Virgin Media Community

[RedHodor]

So on the 3rd Jan I received an email from Virgin saying "In a few days time we'll be switching Virgin Media on in your area!"

Its now nearly Feb, and no sign...

Anyone got any experience of how long it usually takes when this "in a few days" email is sent?  My interpretation of a few days is not a month.

Not that Im impatient, but just fed up of 30mb speeds in a house with family of four and two kids hammering netflix and disney! ha!.   Oh and working from home - want to get onto the gig1 as soon as possible.

[Andrew-G]

want to get onto the gig1 as soon as possible

It's your money, go for it if you want.  But if you've got three kids each streaming different HD streams at the same time as they're each running a game then that's about 21 Mbps, then assume your other half has found some 4K content to stream, that's another 25 Mbps.  If you're working from home you'll not use more than 10 Mbps even with a Teams call, unless you're a web developer or video editor doing massive downloads.  So even 100 Mbps would cover most immediate needs.  Obviously there may be times when there's big game downloads or the like, how often's that?  Maybe look for some compromise rather than going for the fastest tier simply because your current internet is slow.  I think for most people the 250 Mbps speed is a decent balance, but as said, your money, your choice.

[RedHodor]

Thanks, though one of the main reasons I'm looking at the gig1 is that we do regularly have large downloads, several GB for games every now and then yes but also quite often we download films for our kaleidescape system that can run to 100GB+

These are sometimes spur of the moment decisions for family film nights, and it would be nice not having to plan films a few hours or a day in advance.  Deciding on a film and having it available by the time we've made snacks has an allure to it.  Getting the kids to agree on a film is difficult enough, having them wait a couple of hours once that decision is made can be frustrating ha.

The price of storage expansion for the system is ridiculous. So very soon we will be in a position of deleting some films to make way for others.  We don't lose access to previously purchased films, but it does mean we will have to download those again to watch them.  I forsee a time when it will be full of the kids films and any that the wife and I want to watch will have to be downloaded on demand.

The 250+ may be a compromise, but at present I'm paying for normal copper line fttc for the latency for gaming and starlink satellite for lage downloads and by way of dual wan config keeping heavy traffic from compromising the connection when working from home and remote accessing/controlling an office pc.  Gig1 will be cheaper than those two combined.

[Andrew-G]

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@RedHodor wrote:

at present I'm paying for normal copper line fttc for the latency for gaming and starlink satellite for lage downloads and by way of dual wan config keeping heavy traffic from compromising the connection when working from home and remote accessing/controlling an office pc.  Gig1 will be cheaper than those two combined.

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Good logical reasoning.  In your shoes I'd consider keeping the FTTC line as a backup if that's affordable, and even if planning to ditch it, keep it running during the 14 day cooling off period for VM.  Latency can be OK on VM, but its something that due to the DOCSIS technology and VM's traffic routing often means higher and more erratic latency compared to Openreach, whether FTTC or FTTP.  If nobody notices the difference then by all means cancel FTTC, some people do notice, especially gamers.

I've just changed from VM to Openreach FTTP due to poor service and protracted period of unreliability for many weeks last year, and even though my VM connection as good as they get when I left, there's a very clear difference in favour of Openreach when it comes to latency.  High bandwidth is great, but that's the only real selling point for VM. 

[RedHodor]

Thanks for this, good information to have on hand.  I did see a frends install of VM recently and latency was quite low, in the single digit ms figures, compared to my 20-30 via my BT/Plusnet FTTC.

Unfortunately I dont live in an area where FTTP or FTTC on demand is available.  Virgin will be my only fibre option.  There are gamers in the house, including myself so depending on the service we get from virgin I may choose to kee the FTTC service for that traffic.  The VM Gig1 will be cheaper than the current starlink service which is used for high bandwidth stuff, so will still be a saving on present costs even if I choose to keep the fttc service for now.

[Chez92]

Just to calm down the fear mongering I wouldn't worry about having to use your FTTC connection for gaming; even if you end up with a 50ms ping you won't notice it in gaming and I'd be shocked if it was anywhere near that high.

Definitely keep your FTTC connection until VM is installed and working though, myself and many others are having huge issues trying to get external installation work done (I ordered it on the 10th of November and after 7 delays I'm currently scheduled for the 3rd of March)

[Martin_N]

Hi RedHodor, 

Thank you for your post. I'm sorry you haven't had any further update with this. 

What I will do is private message you now to see what further information I can get for you. 

^Martin

[jem101]

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@RedHodor wrote:

Thanks, though one of the main reasons I'm looking at the gig1 is that we do regularly have large downloads, several GB for games every now and then yes but also quite often we download films for our kaleidescape system that can run to 100GB+

These are sometimes spur of the moment decisions for family film nights, and it would be nice not having to plan films a few hours or a day in advance.  Deciding on a film and having it available by the time we've made snacks has an allure to it.  Getting the kids to agree on a film is difficult enough, having them wait a couple of hours once that decision is made can be frustrating ha.

The price of storage expansion for the system is ridiculous. So very soon we will be in a position of deleting some films to make way for others.  We don't lose access to previously purchased films, but it does mean we will have to download those again to watch them.  I forsee a time when it will be full of the kids films and any that the wife and I want to watch will have to be downloaded on demand.

The 250+ may be a compromise, but at present I'm paying for normal copper line fttc for the latency for gaming and starlink satellite for lage downloads and by way of dual wan config keeping heavy traffic from compromising the connection when working from home and remote accessing/controlling an office pc.  Gig1 will be cheaper than those two combined.

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Sorry but I've only just seen this thread, you have a 'Kaleidescape' system? Congratulations, although I know what it is, you are literally the first person I have 'sort of' encountered who has one! What's it running on? I suspect you are going to need a full blown SAN storage system soon, you can get a reasonable one for around £35k 😉

[RedHodor]

@jem101

The Kaleidescape is the Strato C player and a 6TB Terra store.   If I was buying again I would likely have a larger terrastore as they charge a fortune for new storage - litterally must be the most expensive storage on earth at about 12k for another 18tb.

Its a standalone player and storage system made by Kaleidescape, it doesnt run "on" anything as far as Im aware.

https://www.kaleidescape.com/systems/movie-players-servers/

Its great for watching films, but in reality I dont know whether anyone else in the family would spot the quality difference between films on this and a properly ripped blu ray.  The sound from the syste though is fantastic and certainly makes use of the atmos setup we have (9.2.4).