Change from virgin to sky?

kinger8938

kinger8938

kinger8938

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23 Mar 2011
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Basically fed up with the laggy slow tivo box, but we are happy with the internet provided by virgin! Sky fibre isnt offered here right now

So i imagine its possible to keep the internet from virgin and just switch the tv?

If so the basic sky tv is £20 a month plus £10 set up fee, would that include a sat dish etc? Doesnt mention it on the offers

Also as an incentive they offer a rubbish lg tv, notebook, or vouchers for signing up! I imagine the prepaid mastercard or amazon vouchers would be the best bet
 
I rang them once as i thought my box was faulty as it was that bad. The bloke asked how long is long when i say it takes ages to load even the tv guide! I said sometimes 20-30seconds and he said thats deemed as normal. May not sound like much but it is, and sky is so snappy from what i have used

Looking at virgin, standalone fibre broadband is a bit pricey though :S
 
I swapped back to the standard box. I can deal with the speed it's the constant thud of the HDD that does my head in. Especially when it randomly turned itself on in the mornings for an update :D.

There are ways you can install a SSD but I haven't actually tried it yet as I'm not sure on the legality.
 
Sky boxes aren't much better. We have the Slimline Sky+HD box which a couple years ago was the brand new one. Think we paid an extra £100 for it for more storage and WiFi.

Often doesn't record shows, is slow if you push buttons too quickly and says memory is full even when there is 92% available. Doesn't let you pause or rewind sometimes due to memory issue.

Complain to sky and they'll say buy a new box.

Also previously went through about 3 boxes in two years due to issues. The one in our bedroom has loads of problems but we don't use it much.
 
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The virgin TiVo box is a joke, sometimes I can wait 20 seconds for it to load a recorded show. Turning it off at the wall clears it for a while usually, I'd be surprised if there's not a 4K box in the wings?
 
Sky box performance, EPG and just general usability leaves the Virgin one for dust. When I'm round my mate's house his Virgin box infuriates me everytime I use it, not to mention the constant clicking from the hard drive (seriously, I haven't heard a drive that noisy since the Maxtor's back in 2007ish!). We've only ever had two sky boxes over probably 15 years or so, the second was an upgrade to HD when it came out. Never once has it caused any issues :)

It's just a shame Virgin's fibre is so good!
 
kinger8938 said:
I rang them once as i thought my box was faulty as it was that bad. The bloke asked how long is long when i say it takes ages to load even the tv guide! I said sometimes 20-30seconds and he said thats deemed as normal. May not sound like much but it is, and sky is so snappy from what i have used

Looking at virgin, standalone fibre broadband is a bit pricey though :S
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Arcane said:
The virgin TiVo box is a joke, sometimes I can wait 20 seconds for it to load a recorded show. Turning it off at the wall clears it for a while usually, I'd be surprised if there's not a 4K box in the wings?
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They're developing one. It will likely be just as awful.
 
As above, consider what channels you actually watch and see if they are on Freeview or Freesat before signing up to Sky. There is a lot of content you can get via the Smart TV apps as well, obvious ones being Amazon Video and Netflix - worth a look too.
 
I changed from Virgin to Sky a couple of years back and kept my broadband as 200Mb (as it is now) is just so nice :)

The only good thing I can say about the Tivo box is that it jumps back a few seconds after forward winding at x30, whereas with Sky you end up going past the start and having to rewind a bit :)
 
We just switched from Virgin to Sky Q and the difference is night and day. Sky Q is just so much better than the Virgin Tivo box. I doubt I could deal with going back to it. Plus it is so much easier to find content on it. Sky Q has a global search feature and all you need to do is type in the name of the programme and it will tell you when it is on that week, what is available on demand and show you other programmes that are similar to it. Overall I'm very pleased and it looks great on our new 4k TV :).
 
The TiVo box is an absolute joke isn't it. Just opening the iPlayer app needs to go through about 4 different loading processes of about 20 seconds each. It's complete and utter garbage.

I'm assuming these idiots send their prototypes to Sky for testing :D
Thinking logically, I think it's safe to say the new 4K box will be slower not faster.
 
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Duke said:
As above, consider what channels you actually watch and see if they are on Freeview or Freesat before signing up to Sky. There is a lot of content you can get via the Smart TV apps as well, obvious ones being Amazon Video and Netflix - worth a look too.
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Freesat imo isn't worth the cost of having to buy the dish,The box (especially if its recoverable box thats more expensive) plus any other fees you may encounter like we did..having to have a guy come out with a special box to adjust it properly as our tester just wasn't cutting it so that was an additional £50..overall it cost around £250-300 to get the freesat up and running and to be honest its not great,Most are crappy channels,a lot of radio channels and there are 21 (YES 21) of the same channels (BBC1) throughout the list.

Just not worth the price to be honest going freesat.
 
I love Sky compared to VM for TV. But for internet no competition, I get full speed from my 200 connection, no congestion here, yet!!
 
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