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having been made redundant i have been able to negotiate myself a decent deal with Virgin for my TV etc.

Currently i have been paying:
Sky - £63pm which includes, HD, Sports, Documentries, Kids TV, Multi Room (no movies or music)

Virgin - £52pm which includes 50mb Broadband, Phone Line, 200 anytime minutes, M+ TV (which we don't use the TV)

Now as from Tuesday we will be having everything with Virgin for the following.
Multiroom
250gb Tivo box
HD
Sports
XL TV
Phone line
50mb broadband

all this for £77pm. which i think is a brilliant deal.

has anyone got the tivo box or can comment on the tv quality from virgin

I'm not allowed digital TV.  It's a waste of money that could be spent on the little one, apparently.

Hope that helps.

my old man has a tivo box from virgin and its the dogs bollocks.

oh dear. i feel your pain.

whats the HD quality like?

exactly the same as sky hd, no noticable differnce

cool. thats what i wanted to hear.

Hope you get something sorted job wise soon magic. Horrendous prices to be paying for any TV system

i'vea new job lined up mate. thanks for the concern though

Don't tell Virgin then, seriously that's good news about the job

Yeah Tivo is meant to be shit hot.

it even has it's own 10mb connection for various online programmes

been with virgin/ntl for years now, broaband is the best never drops the connection, get espn for free as im an xl customer, fuck sky :smugfu:

Sky broadband is shit makes Tiscali & AOL look good and that's saying something.  Virgin TV is good but not a patch on SKY HD.

Yours might be, mines fine.

HD on virgin is the same as sky, and virgin dont charge for the box

Mine was awful kept dropping out.  I had a really bad experience with Sky over my broadband which lead to an ongoing saga for 3 months and trying to get any sense out of their customer service.  It took the threat of cancelling my Sky Tv HD package with them to reimburse me 3 months for both broadband and tv.  I kept HD but changed to Virgin for broadband.  Virgin Broad band is excellent if you play a lot of games online too like CoD etc

Virgin is awesome.

Catch up tv and music on demand being great features..

Also get free ESPN!

yeah i never wanted to drop the broadband. i game on my pc/PS3 a lot so online performance was a must. it was all down to price and they sorted me out nicely.

shame Sky Sports News isn't in HD.

Sky HD box used to be the dogs dangly bits but the Virgin Tivo box simply blows it out the water. Can't see Sky bringing out a better box in the future and the only thing that Sky have left to pedal now is 3D which in my opinion won't catch on.

How the fuck can someone made redundant justify £77 a month for TV.

Im with Virgin and just had to cut my package to the minimum,which is £33 quid and frankly without TVOD Virgin can fuck right off.

Its true to an extent, but I don't reckon a large % of customers use Tivo's extra functionality. Sky+ does what most people want.

Broadband on the other hand, unless Sky go FTTC/FTTH (fibre) then Virgin will clearly destroy them on performance.

I don't have either.

Does that make me cool?

Oh my gosh I just can't imagine paying that much for TV??? Am I nieave??? My Sky package is £21 a month & I moan about that!

I like the tellybox and the shows what is on it like Doctor Who.

I won't tell you how much my $ly package works out a month then cos you wouldn't believe me, besides I haven't worked it out myself. On the other hand I never use it, total crap

The same. I think it depends on how much you enjoy TV. I don't care much for it. I also pay £21 or so a month and I resent paying every penny of it. I do pay £20 ish for my phone though so £41 all in. It doesn't exactly please me. Fuck paying for HD as well. Sure it's good, but £10 good (50% increase in bill)? Not a fucking chance.

@stfcinbmth - I never heard back from my friend about his Italian Sky, I'll have a word when I remember! :)

I pay eighty quid a month for Sky with Sports and Broadband,and the phone also.

Cant moan at twenty quid a week with all that lot in my opinion though the Sky customer service is scandalous.

[quote author=Barry Scott link=topic=45165.msg997893#msg997893 date=131568929

@stfcinbmth - I never heard back from my friend about his Italian Sky, I'll have a word when I remember! :)
[/quote]

Can you remind me Barry, pm might be best concerning that  ;)

I pay just over £100pm to sky for the family viewing pack, Main tv, 1x multi room, broadband and phone+ line rental. I'm in to my last month of my 12 month contract and can't wait  ! For the first two months I was making a lot of calls after 6 pm only to find out sky free weekends and evenings start after 7 pm. Finding this topic really useful as the Virgin offers sound brilliant compared.

Even so it will only still only be up to 40mb Batch over the BT network. Upgrading the exchanges is a sloooooooow process, still waiting for mine to go ADSL2+

But up to 40Mb would be enough for most people at the moment. You could stream HD TV with an acceptable buffering time before the thing plays.

Isn't Virgins 100Mb service contended anyway?

YOu need to move out the sticks! We could have BT Infinity here. But that means a new 18 month contract so sod that.

VM is great value if you run a Kryptview box - which I don't as I dont have cable access to my house.

I pay too much

Sky world package
ESPN
Hd pack
Premier sports
Multiroom

I must be fucking mad

You could adopt a whole African family for £77 a month fella.

HD is crap, multiroom is laziness, premier isn't and ESPN can suck my cock.

My missus would agree with you. However her buying new shoes each week at £80 is perfectly acceptable. And guys lets be real here, we all spend more than £60 on a night out on the town with fuck all to show the next day.

You don't have kids then! Multiroom is a Godsend so that you can get them out of your hair watching Cartoon Network while you watch Sky Sports!

We have a tivo box and its a brilliant bit of kit

ADSL2+ would be enough for me. I wish I was in the sticks, the two other exchanges near me have both been enabled for some time, all three have roughly the same amount of business and home premises on them. I'm not sure what criteria BT use in selecting exchanges for upgrade, anyone know?
I am actually a hell of a lot closer to one of the enabled exchanges than I am to my useless one. It doesn't make sense.

whatever criteria they use, it certainly doesn't involve any form of logic whatsoever

 I'm forth in line when it comes to choosing programmes in my house so Multi room is a must. Some people spend a lot on hiring DVDs per month, sky+ anytime does give you a wide choice of films etc when connected through broadband.

I've got the standard sky + package with all the sports channels and broadband - I think I pay about 52pm which I think is a bit much considering its quite 'standard'

Wouldnt pay anything extra for HD though - whats the point? I can see the normal picture perfectly fine?

I've been with Virgin since the old Swindon cable days, the VIP package that I've got at the moment is very good, but is quite pricey. I do like the look of the TiVo box though, has anyone tried upgrading their V+ box to the TiVo ?

I've got freesat. Anyone who pays a subsription for TV is a fucking idiot. Worst form of entertainment there is.

I've got Sky+HD full package with sports (and ESPN), movies etc.

Share a place with 2 others so the subscription cost is shared between 3 which makes it easily affordable.

However the TV subscription police has spoken and this makes me an idiot.

How much do you spend on magazines JFW ? ;)

Sky is great, Sky HD is even better. I have the entire lot and there is no way i'd get rid of it. It costs a month considerably less than coming down to watch the town twice a month for 3 hours!

If it weren't for FX I'd ditch Sy in a heart beat... if anyone can tell me how I can get FX on freesat I'll buy them a beer... or three

Bump on this thread.  I have got Sky, way too expensive for what you get.  Considering swapping to Virgin as they have a half price deal for 9 months on at the moment.  Sky have offered me £7.50 discount for a year, robbing bastards.

Any Virgin customers tell me what they think or the service?

Any thoughts from anyone else would be welcomed.

Virgins fine not had any probs.

We just threatened to leave Virgin for Sky and got them down to £37 a month :D

As an update on this - all the Sky programmes (Dexter, True Blood, Breaking Bad etc) that were stopping me from leaving sky are available on US apple TV ahead of the UK so set myself up a US account on my apple TV... Switched to Freesat and saved myself a packet

Just had the same.  We already pay £75 a month for the top packkage, one hd box and another multiroom box.  We wanted an additional box because we've just put a tv in the extension.  Tried the we're considering moving to Virgin, butthe bloke wouldn't budge and offered us no discount whatsoever. Instead wanted £109 for the new box and installation and another £10.25 a month.  I need to price up Virgin properly now.

Moved to Virgin from Sky after Sky+ box went wrong shortly after buying a new HD tv and asked about an HD box replacement and got short shrift. Luckily had a installation friend who had moved to Virgin so got a "friends and family " package which helped keep costs down. I lumped everything together (Tv/phone/broadband) and apart from getting used to different menus/channel numbers I find Tivo an excellent system and also the broadband is definitely better.

Since moving from Sky I have had two letters and four phone calls asking why I left them. The guy on the last call when told about the Sky+ box etc. apologised and said "that should not have happened as my records showed that I was a long serving customer of Sky and they should have been more helpful", all rather late!

Not too sure how the new "free" BT sports package is going to work out as I do not see Virgin mentioned anywhere in all there advertising but as I can take or leave the Premier League, missing out on 38 of the 380 games played will not bother me too much.

Do it before the end of Tuesday and you get half price for 9 months.  Check out the website

I spoke to virgin last week to get my bill down as have TV(tivo)/BB/phone and mobile, dropped my BB to 60MB from 100MB and saved just over £15 a month, I asked about the BT sports and was told that they (Virgin) were just in talks with BT over cost of the football channels which are to replace ESPN, and  XL customers would get these added for no extra cost.

Also had a call from the re my mobile contract, was meant to upgrade to a new phone back in Jan but decided to stay with the one i already had so they reduced my Monthly bill from £25.99 to £15 pm staying on the same tariff, had a call 2 weeks ago saying as was a loyal customer they could reduce my mobile bill to £11.99pm on a 12 month contract, told them i didn't want to be tied to a 12month contract as i'd prefer the option of going to another provider like O2 or Vodafone, as soon as i said that, she said no problem we can do you a 12 month contract same tariff for £8.00pm. So it is worth giving them a ring, also if you are a customer you can recommend a friend via the website and you get £50, last one we had was credited to our bill.

Not on freesat but......can i claim a pint? :beers:

http://livetvcafe.net/video/8HNU11XM5HUR/FX-Network

Just moving over from Sky to Virgin after 12 years - they refused to upgrade my sky box to the recordable one - but Virgin have told me today that they will no longer be carrying ESPN and BT Sports is a no no at present!!

Having been on a lengthy call with Virgin today, I was surprised to find that the equivalent package with them and the same number of boxes we currently have is actually quite a bit more expensive than Sky.  It will be cheaper for 9 months, but averaged out over 18 months is more expensive in total.  They couldn't seem to get it any lower, so looks like I'm staying with Sky, which aggrieves me slightly because their customer service leaves a lot to be desired.

Exactly the same as me.  I have ended up staying, but managed to get about £20 off per month for 12 months.  I was all ready to jump too...

That's not bad.  How did you manage that?  The bloke I spoke to last week wouldn't offer any discount whatsoever even when I said we were thinking of moving to Virgin.

Seems Sky are more reluctant to offer discount deals these days. The best deals seem to come a month or two after you actually leave (50% off for a year), but even this isn't guaranteed.

Bernie did well.

Got a mate who works for Sky who got me a 12 months half price deal. Got the main package, HD pack, Sky Sports, ESPN and multi room for £49 a month.

I'm moving back to England later this year, do you think you'd be able to arrange a similar deal for me? I already have the box.

Half a lager and lime in it for you.

You're all fucking idiots. £50+ a month to watch fucking TV?! Fuck off.

Its what it costs. If people choose to pay it, what difference does it make to your life?

That's a crakcer

50% codes go around quite often for new customers (well once or twice a year).

Not seen any for existing customers since I started looking - they did some ages ago :(

I get an extra £50 a month and a feeling of superiority. Thanks :)

What do you spend the extra £50 on?  :beers: :pint:?

Crack cocaine.

Had a feeling you were going to say that!

go straight to cancellations. Playing the I'll go elsewhere card doesn't work anymore. Pleading poverty does get discount but expect a lengthy phone call and you have to work for it. Tell them you're skint and are havingto cut bills out and sky is one of them. If they don't budge you can ends the call by saying you need to think etc. Ring again and try your luck with someone else in their call centre.

I'm sure I can try? Just depends when he has another offer and when you're moving?

Keep an eye out here too Bob, you may get lucky

http://forums.digitalspy.co.uk/showthread.php?t=1755930

http://www.vouchercodes.co.uk/offer/sky-12monthshalfprice-jun13/

It was my 2nd call to them, and I was convinced I was leaving so went straight through to the cancellations dept.

I agree with Batch though, they are cutting back on the discounts they are giving, probably because there has been a lot of press recently stating that they are one of the companies that it is easy to get discount with.

Virgin sounds cheaper, but when you sum it all up, over the course of the contract, it isn't, well not if you want Sky Sports etc.

Update:  After a very lengthy call to cancellations and a further lengthy call to customer services, I've had a very good result.

We got the additional HD box free of charge and installed free having originally been quoted £109.  Free phone line and broadband for 12 months and half price sky sports and movies for 3 months.  Total saving of £309 over the year.

Thanks Berniman and Arriba  :) :)

Glad it worked!  Good work