TiVo (Virgin Media)

[Dava]

Not sure if you have read about it or anything but TiVo is (properly) here at last!!!!

http://tivo.virginmedia.com/

think people who had TiVo already had boxes sent to them and you can order yours now!

think many people will switch from sky to have TiVo now.

[dope_demand]

Not sure about you're comment regarding people switching from Sky to Virgin because of this Tivo box TBH. Not withstanding the shower of bastards that Virgin are (i'll get to that in a minute), i can't see a huge advantage in this over a Sky+ box.

First of all Sky has more channels in HD than Virgin. The Tivo box saves a highlight of the weeks TV. Sky already has this on Anytime which Sky are expanding to cover the on demand you can get on their website or the xbox, i.e. watch the films that are showing on the film channels over the month. you can also search by genre etc. already.

Admittedly the advantages this has is a terrabyte of memory, although you can get a box this size off Sky for about £200 i think. Also Virgin has far superior broadband although there is a cap even on the so called unlimited (using a "fair usage" cop out). My friends father was cut off by virgin for this as he's retired and trades shares online all day. Virgin also as BBC iplayer etc.

Now getting to the useless shower of shite Virgin are. I used to be with Virgin but changed to Sky due to the absolute joke at customer service Virgin attempted. Some of the problems I encountered with Virgin were: attempting to take the bill on the wrong day 3 months running (they never actually managed to set it up on the day agreed in the whole time i was with them), took 8 weeks to set it up in the 1st place, because of these errors agreed to waive the installation fee but then repeatedly attempted to take it, was told that they don't take complaints??????????????, was given the wrong address to send complaints to, denied they were regulated by anyone, advised us that they were regulated by BT????????, advised us that they were regulated by themselves, denied that they were regulated by Offcom or the intermediary Offcom use for individual complaints, denied they received a complaint letter despite me sending it recorded delivery and telling them who signed for it(they also agreed however that who signed for it was a member of staff there!!!!). Finally agreeing after they failed to keep up with Offcoms regulations that we would just draw a line under it all and to just write it off, to pass on this debt to a debt collection service!!!!!!! which lead to me threatening them again with Offcom if i ever received anything else of them (which to be fair they finally followed)

Sky on the other hand, when some twat cloned my gf's card and then used it to buy a load of crap with it, Sky were cool about it and just advised they will take 2 months worth on the next bill.

Virgin is a good service, but good luck to anyone who is with them and they mess up on a bill etc as none of them know what they are doing. I have never in my life experienced anything like what i had to go through with virgin with any other company ever, and it actually got to the point where my gf refused to speak to them anymore.

Sorry rant over now. I feel a lot better now lol

[Dava]

Yeah but sky can only receive signals, virgin can send back and request so on demand is alot better on virgin, I've had a skyHD box but after they updated the layout it was quite laggy!

[Boner]

I had Sky with a BT landline and because I could only get 700k internet I switched to Virgin (was Telewest back then, now they were fucking shit) and couldn't be happier, never had a problem with customer service either, to be honest they've been really good and sorted things out asap for me.

[dope_demand]

I also see Sky are doing their usual cunts trick and not selling sky Atlantic to Virgin, which is basically the channel they are showing for HBO shows as they've got the rights to that in the UK now.

They are showing Sopranos n curb your Enthusiasm from the start on top of the new shows, although i wish they would show more great old HBO shows like Oz etc.

[YourGuru]

although i wish they would show more great old HBO shows like Oz etc.

That show (although a little too unrealistic and homo-erotic at times) was quality programming... Gotta love race wars and shanks... Plus Eamonn Walker and Harold Perrineau were top notch..

[Dave J]

I'd never ever go with sky again, a vastly overated service providor. They like to go on about so many channels this, so many channels that hd contend this and that etc. Look, there is only so much tv a person can watch in a day. So to go on about all the film channels, music channels and HD channels they have is stupid. It's not about choice at all but trying to justify what they charge by adding yet more and more channels that for the best part are repeats anyway.

At least with Virgin i'm paying for and getting 50 meg broadband. And it's not capped by any fair use policy. Virgin dont cap your net if thats the fastest you can get in your area, they only cap\have a fair use policy on lower speeds. Sure sky like to claim unlimited net downloads. But they can as there "upto" 24 meg speeds on average is what, 6-7 meg so about 1/4 of what a customer is paying for. So kind of capped by limitations before they even start. If a virgin customer on 20meg get capped then they are still on 5meg but only for what, 5 hours. If you work the virgin system on a 20 or 30 meg so that any heavy use is outside the fair use hours then you will still get max speed.

I'd be far more happy with a decent 10 channels service than a crappy 200 channel service. In fact I've a 20,000 tv channels service (and NO it's not a internet program to view on your pc)that gets me live football every saturday at 3pm. Lets see a sky user so into there setup say that. Had it for years and never really any running costs, but thats a different story.

[Dava]

Yeah the TiVo boxes are going to have a 10mb dedicated line for streaming the on demand content etc. . .

Like I said sky can only recieve it can't request content only stuff that sky will broadcast. Virgin > sky

[cattales1960]

I have tivo but I use it in addition to my cable for recording shows so I can fast forward thru commercials and watch them when i want. Do you guys use it as a provider of shows? We also can do internet and grab pics and stuff off our computers and watch them on the television

[Dava]

I have tivo but I use it in addition to my cable for recording shows so I can fast forward thru commercials and watch them when i want. Do you guys use it as a provider of shows? We also can do internet and grab pics and stuff off our computers and watch them on the television

yep virgin is a cable tv provider and they have partnered up with TiVo to bring out a digital box!

[cattales1960]

I have tivo but I use it in addition to my cable for recording shows so I can fast forward thru commercials and watch them when i want. Do you guys use it as a provider of shows? We also can do internet and grab pics and stuff off our computers and watch them on the television

yep virgin is a cable tv provider and they have partnered up with TiVo to bring out a digital box!

LOL that explains alot. I have a digital cable box and a tivo box. but Our one tv has a DVR in it.

[Dava]

yeah, the TiVo is going to have 3 tunes and 10mb dedicated line for on-demand content

sky cant possibly get anywhere near as good as that anytime soon if at all.