Virgin HD anbody have it?

[Pesty]

Had enough of Sky, thinking of switching to Virgin.

Any happy customers? Picture quality ok?

[aclivity]

the only problem is the lack of HD channels - there are more than there used to be, but not as many as $ky.

For the time being, anyway, they have promised more to come this year.

[Mark34bn]

Picture is good, there seem to be more HD channels arriving now. Off the top of my head we get ITV1, C4, Living, FX, MTV, and a couple of others in HD. You need the V+ subscription to get the HD though.

[aclivity]

Mark34bn said:

Picture is good, there seem to be more HD channels arriving now. Off the top of my head we get ITV1, C4, Living, FX, MTV, and a couple of others in HD. You need the V+ subscription to get the HD though.

not any more - there is a new HD non+ box out now.

[Mark34bn]

aclivity said:

Mark34bn said:

Picture is good, there seem to be more HD channels arriving now. Off the top of my head we get ITV1, C4, Living, FX, MTV, and a couple of others in HD. You need the V+ subscription to get the HD though.

not any more - there is a new HD non+ box out now.

Might have a look at that. We've got multiroom with V+ in the living room and the newer Samsung V+ box in the back room. The box in the back room isn't on a V+ subscription so we don't get the HD there. The newer box would be a good replacement as that's where we spend most of our time.

[Pesty]

thanks for the replies.

Can't get it no cable in our area

have to stick with SKY

[hairyben]

No bad thing. Virgin has about 5 usefull HD channels BBC/nat geo/espn etc and about 3 silly ones.

It's very unlikely they'll get sky movies/sports in HD anytime soon either- HD isn't covered in the regulator agreement which sets the tariffs sky charge virgin for channels.

Plus the V+ box is one of the biggest pieces of cr@p ever to be sold, mines on it's last legs (crashing, freezing, "forgetting" to record sheduled programs etc) and I only had it replaced less than a year ago.

[aclivity]

hairyben said:

No bad thing. Virgin has about 5 usefull HD channels BBC/nat geo/espn etc and about 3 silly ones.

It's very unlikely they'll get sky movies/sports in HD anytime soon either- HD isn't covered in the regulator agreement which sets the tariffs sky charge virgin for channels.

Biggest piece of misinformation ever, I'm afraid.

ESPN - free to Virgin customers, £10 extra for $ky customers. That's for SD, if a $ky customer wants ESPN HD they have to pay twice. If they want it in more than one room they have to pay 3 times.

Film 4 HD - only available on Virgin.

Sky Sports 1, 2 HD coming to Virgin Media

Still, don't let anything like facts, or the truth, get in the way of a good piece of $ky fandom.

[hairyben]

aclivity said:

hairyben said:

No bad thing. Virgin has about 5 usefull HD channels BBC/nat geo/espn etc and about 3 silly ones.

It's very unlikely they'll get sky movies/sports in HD anytime soon either- HD isn't covered in the regulator agreement which sets the tariffs sky charge virgin for channels.

Biggest piece of misinformation ever, I'm afraid.

ESPN - free to Virgin customers, £10 extra for $ky customers. That's for SD, if a $ky customer wants ESPN HD they have to pay twice. If they want it in more than one room they have to pay 3 times.

Film 4 HD - only available on Virgin.

Sky Sports 1, 2 HD coming to Virgin Media

Still, don't let anything like facts, or the truth, get in the way of a good piece of $ky fandom.

Sky "fandom"?

Okay granted sky sports is (surprising) recent news given virgins lack of intrest in HD for so long - but don't forget, virgin's definition of "soon" tends to differ vastly from most people.

Are they going to roll out reliable STB's or continue trying to stuff all this HD down the wire in MPEG2 then? If you fancy a laugh try taping a HD channel while watching a 2nd. Go for the triple if you're feeling cruel. Last V chimp I spoke to told me I was using my v+ "incorrectly" by using it to record and store programs

[aclivity]

Slight update on this - as a result of the sale of the Virgin Media TV channels to $ky

Virgin Media Press Release said:

For an incremental wholesale fee, Virgin Media will, for the first time, have the option of carrying any of Sky's basic HD channels, Sky Sports HD 1 and Sky Sports HD 2, and all Sky Movies HD channels.

[aclivity]

As I hadn't seen the last post on this thread before, thought I should do Ben the courtesy of replying.

hairyben said:

NoOkay granted sky sports is (surprising) recent news given virgins lack of intrest in HD for so long - but don't forget, virgin's definition of "soon" tends to differ vastly from most people.

Lack of interest in HD? By being the first UK TV provider to roll out HD Virgin (in one of it's prevous constituents, Telewest) showed quite a large interest in HD. $ky then signed some deals with TV channels with "sole carrier" clauses in them, stopping Virgin being able to carry them. Similarly with the thousand or so hours of HD on demand that is available ($ky announced something will be happening later this year).

hairyben said:

Are they going to roll out reliable STB's or continue trying to stuff all this HD down the wire in MPEG2 then? If you fancy a laugh try taping a HD channel while watching a 2nd. Go for the triple if you're feeling cruel. Last V chimp I spoke to told me I was using my v+ "incorrectly" by using it to record and store programs

I've seen many V+ HD boxes do exactly what you suggest is a cause for humour. Sounds like a problem with your box. To be fair, though, PVR's were never really intended to be long term storage, they were intended to be short term "time shift" for programming. I wouldn't say you were using it incorrectly, rather I'd say that the manufacturers intention differs from a common usage method.

The MPEG2 vs MPEG4 encoding is a complete non-issue for the user, as far as I can see. The bandwidth is available for it on the cable, the box can decode it, what is the issue?

As for reliable STB's, the Cisco HD box is exceeding all other boxes in the reliability stakes, and the new Tivo powered boxes out later this year will be a massive leap in capability over anything that exists in the UK now.

Edited by aclivity on Friday 4th June 12:00