After advice from 3 different tech guys on the phone I finally got one who talked me through how to solve the problem So the fault is fixable it's just getting the right agent to talk you through it
I've noticed SKY released an update for the Sky Q late 2021 which resolved 99% of issues.
I had Sky Q around 18 months ago and it was fine then.
Wow this thread is still live.
12 months on since plugging in the V6 box the problem still hasn't been fixed. Incredible.
Oh and all those new settings don't make a jot of difference
Upon returning to the U.K. in 2018, after spending 14 years working and living in Australia, I opted for Virgin’s TiVo offering as I had had TiVo in Australia and really enjoyed the interface and functionality. I have two V6 boxes and both of them worked just perfectly with my Panasonic 65” (lounge) and 40” (bedroom) TVs. My large TV has the SC-ALL70T soundbar, with two SC-ALL2 surround speakers connected to the bar by Wi-Fi. My smaller TV has a smaller Panasonic soundbar, with accompanying wireless subwoofer. BOTH of these setups have worked perfectly since day one with the V6 boxes and TiVo
Then came January this year, and, while negotiating contract renewal with Virgin, I was put onto the ‘new, amazing, exciting’ TV360 that is supposed to make finding and streaming 4K content seamless and easy.
My lounge V6 box was the first one I upgraded and it went through the process just fine. It also worked perfectly afterwards, with no audio synchronisation problems at all. As for the total lack of quality in the overall finish in the quality and functionality of the TV360 software? Well that is another story completely, and the day just isn’t long enough for me to start listing all the things I that seriously annoy me every single day, including the reduction in so much functionality that I have seriously wanted to revert back to TiVo, or to just leave Virgin Media altogether. TV360 in its current form isn’t even a beta version it’s as if they got a couple of developers to knock it together in three months so that Virgin Media could exit paying TiVo fees. My professional career is that of a programmer, software engineer, and software delivery project manager for a blue chip I.T. company. I know how this stuff works. Whoever signed off on the TV360 functionality should be sacked immediately. It’s like they just never gave a sh*t about the end user, and just needed the bare minimum not to be sued for false advertising, while at the same time allowing Virgin Media to stop paying TiVo license.
Anyway, rant over for now. When it came to upgrading my bedroom V6 box that too competed the process OK but I immediately noticed the audio synchronisation problems, and phoned Virgin Media support straight away
Virgin Media support told me that my V6 boxes required a software update, which I found really strange considering they had both literally just downloaded what should have been the latest version from the Virgin Media servers to carry out the upgrade process. I voiced this question to the support person, but I may have been asking my cat. Virgin Media’s first line support do not appear to be capable of independent thought. I got the impression they type keywords into a computer and it tells them what to do.
That day was the start of an immensely frustrating month for me, where, by the end of it, I was in exactly the same place I had been when I started. I had now literally lost the Will to engage with Virgin Media anymore. An incredibly sad thing for any customer to have to say about a company they’ve been with for 4 years, and have paid them around £5,000 in that time. I was promised many phone calls back, that never happened. I was promised escalations to 2nd and 3rd level support that never happened I even wrote to the CEO of Virgin Media for the U.K. and Ireland, and, this is really telling, didn’t ever receive so much as an acknowledgment, let alone a reply
But, I feel like none of this really matters to Virgin Media. I am nothing to them in the grand scheme of things, and will be moving to Sky as soon as it is possible for me to do so.
I can offer information about one thing I did try, which seems to have made a very slight positive difference. I was wondering why everything worked just fine in my lounge and not in my bedroom. So I went through all the settings and checked to ensure they were both identical. Apart from the fact that they are two different sized Panasonics, and, even though they are also both Panasonic, the soundbars are different, the ONLY other thing that I spotted was the way my TVs were connected to the devices.
Lounge TV:
HDMI 1 - 360 box,
HDMI 2 Soundbar
HDMI 3 Panasonic 4K Blu-Ray DVD player
HDMI 4 Apple TV
Bedroom TV:
HDMI 1 - Apple TV,
HDMI 2 - Soundbar
HDMI 3 - 360 Box
So, I ensured that HDMI 1 in both TVs has the V6 boxes attached, and that the soundbars were connected to HDMI 2 in both cases.
This appears to have made a slight improvement, but unfortunately hadn’t cured it by any means.
Good luck to everyone still searching for a solution to this. You never know, engineers from Virgin Media might even join in the search one day!!
*360 box
Thx 😊
Oh, and one more thing.
WHY THE HELL, even with the latest update that occurred last week, is the “RECORDINGS” menu item FOUR PLACES AWAY from where the ”HOME” button takes you every time.
I don’t know about other people, but 99% of the time I press the ”HOME” button it is to go to ”RECORDINGS”. It would be far far better to have ”RECORDINGS” preselected when you enter the “HOME” screen, or put it one click away from the “GUIDE” menu option.
It’s almost as if the interface design has never had any consultation with day to day users. Unless there is some good reason for the menu layout that I, in my ignorance, am missing completely
Does anyone else feel the same way or have any views on this?
P.S. - apologies for CAPS they are mainly to differentiate the menu items, but may also be indicative of my ongoing frustration, beginning to border on hate, for this TV360 pos.
Hi Anonymous
You can press the voice button from any screen and say, "recordings" and the 360 will open the recordings section.
Where is the Fav next to recordings
Just had our new Virgin fibre installed, after many years with sky, signed up for Volt2 and very impressed with broadband speed. However, I was shocked to find we now have lip sync issues, something never experienced with sky. So disappointed, is there really no solution for this at all?
No there isn't a solution.
If I contact my phillips soundbar via HDMI arc I get audio sync issues, full stop, regardless of any settings. I adjust the audio offset via virgin or the soundbar itself but this works for a few seconds before drifting again.
Only solution is to connect soundbar via optical cable but then you lose the arc features and hdmi benefits.
The problem started the second my box was 'upgraded' from V6 to 360.
Virgin are a joke.
So how come the Sky Q box had no lip sync issues but the Virgin 360 does, is it a hardware or software problem?
Software. The 'upgrade' to virgin 360 was an 'update' to the existing physical v6 unit.
As leicesterfan mentioned, it is software. The whole TV360 package was downloaded to Virgin Media’s V6 box, and then self-installed. I went from having ZERO lip sync issues, AND the ability to switch between each of the 6 tuners without it clearing the last hour or so of TV on each one, to loads of lip sync issues and zero ability to switch tuners, within an hour. In fact, just by playing two seconds of a recorded programme then going back to ‘Live TV’ clears the buffers.
If I want to switch between different channels/programmes/tuners now, I have tk set them all to record, and keep entering the ‘Recorded’ menu and play each one for a bit etc.
A RIGHT ROYAL PITA
THE ONLY reason I can think of for Virgin Media rolling out the pile of excrement that is TV360 is that they wanted to stop paying the TiVo licencing a.s.a.p. How any conscientious IT software development director signed off on the functional specs of TV360 as the TiVo replacement I really don’t know. Personally I would have moved company rather than have my name anywhere near the product. I suppose we should be glad that it only freezes up once or twice a week, normally when exiting BBC iPlayer or Prime, it could have been a lot worse
I’ll be off the Virgin Media platform just as soon as my contract finishes. Yes, it’s nice to have close to gigabit speeds, but at the end of the day, 99.9% of the time you will find all your connections throttled by the server you’re connecting to, or by any of the multiple hops once your outside of Virgin Media’s responsibility, so you’re paying for a lot of bandwidth that you can’t ever use. Unless you use the likes of BitTorrent or similar.
One more thing that I have found out that nearly made me switch before my last Virgin Media renewal. I’m an avid sports fan, as is my Dad. He has Sky Q. Whenever he sets the golf to record, or F1, or cricket etc if the programme runs over then Sky tells its Q box to extend the recording, then it stops recording when the televising of the event has actually finished. With Virgin Media’s TV360 you have to guess how much extra time might be needed and set the initial recording up to extend by 1hr or 2hrs etc. BUT, make sure you do this when you set the recording up, as there’s no way of going in, that I have found, and editing a series recording, or one off recording, once it has been added you have to cancel the whole thing then start again. And then there’s the case where Sky moves a sports programme to start a few hours earlier than scheduled, due to weather it whatever. My Dad’s Sky Q box automatically changes the TV Guide, and the scheduled recording to reflect this. This has never happened with Virgin Media. And then there’s all the 4K, and easy to find on demand content that is available through Sky, which it cleverly downloads to the box first, in a matter of 20-30 seconds or so, for you to watch, be it a whole series, or a single episode, or multiple movies, negating potential issues caused by any network hiccups during the viewing.
As you can see, I could go on, and on, and on, but I’ll leave it there for now
Good luck with your new package all the same.
This is not good news at all, I’ve only just signed up and had it all installed. Unless virgin update the software and sort it, it looks like I’m going to be stuck with this lip sync issue for the next 18 months!
NeilG10 wrote:This is not good news at all, I’ve only just signed up and had it all installed. Unless virgin update the software and sort it, it looks like I’m going to be stuck with this lip sync issue for the next 18 months!
If you're within the 14 days just cancel. Sky will be hounding you with half price deals so maybe cheaper too. They still send stuff to me every other day. Some good offers to be had for returning.
I did consider the 14 day cooling off period but the main reason for moving from sky was our neighbours huge Ash tree which has started to interfere with our satellite reception. Looks like I’m with Virgin for the next 18 months but if we ever manage to get the tree taken down I’ll be giving my next subscription some serious thought.
Virgin have been aware of the fault for nearly 2-years, however, their complaints department deny the problem and blank any effort to acknowledge, address and resolve the fault. I have stated several times, both on this forum and in my complaint, that Virgin are advertising Dolby 5.1 compatibility for new customers (and denying complaints from existing customers) is in breach of the trades description act, but Virgin Media still remain silent. We know they moderate this forum but never intervene because they know the customer is right.
I posted a few weeks ago that I thought Virgin had introduced a fix in the Audio setup with a new 5.1 option that synchronises the sound. However, forum users were quick to point out that this is NOT in fact Dolby 5.1, it is simply basic stereo sound which I first got in the 1960's! I have now verified this and confirm the 5.1 Audio setting does not give Dolby 5.1 surround sound.
I am stuck with Virgin because they own my email address and changing it would cause me exceptional disruption and stress. It makes me so CROSS!
NeilG10 wrote:I did consider the 14 day cooling off period but the main reason for moving from sky was our neighbours huge Ash tree which has started to interfere with our satellite reception. Looks like I’m with Virgin for the next 18 months but if we ever manage to get the tree taken down I’ll be giving my next subscription some serious thought.
Is there no where to move the dish?
You should have at least a 7 day cool off period.
What about mounting it on a long pole? Sounds silly I know, I’m just trying to think outside the norm.
Anonymous wrote:What about mounting it on a long pole? Sounds silly I know, I’m just trying to think outside the norm.
Or SKY glass maybe?
