Virgin Media Community

[purpleivan]

I moved into a house at the begining of this year and had Virgin Media connected and I'm having issues with picture quality.

I'm viewing on a Samsung 4K UHD TV, which provides a great picture from other sources (e.g. an Nvidia Shield TV box) but the quality I'm seeing from the VM 360 box is very disappointing. To be honest it looks like SD rather than HD video.

As a comparison here are some pics of the Sky F1 channel, from my VM 360 box and from a recording played on my Shield TV, both in theory at least, being 1080p. There's some sharpening going on when I take the photos, so the the VM 360 box images look more defined than they actually are, with blobiness replacing the actual fuzziness of the image.

What's striking to me is that there are clear, very strong compression artifacts around the high contrast parts of the images for example to the sides of the HUD on the left of the screen, showing the driver data and between the rows of info on it.

BTW... this applies to all channels, not just the Sky Sports ones, with the exception of the BT Sport 4 channel which looks pretty crisp.

Anyone have some suggestions as to why this might be, as surely this isn't the expected picture quality?

VM360_whole_screenShieldTV_whole_screenVM360_closeupShieldTV_closeup

[purpleivan]

As a test I thought I swapped over the HDMI cable connecting the 360 Box to the TV for another one. This didn't fix the very poor picture quality I'm seeing, no that I expected it to, as the 360 box GUI looks fine, but thought it worth ticking off the list of things I'd checked, in case someone suggested it.

Are the performance of the broadband connection and the TV linked, if so, as some information on this, the broadband connection is fine (typically 350-400Mbit).

[purpleivan]

Ok, I've solved the mystery of why many of the channels, including the Sky F1 channel looking pretty terrible, bad enough to be in SD, which is of course because they are in SD. I had no idea that many cable channels still come in SD. I've been living in Norway for the last 10 years, so I'm a little out of touch with UK stuff.

So, the Sky F1 channel (506) that I was watching (and which looks terrible) is in SD.

It turns out that the package I ordered (Bigger Oomph + Sports) includes some of the HD Sky Sports channels, but not others, including the one for F1 (516).

Not too happy about that (a separate issue for me to sort out) but at least I have an explanation for why some channels look rubbish.

[markdyer72]

That’s weird I have the sky sports pack and HD subscription and the F1 HD channel is 506 and channel 516 doesn’t exist 😐 HD costs an additional £7 month

501 - 510 is all the sky sports channels in HD, I think if you subscribe to the HD pack all your channels should change to HD from 501 - 510

[BlueLou]

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@purpleivan wrote:

Ok, I've solved the mystery of why many of the channels, including the Sky F1 channel looking pretty terrible, bad enough to be in SD, which is of course because they are in SD. I had no idea that many cable channels still come in SD. I've been living in Norway for the last 10 years, so I'm a little out of touch with UK stuff.

So, the Sky F1 channel (506) that I was watching (and which looks terrible) is in SD.

It turns out that the package I ordered (Bigger Oomph + Sports) includes some of the HD Sky Sports channels, but not others, including the one for F1 (516).

Not too happy about that (a separate issue for me to sort out) but at least I have an explanation for why some channels look rubbish.

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I think, as another poster has suggested, that you don't have the Sky Sports HD subscription and only the SD version.  It's an additional £7 (and is charged by Sky, not VM!) for those channels in higher quality. 

Given your current package I would look into upgrading to Ultimate Oomph instead as it includes Sky Cinema plus the Sports HD pack, plus an additional TV box and an unlimited SIM...I dont think it would actually cost you much more.

[purpleivan]

I've thought about that and if the current advertised price for Ultimate Oomph applied (i.e. I could switch to it just a month after having signed up to my current package) then it would only be an extra £6 per month, with the numerous improvements it supplies.

Ideally I'd sign up for this through the website, but in my "upgrades & offers" part of the VM site, the only upgrade I see listed (other than specific channels like MUTV) is a listing that looks like what I have now, with no Sky Sports HD, but with Sky Cinema HD, for a whopping £77 extra per month.

That upgrade looks like an error and doesn't have any kind of package name, just a listing of things it includes. So unfortunately I'd have to call VM to change my package. Shame this stuff isn't easily upgradeable through their website.