I’ve had Virgin Media TV since the days of Telewest Active Digital and loved it.
But Virgins bitrate over the last couple years are going lower and lower (started when they switched to MPEG4) - I have Sky and Virgin (since you can’t have two main Sky boxes) and HD is getting more and more softer - changing the box from 4K to 1080p helped A LITTLE bit definitely not as good as Sky.
E4 HD is so poor that even HD on Channel 4 On Demand is higher! There is a few channels that look great in HD but it’s a handful.
Theres also issues with the encoder at Skys or Virgins end with Sky Comedy HD - half the time having white speckles on screen (static) with audio and picture jumping (doesn’t happen on Sky) and this happens so so often - it will eventually get fixed but then will break again later
Theres other SD channels which I can’t even watch as the picture is so poor (low bitrate/resolution) like Really, Challenge and That’s TV is AWFUL even the audio is low bitrate, as if they’re rebroadcasting already squeezed Freeview. Think there’s only ONE channel that looks better in SD on Virgin and that’s TalkingPictures
Also hate the implementation of “Fast Channels” and think it’s just a marketing gimmick as there’s no TV guide implemented (even Samsung TV Plus can do this) so without clicking, waiting for it to load there’s no real way of knowing the episode or show
A bit of an bitrate increase and better sources (away from terrestrial rebroadcasts) and it could be a great service, but watching the Sky in the other room is just superior.
Hope Virgin will pull their finger out.
This is NOT pixelation and isn’t a signal issue.
