I’m almost at the end of my contract with Virgin Media and I’ve got to say that:
1) The Tivo really is too damn slow. The UI interface is clunky, unintuitive, and the problems I had with On Demand last year just didn’t give me the confidence in Virgin to provide a reliable TV service. I’ve also noticed that a number of TV recordings have had satellite-style glitches.
2) 120Mbs broadband is nice, and it has been stable, but I should NOT have had to pay £50 for Virgin to give me a modem/router that should do the stuff that the old one didn’t. The Superhub 2 is much better product than the original Superhub, but still suffers from various problems that really shouldn’t be there (e.g. double logins, the Roku/NOW TV box issues, etc. etc. etc. – I’ve documented most of them here on this blog somewhere)
3) Virgin Broadband traffic management. They keep changing it, but they never bloomin’ announce when, what and how. Granted, it’s got better over the past six months, but it still needs improving.
3) Sky Atlantic and Virgin Media: never the twain shall meet.
So I’m now switching over to Sky TV and BT Infinity 2.
BT Infinity I’ve used before and found it to be a rock solid product. The Home Hub 5 is much like the Superhub 2, but I’m hoping BT will offer a saner product than the Superhub 2. The Sky HD+ box is much, much faster in operation – with better navigation and UI, and by switching I am consolidating one VoD service (NOW TV) into a single box. I can now ditch NOW TV as a consequence and save even more money. So another bonus. Oh, and I’ll get Sky Atlantic in HD too. Additionally, Sky’s iOS apps are also much, much better than Virgin’s.
Yet another reason for switching: £200 in Tesco (Sky) and Sainsburys (BT) vouchers. This will feed and clothe me for the next two-three months. Crickey. It pays to switch.
I have a few more months with Virgin Media, so I’ve downgraded everything accordingly and will run all services side by side. The money saved from downgrading is being used with the BT/Sky stuff and will cost me no more than what I’m already paying now.
I think Virgin are improving, but it’s not for me at the moment. We’ll see how the next 12-18 months go and will re-evaluate then. Oh, and I just thought of another bonus: according to an article in The Times today, houses with the best broadband tend to sell more than those that don’t. Where I live, I’m only a mile from the phone exchange and having both BT and Virgin connectivity will give any potential buyers (assuming I ever sell) a choice.
