Sky or Virgin Media?

lookitsjonno

lookitsjonno

lookitsjonno

Soldato
Joined
10 Sep 2003
Posts
5,019
Location
Midlands
We currently have the whole sky package (not HD or Sky+) and paying just over £50 a month. Virgin media rekons they can do the whole lot including HD and V+ for about £48.

I called up sky and they rekon they can give me a HD box and installation for £120 and then it'll be £10 extra a month (£60).

I'm a bit confused as the girl at sky said that Virgin only have 3 HD channels?! I want to watch the new football season in HD goodness :cool:

Any advice would be appreciated.

Jonno.
 
VM, you can usually watch your TV when it rains, you cant with Sky. VM had poor billing systems, which seemed to have improved a bit. VM Broadband is subject to traffic shaping. VM's EPG is clunky and slow, only same day listings availible at any reasonable speed. VM have less channells. VM has awful customer service.

I would get Sky myself, given the choice.
 
Go to Sky.

I have had Virgin for over a year and will be losing it soon due to a move to a non cable area. The TV interface is painfully slow, internet and phone are fine. But yeah, the TV in comparison is USELESS!!!
 
Try again with Sky. I just had HD installed for £100 total.

You need to get through to the retentions dept. If you don't get it 1st time keep trying. Took me a couple of attempts.
 
Sky would be my choice, as said above you can get HD for £75 for the box and £30 for the installation, i've got the full package too and phoned sky up and go through to their Downgrade department, basically i told them porkies that i dont want the movies package anymore as i now have a PS3 and am more likely to watch Blu-Ray movies, they offered the above deal to me right away.
 
Right ill give my 2pence worth because I have had sky installed after moving away from virgin for the last 8 months.

Sky you obviously get sky1 but in all honesty I have barely watched it, compare that to setanta sports you get on Virgin VM wins it there for me.

The Sky tv guide is HORRIBLE! No PiP guide so your forced to listen to crappy music whilst you look at what else is on.

The mini guide, if I am watching BBC1 and I want to check info on BBC2 I cant just scroll up one channel and press i this irrates the hell out of me.

Sky do have a better choice of HD stuff but channel wise I dont know if there is that much difference, but I can safely say both are full of crap anyway.

Virgin has the ondemand stuff which annihlates anything sky has I mean this really is just awesome. I can watch a large majority of stuff upto a week later, BBC channels have the iplayer on the red button BRILLIANT feature.
Also a lot of the channels have a selection of shows/series that you can watch within a time frame, few 100 days I think? Like sopranos S1 on HBO and so forth, this is cool as I managed to catch a few shows I previously missed.

If Sky could implement that stuff onto its service then it would be awesome but for me virgin is just nicer to use, more features that I actually use and I think most people would use once they have it.
Also what difference does it make if it takes 1second to change a channel? What are you possibly going to miss in that time?!?!
 
R5Rich said:
The Sky tv guide is HORRIBLE! No PiP guide so your forced to listen to crappy music whilst you look at what else is on.

The mini guide, if I am watching BBC1 and I want to check info on BBC2 I cant just scroll up one channel and press i this irrates the hell out of me.
Click to expand...

I'll give you that. The program guide isn't great and the features you mention would definitely improve it. All of them are things I'd like to see added. I wouldn't go so far as to say it's horrible though.

I'd really like to see a transparent one, like the VMC one, which I think is really nice.

R5Rich said:
Sky do have a better choice of HD stuff but channel wise I dont know if there is that much difference, but I can safely say both are full of crap anyway.
Click to expand...

They're not full of crap, there's some really good content now. Which HD channels do you get with Virgin?

R5Rich said:
Virgin has the on demand stuff which annihlates anything sky has I mean this really is just awesome. I can watch a large majority of stuff upto a week later, BBC channels have the iplayer on the red button BRILLIANT feature.
Also a lot of the channels have a selection of shows/series that you can watch within a time frame, few 100 days I think? Like sopranos S1 on HBO and so forth, this is cool as I managed to catch a few shows I previously missed.
Click to expand...

That sounds good. How up to date are the movies?

We have sky as there is no cable on our street but it sounds like it would be worth having a good look at the Virgin content. I guess you get the cable broadband as well?
 
Im not saying the HD channels are rubbish, im saying overall both are full of rubbish never anything good on :P

The movies are pretty upto date I think, never actually got one out.
Virgin has both "on demand" which is like an iplayer for a whole bunch of channels, can watch selected programs upto 1 week later.
They also have a "tv choice on demand" now this is where a large selection channels/broadcasters have a kind of "best of" selection. Showing a varied bunch of programs usually quite old series so its good to find something to watch that you haven't seen before. For example I watched curb your enthusiasm from series 1-3 on the HBO Comedy section.

I wouldnt say its that slow or clunky either tbh you dont even notice after a while yes its not as fast as SKY but I would say the other features more than make up having to wait a nano second to flick channel. Anyway I could scroll up a channel and press i first to see if its worth watching :p

I dont know if I would have HD as that much of a selling point, yes its nice to watch but its still the same program just looks prettier. Although I think VM do a bunch of "on demand" HD stuff if thats what your after.

Both have pro's & con's its really down to how important HD content is to you, do you like being able to watch stuff on demand, and sky1 vs setanta sports really. I for one would rather watch setanta than the likes of sky1 :)
 
R5Rich said:
The Sky tv guide is HORRIBLE! No PiP guide so your forced to listen to crappy music whilst you look at what else is on.
Click to expand...

For Sky HD at least, there has been a new EPG in testing for some time, which has pip amongst various other things if memory serves. There is a current thread on it on AVforums, bit of a Marmite response to the EPG so far it seems.

This isn't from personal experience, but from what I have read, the HD service from VM is very poor in comparison to SkyHD. Very few channels. Discovery, Natgeo, History HD aren't what I would call rubbish channels really, it all depends on what your personal tastes are ;).

Personally I think it is a shame that VM aren't nearly as good currently on the HD front as I would love to change my folks to that from their 2 old Jerrold boxes!
 
You can turn the music off in skys Guide (first thing i did cause its annoying).
I've never hd my picture drop casue of normal "rain", if the weather is really bad it messes up sometimes but thats really rare for me.

Net wise I've seen more complaints from freinds who are gamers on VM than I have Sky.
Skys tech support is ok and I would go as far as good once you get past the first level.

If you have HD with sky they have a new EPG coming soon as well that looks pretty good.
 
Got Sky HD here on the full package and I can say about 99% of my viewing is on the HD channels I don’t watch any single definition channels anymore, there is a vast array of programs and channels available on Sky HD, plus a new HD EPG is coming out which looks very good.


I had VM for about a week while I had Sky HD as I currently have the VM cable broadband, within 7 day I cancelled the VM TV as it was shocking tbh, the box kept on freezing I was having to unplug it from he mains, the EPG is painfully slow and Sky’s channel list blows VM out of orbit.
 
Last edited:
stable? I had it for months and never had any issues with the TV or the box so I got no idea what your problems were :/
 
R5Rich said:
stable? I had it for months and never had any issues with the TV or the box so I got no idea what your problems were :/
Click to expand...

Well your just one person doesn’t mean every box is going to be perfect, look at various VM forums the TV service and STB have loads of issues about very slow EPG and freezing etc, no Sky isn’t perfect buts it’s a lot better than VMs effort.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom