So far so good. But I said the same about Virgin Media last year.
Both services were installed around the same time, more or less.
BT and BT Infinity 2
The BT Infinity engineer had an earlier appointment available, and the Sky engineer turned up almost dead on time. As I already had a BT fibre wall box installed already, the BT engineer only had to run a few tests and then hook up the fibre at the local cabinet. He spent at most about 10 minutes and BT Infinity 2 broadband was up and running via the Home Hub 5.
Speaking of the Home Hub 5 – this appears to be a massive improvement over Virgin’s Superhub 2. Firstly I didn’t have to do anything to get my wireless devices up and running other than locate the SSID and enter the password. iPad, iPhone, MacBook Air and Kindle Paperwhite 2 found the connection without a hitch.
Like the Superhub 2, the BT Home Hub 5 can handle dual 2.4Ghz/5Ghz bands, resulting in complete compatibility with whatever wireless gadget you may have. My Kindle Paperwhite 2 will only talk 2.4Ghz, so it is essential that the 2.4Ghz spectrum is available for that as well as the improved 5Ghz band which provides faster throughput at the expense of a shorter range. That said, in my cottage, 5Ghz covers the whole property with no dropouts and full strength on the signal bars on my iOS devices.
Ethernet-wise, the SkyHD+ box and the PS3 picked up their new DHCP allocations without any difficulty and both PS3′s various VoD services (Netflix, Amazon Instant Video UK, etc.) and Sky’s On Demand service just worked out the box without any additional reconfiguring.
Speed-wise, given that the line is still retraining, I’m getting an average of around 75Mbs downstream and 18.50Mbs upstream from non-BT network servers which I’m perfectly happy with. The increase in the upstream over Virgin Media is a big improvement. As I test various online backup services (including the one I operate on behalf of my employers), so having non-traffic managed upstream is very important. The above figures may improve slightly over the next few days as the line retrains.
So I’m very, very happy with BT Infinity 2 at this time.
BT currently represents excellent value for money (especially given the £100 Sainsburys gift card which I’ve just applied for – takes up to 45 days to arrive, apparently).
As well as the phone line, I have access to BT Wi-Fi hotspots (and it works very well I might add), BT Sport (on Sky TV too – just need to give BT my Sky viewing card number and I’ll get access to the non-HD BT Sports channels – otherwise I can use the BT Sports app on iOS or via the BT Sports website), BT SmartTalk which allows me to make phone calls via any Wi-Fi connection using my BT phone plan (currently Weekend Unlimited Calls). It’ll even allow me to make calls to the UK from abroad via Wi-Fi at no additional cost above whatever local call or inclusive call plan I have with BT. It’s very similar to Virgin Media’s SmartCall app in operation. I don’t have much use for BT Cloud, but operationally it works well enough over iOS devices and my Macs.
Use your BT phone plan from your mobile phone to save money with BT Smart Talk
I’ve also just signed up for the free one year BT Privacy package which gives me Caller Display for my new BT phone. It’s quite amazing really – as soon as the line was activated I’ve had two phone calls – one a cold caller advertising PPI and another one a wrong number. So having Caller Display will be very useful indeed. It also automatically registers me with the TPS (Telephone Preference Service) which should (em>should) put a stop to cold callers.
SkyHD+ with Entertainment Extra+ and Sky Movies HD
This replaces my Virgin Media Tivo alongside the NOW TV from Sky which I’ve been using alongside a NOW TV Box, Roku 3 and the PS3. Overall, this is a much cheaper and far less complicated way of getting everything you want from Virgin Media and Sky together (read: Sky Atlantic and proper full HD channels on Atlantic and Box Sets). I don’t have to tinker with multiple devices, find hidden menus or navigate (sorry NOW TV) strange menu systems.
The SkyHD+ box comes with wireless connectivity, but I’ve plugged it directly into the Home Hub 5. The On Demand service from Sky uses the broadband connection to download whatever TV show or film you want to watch from Sky’s Catch Up or Box Set service. This applies to Sky Movies too. You don’t need to wait for the TV show or film to have downloaded completely – you can start viewing pretty much straight away. The advantage to downloading the content to the SkyHD+ box’s HD is that you should avoid buffering and get the highest quality picture quality at the same time – you don’t need to rely on a constant bitrate as a result. Scrubbing through the content that’s downloaded locally makes for a much better experience too (although, obviously, you’ll need to wait for the download to complete to do this successfully). Plus you can replay at any time up until the content auto expires. From my own testing, this download system works fantastically well. Managing and deleting downloads is a cinch too.
Sky have solved a big problem with On Demand content – something that plagued Virgin Media last year which prevented me from making the most of its On Demand content (most of which comes from Sky anyway).
Oh hell, Sky have fixed many of the problem that make Virgin Tivo an enormous pain in the arse to use. Firstly the SkyHD+ box’s user interface uses a better colour scheme. The screen is generally uncluttered, and there are far fewer different screens to navigate to get to what you want to do. And the whole experience of flicking through the TV guide and On Demand content is substantially faster than Virgin’s Tivo to boot.
And there are the iOS apps to control recording and playback of content on the SkyHD+ box as well. They are substantially superior to the Virgin Media equivalent. The Sky+ app presents an extremely clean interface to the various channels. Navigating through the multitude of channels is actually a pleasure. Unlike the Virgin Media Tivo app, each channel is presented with the current and subsequent two upcoming programmes. Clicking the on channel will give you a well presented overview of programs available that day (and up to a week in advance).
The app allows you to set-up remote recording of individual programmes or films,or entire series, regardless of wherever you are (obviously providing you have some form of internet access).
A clean UI makes for better programme choices
I’ve not even got to Sky Go yet. Sky Go allows you to watch live channels on your iOS device. Sky Go Extra, which allows you to download programmes and films to your iOS device for viewing offline (useful when travelling) – all from within a single app. I’m not sure how useful I’ll find this, but as I have it free of charge for a few months, I’ll give it a go.
Overall Opinion
I think I made the right choice. Especially having had to fight Virgin Media twice on downgrading my package. I’m not sure where they operate their call centres, but twice when I’ve spoken to (I assume) an Indian lady they have outright lied to me as to what I can do and have tried to push me into another 12 month contract. When I hung up and redialed and spoke to another person, I eventually got what I wanted.
Case in point. When I downgraded the Virgin Media broadband from 100Mbs (officially, the current speed is 120Mbs), I was initially told by the Indian lady phone operator that I would save £5 a month, but would tie me to another 12 month contract. Having explained that the Virgin Media Twitter team have said to me that I can downgrade without penalty, she then told me that I would only save 35p a month. She also spewed a lot of nonsense about the Loyalty department. I hung up. I then spoke to an Indian (again, I presume) gentlemen that downgraded me to 50Mbs and saved me £10 a month a consequence (with £5 pro-rata refund). He explained that there was no contract tie-ins and just went ahead without any quibbles or fuss.
When I downgraded phone and TV with Virgin Media, I suffered an equally difficult process to the above – but if you get through to the right person, it just gets done. And this experience is another reason to the many I have accumulated over the past year why I am leaving Virgin Media.
BT and Sky have answered all my queries without fuss. The only thing I need to clarify with Sky is when I’m likely to get the £100 Tesco gift card (no mention of it on my order other than the actual order page itself) – but that’s not urgent or important at this stage (NOW TV were very good at surprising me with a £20 Waitrose voucher at one point – arrived very quickly indeed).
I’ll continue to report on how things go over the next few weeks and months.
