Virgin Media Community

[Meldy73]

So, I’m with sky tv at moment (out of contract) and I’ve arranged for the ultimate volt bundle to be installed…..

however my install date has changed twice already and I’ve read lots of horror stories on here and elsewhere about problems with installation and also the quality of the actual service provided.

would be great to hear other people’s experiences when swapping from sky to virgin media

im also with BT (FTTP) and this is fine but looking to save costs 

[Ashleigh_C]

Hi there @Meldy73 

Thank you so much for your post and welcome to the community forums, it's great to have you here. 

I'm so sorry to hear your installation has been delayed, can I ask if there is outdoor work that needs to be completed? 

Thank you.

[RedAndWhite]

My install went without a glitch, the installer asked where I wanted the hole drilled and box placed, and managed to get the broadband router where I wanted it a bit further away from the TV. He didn't leave until he could see it was all up and running properly.

Had a few teething problems at the start, all sorted by the forum team on here. Now about 6 months in and not had any problems, broadband hasn't gone down (atleast while I've been using it!) and the speeds compared to Sky's are fantastic.

[tarsins]

I moved from Sky Ultimate to VM 1G Volt. Installation was flawless, I’m getting over 900Mbps. TV360 is wayyy better than Sky Q.

I too had heard bad stories about Virgin but my experience is quite the opposite. 

[HobGoblyn]

My install was done today, went from Sky Q and their BB to 18 month Virgin deal with 250mbps and same channels (well any I watch) as I had on Sky.

To be honest I was happy with my Sky TV except for one thing:

For the past 5 months Sky has been trying to sort out my intermittent broadband, kept dropping, even though all lights on their router were green. I’ve had a new router, a new Q box, Openreach looking at the line (which stopped it disconnecting for about 2 weeks), new master socket etc etc etc and it still randomly disconnected, at least once every other day, sometimes multiple times a day.

When the BB is down, this also affects the Sky Q box, no guide, no catchup, no apps etc.

When on Feb 7th I called them as it was getting ridiculous, the earliest they could send an engineer out was March 8th. I told them it has to be an Openreach problem as it was before, exactly the same problem and everything in my house is new.

They wouldn’t have it, I must have their engineer look first.

Then they informed me they were putting my price up by£11 a month

So I had a look around and saw I could get all my channels, and 250Mbps (instead of the 68Mbps I was getting) for £39.99 for 18 months, half what I was paying Sky (before their increase).

I was still under contract, but their retentions dept took one look at the notes on my account over the last 5 months and said I could end everything with no penalty.

He also agreed with me that the engineer I was waiting a month for was stupid, and he too thought it must be the line outside my house.

So today I had Virgin installed, getting 270Mbps according to Ookla speed test.

TV will take a bit of getting used to but I’m sure it won’t take long.

Thing is with anything, only the people who have problems or hate changes tend to post on forums (Sky forum has complaints from me about my BB problem) whereas everyone else is happy using their products.

[HobGoblyn]

While it’s only been 24 hrs, so far I’m very very happy.

Theres a few things I don’t like with the guide, but there may be a way around them or hopefully a future update gives the options I’m looking for, or maybe I just need time as no one really likes change, I’m sure if someone moved from Virgin to Sky they would find similar annoyances.

The Profiles are much much better than Sky Favourites as Sky Favourites is limited to 100 channels whereas with Virgin you can have all the channels you like.

Things I don’t like at the moment.

The  use of icons as channel names, sure I can read most fine, but some of them are a strain for me to see and I’m sure someone with bad eyesight would really struggle .  

For example, Sky Documentaries with the red background, the word Discovery on  ‘Discovery Science, the word Action on ‘Great Movies action’, again it might be because I’m so used to the words on Skys guide and I’m sure I’ll soon learn what they are.

I  would like an option so that the guide always starts at the first channel (my profile has my channels listed in the order of most likely to watched/record from), but have just read that pressing ‘1’ on the remote does this hence not really a problem, however a settings option would better.

I would like the menu pull-down to only show channels in my profile

For example, I don’t have any of the Sky Movie channels hence they’re deleted from my profile, but if I choose Movies on the guide, the first page is entirely Sky Cinema channels as are 5 of the 7 channels on the second page, sure it’s only one click on the channel down button but would be nice if using a profile to only show channels you’ve put in it.

In the same pull-down menu, a ‘+1’ option would be nice.

There’s probably a shortcut I’m not aware of, is there a way to go straight to the pull-down menu from wherever I am in the guide, or do I need to press 1 to go to the first than new, then move up?  

I want to stress that these are very minor things, and it’s probably because I’m used to something different, I’ll probably find I’m wizzing around the guide in no time.

Another plus with Virgin is they have 4 Ethernet ports on their router, Sky only had 2. I now have my PC, PS5 and Virgin 360 connected via Ethernet