Whats better Sky HD or Virgin?
- Thread starter coughs
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You have shelved your S1 Tivo? shame on you.I have been using mine since I bought it around 10 years ago, have since upgraded hard drive to 500gb, added network card & done mode 0 hack to improve picture quality.
Will be sad to be not using it anymore soon, but will have a shiny new series 4 next week
Associate
I've had both recently.
The sky HD box, speed and simplicity of it beats virgins clunky slow box hands down.
Virgin had better on demand stuff, slit more of it to choose from.
For me personally its sky for tv and virgin for the internet.
The sky HD box, speed and simplicity of it beats virgins clunky slow box hands down.
Virgin had better on demand stuff, slit more of it to choose from.
For me personally its sky for tv and virgin for the internet.
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Sky - more services and the use AVC for their HD, Virgin are still using MPEG2 and the scene transitions are painful, that is why I switched.
Their broadband isn't throttled either.
Their broadband isn't throttled either.
I'm entitled to my opinion. However when you compare the SkyHD interface with the V+ interface I know which I prefer to use. It's still 4:3 unless you get your TV to stretch everything and the high contrast red and black look is not good. The new Tivo interface looks like a breath of fresh air
.Such a shame they're still using an inferior codec
.
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Caporegime
No it's not though...are you talking about the latest Samsung box? Mine was 16:9 as soon as I switched it on
.The red and black dislike is a matter of opinion, yes, and of course you're entitled to it, but whether or not the V+ box deals correctly with widescreen is nothing to do with opinion, it is fact. And the fact is that it does.
Associate
Im a Virgin customer for all 3 services...
For normal TV, sky wins hands down, for on demand stuff i much prefer virgin.
Broadband....Virgin all the way
Telephone....Virgin win again.
As a complete package for what i pay Sky simply cannot compete.
For normal TV, sky wins hands down, for on demand stuff i much prefer virgin.
Broadband....Virgin all the way
Telephone....Virgin win again.
As a complete package for what i pay Sky simply cannot compete.
No it's not though...are you talking about the latest Samsung box? Mine was 16:9 as soon as I switched it on
The red and black dislike is a matter of opinion, yes, and of course you're entitled to it, but whether or not the V+ box deals correctly with widescreen is nothing to do with opinion, it is fact. And the fact is that it does.
I still have the old SA box
. When you have the box set to 1080 (not 1080 wide) the box displays all content in it's original aspect ratio. Widescreen footage fills a 16:9 screen and 4:3 video is correctly displayed with pillars either side on a widescreen display. Using the 1080 setting the menus are displayed in there native 4:3. The menus are only widescreen when they're stretched using the 1080 WIDE setting. This also stretches all 4:3 video which looks rubbish.
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Caporegime
So you're talking about the old version of the VM box...pretty pointless and misleading really, since nobody gets it anymore.
Last time I checked AVForums some people are still given the SA boxes, albeit the minority. So does the Samsung have a widescreen optimised UI or does it mimmic the behaviour of the SA box and simply stretch. As far as I'm aware they both have the same 4:3 Red/black high contrast UI.
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Man of Honour
Not if you triple-play it doesn't:
Sky: 6 packs + Sports + Movies + HD + Broadband Unlimited + Talk Unlimited = £86
VM: XL Broadband/TV/Phone + V+ HD + Sky Sports/Movies/HD = £97.05
Even without the sports/movies - Sky: £58.50, VM: £60.55.
I have the new TiVo, trust me if you can get cable, do ittttt
They've offered, I'm tempted, but there's a few 'problems' (cost being one).
Because it is!
Yeah, unfortunately. I got Sky+ and the TiVo went then, because (a) it can't reliably control the Sky+ box, and (b) recording the transport stream is always going to give better quality (even than mode 0, which I tried
).I turned it on recently, and it still works, but the disks are fairly well knackered. I don't have the confidence to take the lid off mine (I've seen what exposed capacitors can do and don't trust myself). I'll work on PCs, sure, but not consumer electronics. Shame really. I did replace it with a media PC with 7TB online storage, so I'm not exactly missing out, but that doesn't have premium channel access which is why I still have Sky.
Besides the cost (which I could live with given that I'd want the Sky+ 1TB box which is £100 more than TiVo), my other big problem is static IP. I use my IP address for access security so that's going to be a pain in the butt. I also want to deploy a web server from home which makes it even more of a pain in the butt.
May end up going with TV only (which VM does work out slightly cheaper for). The difference between triple-play and three providers is only about £3/mo, which I could cope with (the web server idea would save me about £100/mo).
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Got to agree with this guy but TBH I go with Virgin purely for the Broadband. TV wise I have Freeview, Freesat & Virgin but there is still nothing to watch, LOL
Man of Honour
My new Samsung exhibits the same as he is suggesting though. The epg is pretty naff looking when set to 1080 wide.