html

They've now not bothered with Channel 4 HD, Eurosport HD and apparently pushed away Setanta HD. For the Sky channels they had an excuse but not in these examples!

When are Virgin gonna give this up! They keep rattling on about On Demand but there has to be both - traditional channels and On Demand!

Just imagine if things began to premier via On Demand! Over 10 million people watched the Doc Who finale. If that was made available for the first time On Demand at 7pm on a Saturday night and 10 million tried to watch it straight away just imagine what that would do to Virgin's servers

[dan1979]

Originally Posted by KevinPedrick

When are Virgin gonna give this up!

Don't you mean when are the Virgin customers gonna give this up?

It's been clear for some time now there won't be any HD channels coming so it's a case of live with it or leave.

[suffolktoon]

Originally Posted by dan1979

Don't you mean when are the Virgin customers gonna give this up?

It's been clear for some time now there won't be any HD channels coming so it's a case of live with it or leave.

That's a shame as some people can only get digital tv through cable due to planning restrictions and obstructions.

[Tkrockeruk]

And when you though Virgin's service couldn't be any more ridiculous.





They find a new low.

[KevinPedrick]

Originally Posted by dan1979

It's been clear for some time now there won't be any HD channels coming so it's a case of live with it or leave.

Well I left. I am enjoying Sky HD but fondly remember the days of Telewest when we were the only ones to get the entire World Cup in HD and really felt like cable had a committment to HD. That, and we had the best internet access available!

I really believe in cable as a service, its so disappointing it keeps reaching for ever lower lows

[Sonic67]

I think cable think people want on-demand stuff (whether SD or HD) more than people want HD channels. On demand stuff is something Sky can't really do and what cable is pushing in their adverts. On demand is also something available for any TV as well.

[splatz]

HD is also about the sound not just picture. You only get 5.1 sound on the HD channels. If Virgin could have 5.1 sound on SD channels then I would just about accept the situation.

[KevinPedrick]

Originally Posted by Sonic67

I think cable think people want on-demand stuff (whether SD or HD) more than people want HD channels. On demand stuff is something Sky can't really do and what cable is pushing in their adverts. On demand is also something available for any TV as well.

But as I said in my original thread, both (traditional channels and On Demand) will exist together for a long time to come yet. I don't believe anyone has the infrastructure to premier the latest episode of Lost via On Demand. Even now, On Demand can get pretty popular and you can occasionally find it unavailable (well was the case last time I used the service).

Traditional channels are the most effective way of distributing to a huge audience and will be for some time to come yet!

Sky is getting there with On Demand. Anytime is extremely limited but isn't bad, Sky-Player has potential. If Sky could just sort out a set-top box that can stream / download from the internet then its there!

[Richard H]

before ditching my trusty CRT for an HD machine I have been looking at the relative cost of sky and Virgin subscriptions to provide the most/best HD broadcast content to make the transition worthwhile. I have a reasonable AV sound system which I dont plan to upgrade

They seem to be broadly on a par as to monthly cost but Virgin did seem to have the potential peripheral advantage of being able to include fibre optic broadband in the package (better than the crappy service down the phone line from Orange?- and we are, it seems, all cabled up)

However coming on here, Virgin appear to the object of derision for its HD content - or is it just a matter of paying for the sky content through virgin?

Would there be any difference in PQ via the satellite cf through a cable?

are either of these services worth buying then? would I be better just getting Freesat? or maybe not bother spending the cash at all if no one can provide a reasonable diet of HD?

[limblee]

For the cost, neither are worth it.

Virgin only have 1 HD channel, and have said they don't plan anymore yet. There are a few programmes and movies on their Video-On-Demand service.
IMO their Broadband is second to none. At the mo up to 20Mbps, expected 50Mbps by 2009. IMO the V+ box is better than Sky+.

Sky have numerous HD channels and seem to get more and each month. Some I won't watch even if you paid me, but each to their own.

Freesat is still a baby, but is meant to grow up by Christmas. The PVR boxes are meant to be out by Christmas too.

Personally I'd wait until Christmas and treat yourself with a Freesat PVR.
But...
If Broadband is very important to you then get Virgin.
But...
If HD Channels is very important to you then get Sky HD (beware of the problems with Sky HD boxes, search these forums for more info)

I doubt this helps you at all, so go buy them all

[dan1979]

Originally Posted by limblee

IMO their Broadband is second to none.

You must be confusing them with Telewest, Virgin are the ones who had their knuckles rapped for lying about speed since they spend so much time throttling. It's all well and good having a 20MB connection until you realise you only get it for 20 minutes a night.


There is no HD option other than sky (I've had both Virgin and Freesat) so it's just a question of whether you can afford it. I wouldn't hold your breath for HD anywhere else in the near future beyond BBC HD.

[dan1979]

Originally Posted by Sonic67

I think cable think people want on-demand stuff (whether SD or HD) more than people want HD channels.

I think they're just saying that because they know they can't deliver the channels. They're broke.

[Ian Dudley]

Originally Posted by Sonic67

I think cable think people want on-demand stuff (whether SD or HD) more than people want HD channels. On demand stuff is something Sky can't really do and what cable is pushing in their adverts. On demand is also something available for any TV as well.

They may be right, they certainly are in my case.

We've been a cable customer for some years, and are moving house next week. This gave me the opportunity to switch to Sky, as I recently got a full HD TV, plus I've been pretty hacked off with the Virgin service for the last year or so (basically as long as its been Virgin rather than NTL).

But when I ran through the pros and cons of Sky vs Virgin with my wife, she was adamant that she wanted to keep the on demand. We use catch up TV all the time (even though we already have a PVR), and regularly use on demand for TV shows and movies. Even I had to admit that we'll probably get more benefit from that than I would from a few more HD channels, most of which I probbaly wouldn't watch anyway.

So V+ it is, I just hope the upscalling is as good as some people suggest. I have to admit I've been blown away with what my upscalling DVD player can do, so I'm hoping the V+ will end up being a good compromise between on demand and HD.

If not, I can just use this as justification to get a PS3

[Richard H]

thanks for the comments

I had thought that the Sky content that you could get through Virgin included the HD channels (including the wickedly expensive Sport and Movies)so it was a good job your posts caused me to look again to find the HD channels are excluded.

I'm not quite sure why Virgin even mention HD in their promo material as it seems the only stuff you can get through them is from the good old Beeb. What is the point? I can only imagine that the folk who pay for their TV service are those who cant get a decent freeview reception?

There is mention of On Demand programmes - but the promo material doesn't give you any clue as to what those programmes might be - all very vague. I suspect that anything other than dross will have to be paid at a fee they are too frightened to tell you about upfront? Who is going to pay for a service where you have no idea what you are signing up for!!

Virgin seem to make much of the concept of "choice" - but choice is something I can do without if it means paying over and above the Licence fee for dozens of channels I dont want and will never watch and gumming up the cable/airwaves with crap instead of a much smaller number of quality offerings.

This whole broadcast HD mullarkey seems to be a complete farce and the pathetically limited programming seems to be shared between the providers in a seemingly illogical way:

ITV HD is only available on Freesat..... Why?

Channel 4 HD only seems to be available on Sky.....Why? (but to get "ordinary" Channel 4 the Sky website seems to suggest you need some sort of extra viewing card..... whats that all about then?? - you pay extra over and above your 50 odd quid a month subscription to receive mainstream channels everyone else gets for nothing???.....hmmmm)

The TV manufacturers must be tearing their hair out.... there they are producing nice new shiny tellies to sell to the public keen to take advantage of the HD benefits we are all told about- but when we come down to it the broadcasters have managed to arrange it so that anyone wanting a reasonable (hardly extensive) diet of HD would have to subscribe to/buy the flippin lot of them. Result - consumers who look beyond the advertising blurb realise its all a complete waste of cash and decide, like me, to say "sod the lot of you" and keep my cash unspent thereby making my own little contribution to the economic downturn

[Ian Dudley]

Originally Posted by Richard H

thanks for the comments

I had thought that the Sky content that you could get through Virgin included the HD channels (including the wickedly expensive Sport and Movies)so it was a good job your posts caused me to look again to find the HD channels are excluded.

I'm not quite sure why Virgin even mention HD in their promo material as it seems the only stuff you can get through them is from the good old Beeb. What is the point? I can only imagine that the folk who pay for their TV service are those who cant get a decent freeview reception?

There is mention of On Demand programmes - but the promo material doesn't give you any clue as to what those programmes might be - all very vague. I suspect that anything other than dross will have to be paid at a fee they are too frightened to tell you about upfront? Who is going to pay for a service where you have no idea what you are signing up for!!

The Virgin HD is a bit of a joke, but in addition to BBC HD, there is also on demand HD movies and some HD programs. The V+ box will also upscale all SD channels for your HD set, which could be quite good. It's not brilliant, but if you are going for Virgin anyway, you might as well get it.

The On Demand is actually pretty good. There are a load of movies on there, plus quite a few decent TV shows. Some of it is dross, but some of it is prety good too. Kinda depends on what you want. If there are any particular shows you're interested in I can check out if they are on the service at the moment. There are far too many shows on there to list them all though.

We chose Virgin over Sky because the On Demand (which we have at the moment) was of more value to us that a wider HD service (we have no HD right now)

[sotonjoe]

Originally Posted by dan1979

You must be confusing them with Telewest, Virgin are the ones who had their knuckles rapped for lying about speed since they spend so much time throttling. It's all well and good having a 20MB connection until you realise you only get it for 20 minutes a night.


There is no HD option other than sky (I've had both Virgin and Freesat) so it's just a question of whether you can afford it. I wouldn't hold your breath for HD anywhere else in the near future beyond BBC HD.

That's a very biased post to be honest. You accuse VM of false advertising, and their choice of wording is certainly dubious, but your comments about only getting a 20mb download speed for 20minutes per night are just as misleading IMO.

The traffic management policy is freely available to read at http://allyours.virginmedia.com/html...t/traffic.html and it's clear that the throttling policies only take place between 1000- 1500 and 1600 - 2100. Therefore, you are welcome to an uninterrupted download speed of 20mb for a total of 14 hours per day. Additionally, your speed is only throttled if you exceed the maximum download limits of 6gb during the daytime throttling window or 3gb during the evening window. Even if you are throttled, it's only down to a 5mb download speed which can hardly be called slow.

I don't think the limits imposed upon XL customers will be particularly invasive for the majority of users. You'd have to download a lot of music to fall foul of them. Downloading Xbox 360 demos from Live may be a pain during the evening and you're always going to have to be wary of downloading video, but if this prevents people from downloading huge amounts of material all day every day and thus retains a fast 20mb connection for the most of us, then I don't see a great deal to complain about. Ultimately, we can all schedule large downloads to take place overnight when we can llok forward to uninterrupted 20mb connections.

So yeh, their wording is poor and they should be forced to change it so that consumers who aren't savvy enough to read all the terms and conditions before signing up have a bit more of a chance to work out what the deal really is, but the reality of their service isn't as bad as you try to make out.

[nialli]

I'm in the same boat; HD is great, but it's not the only factor for me and my family. We use On Demand/iPlayer pretty much every day these days, and treat ourselves to a FilmFlex movie most weekends. I much prefer HD, but the upscaling on the V+ is very good, and on a 32" TV is good enough for the majority of our viewing.
I think both the current generation of V+ and Sky HD boxes struggle to some extent with HD; discs too small and software bugs. I would rather have HD versions of channels I watch (primarily BBC and C4 channels) rather than a plethora of HD showcase channels with crap content. If your only consideration is HD, then go Sky. If you enjoy BBC, C4 and Virgin TV content, the Virgin On Demand service is fantastic.

[essbeeuk]

Well said sotonjoe. I agree with you that I would rather have a service that was 20Mb most of the time than pay Sky for a 16Mb service I would never get. The most I could ever get where I live would be 2.5Mb down a phone line, so the service I have now is much better than Sky could offer.
As far as the provision of HD... how many people really watch the Sky HD channels? The only ones worth it are the sports and movies... but even upscaling my standard V box through my AV amp gives results almost as good on those channels.
At the end of the day its the same old story... if you dont like the service, stop whinging and leave.

[Ian Dudley]

Originally Posted by essbeeuk

As far as the provision of HD... how many people really watch the Sky HD channels? The only ones worth it are the sports and movies... but even upscaling my standard V box through my AV amp gives results almost as good on those channels.
At the end of the day its the same old story... if you dont like the service, stop whinging and leave.

Of all the Sky HD channels, Sky one is the only one I've ever really watched in SD. Even that was only really for BSG and Lost. All the rest of the stations I rarely if ever watch on SD, so why would I start watching them just because they are in HD?

In fact the one station I watch more than any other is probably the BBC, which I can get in HD from Virgin.

As for the premium channels, the whole reason we don't get Sky Movies on Virgin SD at the moment is that we watched so few movies on it that it was cheaper to just rent them from Blockbuster. Or pick them up on On Demand!

Don't get me wrong, the lack of HD on Virgin is poor and I'd sign up for more stations if they were available, but the Sky offering is not exactly earth shattering either.

[flyingscotno1]

To be honest I think on-demand is actually better than HD content at the moment. Only real HD content we are seeing is sports based, although other things are coming more common.

There will surely be a time however when everything is HD anyway so BBC 1 will simply replace HD channel!

I have heard that it is difficult to feed other TV's round the house too if you have a V+ plugged in with HDMI- cuts other outputs. True no?

[nialli]

I put together a blog on what's available HD-wise on Virgin Media (see link in my signature). Unless you've got a screen bigger than 37", you may find the V+ box's superior upscaling of SD channels will be adequate whilst we wait for more HD content to appear on cable. You cannot currently get any HD channels on VM except the BBC HD.

With regards to 20mb broadband: I get around 18mb, which is more than adequate as I don't download any big files. Anyone who downloads lots during peak times may be throttled. Virgin's broadband is technical superior cos it has fibre to the cabinets rather than copper, so there's no issues regarding distance from the local exchange (big prob with ADSL speeds). You can still have local contention issues though.

[dan1979]

Originally Posted by sotonjoe

You accuse VM of false advertising,

I think the Advertising standards agency that did that in fairness.

It's all very well defending the throttling but the fact is you're paying the same for 14 hours a day at full speed (when most of us are asleep) as you used to pay for 24 hours a day. I'd call that a bum deal for existing customers.

[sotonjoe]

Originally Posted by dan1979

I think the Advertising standards agency that did that in fairness.

It's all very well defending the throttling but the fact is you're paying the same for 14 hours a day at full speed (when most of us are asleep) as you used to pay for 24 hours a day. I'd call that a bum deal for existing customers.

You're assuming we're all being throttled which isn't true.

The majority of users aren't exceeding the limits and are therefore enjoying a 20mb connection all day long ... me included.

If you were having to download so much content during peak hours (6gb per daytime session and 3gb per evening session) that you were being limited, then you clearly needed to move to another isp, for the majority of us this isn't the case. I'd be interested to know the details of your situation though as you must be a truly unique case. Or perhaps you weren't affected and you're purely arguing from an ideological position.

[KevinPedrick]

Check the Virgin Media section in the ISP forum for plenty of testimonials of Virgin's broadband.

http://www.avforums.com/forums/virgin-media-broadband/

Some seem very satisfied but others are extremely unhappy. My own experience of Virgin was without throttling I would experience awful speeds in the evening, I reckon I was averaging less than 2Mbps during the 'peak' times, which would fluctuate in such a manner that Xbox Live was impossible. This may have been down to an over-subscribed connection, I dunno, don't really care. I wasn't getting the service I was paying for, I'd complained but Virgin had no intention of resolving the issue.

I've since moved to Be (and then to O2 but effectively same company). I have a rock solid, reliable and truly unlimited it seems 8Mbps connection. 8Mbps is about the best I can get from ADSL2 but I'm glad to see Be and O2 control speeds from their end not yours, so if you get 8Mbps from their 24Mbps service you'll get 8Mbps from their 8Mbps service.

[SaberMan]

Originally Posted by nialli

I'm in the same boat; HD is great, but it's not the only factor for me and my family. We use On Demand/iPlayer pretty much every day these days, and treat ourselves to a FilmFlex movie most weekends. I much prefer HD, but the upscaling on the V+ is very good, and on a 32" TV is good enough for the majority of our viewing.
I think both the current generation of V+ and Sky HD boxes struggle to some extent with HD; discs too small and software bugs. I would rather have HD versions of channels I watch (primarily BBC and C4 channels) rather than a plethora of HD showcase channels with crap content. If your only consideration is HD, then go Sky. If you enjoy BBC, C4 and Virgin TV content, the Virgin On Demand service is fantastic.

To be honest I’m getting pretty much hacked off with Virgin. I was sucked in by a TV/Phone/Broadband/Mobile only to find out the mobile wasn’t included. I was hoping more HD content would come but it never has. Other than Torchwood I haven’t wanted to watch anything in HD on BBC HD. I have a PC connected to my TV and can get 4OD and BBC iPlayer OD TV through that. The internet based 4OD has much more content than Virgin anyway and is more likely to work. The only reason I have Pay TV is for football and I’m sure I can get that cheaper through Sky. Sky keep phoning and mailing me with really good offers to go back.

Can anyone give me a good reason to stay with Virgin TV?

[KevinPedrick]

I do miss Virgin's On Demand a little. With my terabyte Sky HD harddrive I find myself picking from the weeks movies and recording to may harddrive, I never watch as its broadcast. I'm finding I'm watching more HD movies using this method than I watched with Virgin so not really missing Virgin's HD movies.

Catch-up TV is rather pointless when you've a PVR. There are usually repeats available to record if you forgot to set it (as I did with Dragon's Den) and if desperate there is always web based stuff such as iplayer.

I'm actually most missing the OD music videos.

On Demand for Sky will happen. Most of us expect it to be a lot like DirecTV's offering stateside:

http://www.directv.com/DTVAPP/global...97413147493786

The soon to be released Sky EPG certainly looks very similar to DirecTV's.

Not quite as elegant as cable's offering but not a bad compromise. Worse case download is probably a 20GB HD movie which would take approx 5.5 hours via a 8Mbps connection.

[whitwori]

I left Virgin just over a year ago and went with Sky upgrading to HD after a couple of weeks.

After the intial buzz of watching anything that was on a HD channel my viewing habbits returned to normal and i tended to watch my normal programmes.

Sky HD for Sport and movies is amazing. Most other channels are very hit and miss, with lots of content being quite frankly poor man's HD, which I could honestly compare to some V+ upscaling, as in the channels which seem to upscale better.

After a couple of years with both unless you have sports & movies I really have the opinion that Sky HD is not worth the extra tenner with the numerous repeats and quite often questionable content.

Although this is only my opinion for what its worth

[evil Homer]

Okay, I've been thinking this over for a few days.

The way I see it... On the front of the old Telewest TVDrive or now Virgin V+ Box, it says HD on it.

Virgin Media senior directors have already said in public that they are more focused on On Demand than Hi Def. Fair enough.

Why resell a box they buy from a manufacturer and state HD Ready on the front. And then supply an HDMI cable so you can plug it into your HD Ready TV?

HDMI? High Definition Multimedia Interface. Says it all doesn't it?

Why don't they just supply a crappy SCART lead to save themselves some more cash!

When are Virgin going to realise that they have a perfect platform on which to build a service that rivals Sky... and they're throwing it away.

Yes On Demand is good, if I want to watch a series that was on TV five years ago in a 4:3 window. Or if I really wanted it, I could have bought it on DVD.

Rant over...

[zzzzfletchzzzz]

unless they are going to have on demand hi-def content

[Forget_The_Rest]

They do have some HD OD content.