Rubbish on demand service

[carrera4life]

So Virgin Media make a song and dance about having the "fastest" broadband.. Well, you do not. 1Gb/s is BANDWIDTH.

Now, with this bandwidth you would think they could deliver a consistent, working on-demand service.  Unfortunately that is not the case. Contacting the offshore call centre achieves nothing.. I still have a tivo box that sometimes plays on demand programmes and other times is unwatchable. Like tonight,  trying to watch series 2 of The Gulf and it is pointless ; the spinning buffering icon works perfectly.

I do not see why I am paying for something I am unable to watch. 

[Roger_Gooner]

When I had my V6 on WiFi there was a good signal but either an app or VoD was unreliable, and switching to an Ethernet cable solved the problem completely.

[Kain_W]

Hi carrera4life,

Thank you for your post and welcome back to the forums.

Apologies for the problems you have faced with on demand, with regards to your issue, I can see you contacted our customer service team to run through some diagnostics.

Were you able to resolve the issue from there? 

If not and you are still unhappy with the service we can raise a complaint and follow it up further.

Thanks,

[carrera4life]

Hi, 

No. The issue is not resolved. Given that all other services on the V6 function via the wireless connection to the router, I am confident that this particular issue is not the unit. The only channel that appears to buffer is the ondemand alibi service. 

Thanks 

[japitts]

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@carrera4life wrote:

The only channel that appears to buffer is the ondemand alibi service. 

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There's nothing different about Alibi OnDemand, compared with ITV OnDemand, C5 OnDemand, National Geographic OnDemand or any other broadcaster. In the same way as Netflix & Prime use an app, the BBC also does the same. But apart from them, the technology used for OnDemand is completely the same regardless of broadcaster.

And the internet connection used for all VoD & streaming is also exactly the same.

With that in mind, although Alibi VoD may be the only broadcaster from whom you've noticed issues, I have serious doubts that it is genuinely the only one affected. Can you try watching a few programmes from other channels and check this point please? It will help ID what's causing this.

[Zak_M]

Thank you for coming back to us Carrera4life. 

Did you manage to follow the advise from Japitts? 

Kind regards,

Zak_M

[carrera4life]

Well...

Nothing changed from my perspective, however, this particular on-demand programme now plays w/o buffering... and for the record, the wifi signal strength when it played successfully, was ~60%.

As I have repeatedly stated, other content plays fine, moreover the TV's inbuilt channel service was always able to connect via the same wireless network w/o issues. I am more than aware that all content is streamed over the same service.. I still contend it was something other than the local setup.

SYN RST.

[Paulina_Z]

Hi @carrera4life,

Thank you for coming back to us and thank you @japitts for assisting in previous messages! 

I understand that you're currently experiencing the buffering issues on your On Demand services. Have you tried to use an Ethernet cable to see if the connection strength increases and helps with your viewing experience?

Are you experiencing any other issues when it comes to your WiFi or broadband connection? 

Please let us know so we can investigate this further for you.

Thank you.