Virgin Media Discussion Thread

I think its fair to say that those with issues will always complain on forums. That said if you have issues you can always cancel within a period of time (14 days?).
 
Super-Spy said:
I am on 200 Mbs. It is fine for general internet usage by the family including watching Youtube and generally HD streaming of movies.

It does struggle sometimes with higher quality, higher bitrate streams (20+ Mbps) even on ethernet connected devices like my Shield.

I am planning on purchasing a 4K OLED and wll then want to stream 4K UHD movies. I don't think 200 Mbs will handle 4K streaming.
I would also like to use GE Force Now for game streaming (similar to Google Stadia) but haven't done so yet.

Will their 500 Mbps stream 4K movies and high bitrate content with ease ?

Separately, is Gigabit worth an extra £30/month over 500Mbps for the above usage ?
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I'm on the 200 meg package and everything I stream (where possible) is 4k with no stutters or buffering at all.

Definitely something wrong, if you're streaming from a remote Plex server that will be your issue, not your 200M broadband.
 
TonyTurbo78 said:
Thank you. Great info. The speeds look great on paper but from both of those replies I get the impression the customer experience isnt that great.... a bit hit snd miss..
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You’re reading way too much into it without context. VM offer a money back guarantee if you aren’t happy, you quite literally have nothing to loose other than time and a small hole in the wall if you do as I suggested and overlap it by a week or two. Yesterday was a good example, free upgrade from M500 to M600 (ignoring marketing numbers 120Mbit extra) announced, that free boost is roughly 3x your stated sync on FTTC, would not being able to hit the full whack be a massive issue for you?

Cable in general is reasonably reliable, mass migration (students for example) can cause issues, as can speed upgrades, but TBH its much like any provider - OR have capacity/full cab issues (roughly 2%), they also can take months (sometimes years) to resolve them. Issues can and do happen in cable, for example when they do the upgrade to gig1 (the 1Gbit DOCSIS 3.1 downstream upgrade), the area will loose service for a few hours in the early hours of the morning, that single event is probably more downtime than I have had on g.fast in a few years (and people say that’s unreliable), will most people notice? Probably not, they’ll be asleep, but it’s technically going to have that happen a few times a year potentially.

Kyle009 said:
I'm on the 200 meg package and everything I stream (where possible) is 4k with no stutters or buffering at all.

Definitely something wrong, if you're streaming from a remote Plex server that will be your issue, not your 200M broadband.
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The maximum commercial 4K is available in (a BDREMUX) will top out over 100Mbit, not much beyond that it’s out of spec, literally no legitimate provider offers BDREMUX - make of that what you will ;)
 
Kemik said:
Grrr, contract up and was paying £31 a month for M100 broadband plus mix TV (that I don't really use tbh). Retentions say I can have £33 a month for the same package or £29 for broadband only. Quoted plus net prices and they won't budge... Unfortunately I have to use VM because FTTC is only guaranteed to 29Mb for my address. Anyone have any tricks?
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Well, I cancelled at the end of October. Got a call from retentions the next day but the call was all background noise. No news since. At what point do I start to get worried that I won't have internet soon? haha
 
Still undecided on whether I should get Virgin Media in my new house. Looks like I can get Gig1 but I'm worried about performance further down the line. Reading this thread and various other forums doesn't fill me with confidence, but my other option is 80Mbps fttc.
 
benjo said:
Still undecided on whether I should get Virgin Media in my new house. Looks like I can get Gig1 but I'm worried about performance further down the line. Reading this thread and various other forums doesn't fill me with confidence, but my other option is 80Mbps fttc.
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I've been with Virgin and its earlier iterations for a quarter of a century, never had any major problems with them.

Can count on the fingers of one hand how many times it's been down for more than an hour in that time.
 
Said it before In this thread but been with ntl/virgin for 20 years near enough and barely had any issues of note. If your in a good area it's great. Check the community forums for your area see if there are any/many complaints.
 
chroniclard said:
Said it before In this thread but been with ntl/virgin for 20 years near enough and barely had any issues of note. If your in a good area it's great. Check the community forums for your area see if there are any/many complaints.
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Yeah I've had a read through their forums and twitter, there's dozens of complaints for my area (HA4). I guess there's no way to tell whether that's a vocal minority..
 
benjo said:
Still undecided on whether I should get Virgin Media in my new house. Looks like I can get Gig1 but I'm worried about performance further down the line. Reading this thread and various other forums doesn't fill me with confidence, but my other option is 80Mbps fttc.
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Don't worry about VM's 1Gig service. It's on the new DOCSIS 3.1 spec (downstream at least), and all areas with it available have been fitted with all new equipment and capacity. In other words, if you can get 1G you won't need to worry about congestion and poor speeds.

I have had 1G since it came out and get a rock solid 940Mbps down (about 900Mbps down with VPN), literally 24/7/365. Peak time? Full speed. School holidays? Full speed. Students back at our (three!) univerities in town? Full speed... No problems.

You can nosey at our bandwidth stats here. (Edited to add: Ignore the two red stripes this evening. Our 18 month old kindly pressed the power button on the front of my router... Twice. Time for a wall mounted network cabinet I think!).
 
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Rainmaker said:
Don't worry about VM's 1Gig service. It's on the new DOCSIS 3.1 spec (downstream at least), and all areas with it available have been fitted with all new equipment and capacity. In other words, if you can get 1G you won't need to worry about congestion and poor speeds.

I have had 1G since it came out and get a rock solid 940Mbps down (about 900Mbps down with VPN), literally 24/7/365. Peak time? Full speed. School holidays? Full speed. Students back at our (three!) univerities in town? Full speed... No problems.

You can nosey at our bandwidth stats here. (Edited to add: Ignore the two red stripes this evening. Our 18 month old kindly pressed the power button on the front of my router... Twice. Time for a wall mounted network cabinet I think!).
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Thanks for the reassurance :) I've gone ahead and placed an order. I've still got a pending order for fttc but I guess I've got 14 days with both suppliers now to make up my mind!
 
Roughly how long from VM installing cables and cabs can you order? There’s a cab going up in my area next week and they’ve been busy in all the Openreach ducts.

Also I take it if I order it and don’t like it I can cancel the contract within 14 days?
 
Does anyone know how long line activation can take? I've just setup my new hub and it works briefly but then disconnects. The status says 'registration failure'.
 
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