No Longer A Virgin....

T

Talksthetorque

Senior member
 Notts
I'm moving house and we're having to leave Virgin and their very good tivo box thingy. :(
Mrs TTT, despite being a self confessed technophobe gets on with it OK, and I'm looking for a replacement for this that's easy to use, for watching live, pausing, rewinding and watching recorded stuff, and that you can record off an EPG.
I'm not a massive fan of Mr Murdoch :evil: , but am aware that I might finally need to give sky - and therefore him - some money.
We're not interested in Sports channels ( Unless I can get the F1 thrown in) or Movies, or kids channels. A Pay per view movie option might be nice though.
We're not in a great Broadband area, so I know I'm going to feel the pain of 30Mb :driving: down to 6Mb :tumbleweed:, but is this sort of speed OK to stream?

So Do I go NowTV? Sky? YouView? Freesat+? Freeview+?
Or something else?

Heeelp :SOS:
 
We use a YouView box after coming from an older Sky+ box that we used like FreeSat.

Really simple to use and you can have NowTV (Sky movies) and now Netflix if you want a subscription movie option...
 
Don't whatever you do get BT Vision! Glorified freeview but not good!

If you're not that fussed about 'add on's then perhaps a non subscription service with the ability to record would be the way to go.
 
We moved from Virgin after no end of grief from them. Lies after lies after lies but the bottom line was they'd oversold the Broadband in our area and it couldn't cope. The supposed 30mb was less than 1mb most afternoons. When the schools let out for the day and all the little darlings arrived home there was no chance of any service worth talking about. It was great at 3.30am though. In the end we told them to shove it, cancelled our contract and went with the much slower 7mb Sky. It's been brilliant, never had a problem in 2 years. We've had consitant broadband speed and no down time that I can think of. We don't watch much telly so have just a pretty basic package which is fine.
 
We have a Youview box with a speed of 11 mb - engineer who installed it said to get catch up tv without annoying buffering you need only 5mb - very good catch up and easy recording but the one thing that is really annoying is changing channels - it's sooooooooooooooooo slow .
 
Talksthetorque said:
We're not interested in Sports channels
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WHAT? Does not compute :o

No point getting any form of pay TV, Freeview is good enough surely.
 
I'd get your internet set up first, have it run for a few weeks and then consider your options.

If your connection is sufficient for hd streaming, then I'd highly recommend a computer/htpc running XBMC.

The use of a few plugins will ensure you can comfortably replace your tivo box without missing it.

As for actual hardware, after experimenting with a variety of old computers and being sold on the way it works, I settled for an Intel NUC. Incredibly small, relatively cheap, full hd and integrates nicely with the NAS drive that's connected to the home network.
 
You can try NowTV for virtually nowt. Tesco were doing the boxes for under £20 with 6 months subscription. If you don't like it it's cost virtually nothing and you can use on four devices.

Buggers have put the cost up from % to £6.99 though. I still have four months left of my initial period though.
 
My mother is in her late 70s, is technologically inept, but loves her Humax Freeview recorder - if your wife likes the simplicity of the Virgin Tivo or V+ boxes she'll get on well with something like that. I believe they do Freeview HD versions too if you're in an area that has coverage
 
+1 for Humax, I have the Freeview HD box, very reliable.

I don't like sport either, so it's ideal.
 
Id also avoided sky in the past (the fact they still try and charge extra for HD content is archaic)!

But... with some pressure I eventually agreed full price line rental £15/month and then 75% of all tv packages. Currently have phone, broadband, family pack, movies and on demand for about £28 a month, which i though was pretty decent. Still boils my piss im watching SD movies as they wouldnt budge on the £10/month movies HD fee.

All in though its a good bit of kit and the on demand library is pretty decent. Having said all that, for the price of one sky movies pay per view, you could get netflix for a month, which is HD and has a good selection.
 
Bish said:
Id also avoided sky in the past (the fact they still try and charge extra for HD content is archaic)!

But... with some pressure I eventually agreed full price line rental £15/month and then 75% of all tv packages. Currently have phone, broadband, family pack, movies and on demand for about £28 a month, which i though was pretty decent. Still boils my piss im watching SD movies as they wouldnt budge on the £10/month movies HD fee.

All in though its a good bit of kit and the on demand library is pretty decent. Having said all that, for the price of one sky movies pay per view, you could get netflix for a month, which is HD and has a good selection.
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Interestingly i have in the last month got offered the same 75% off from sky, for £28.80 i have the family pack and movies with bb unlimited and phone but i have hd and on demand included with that!


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god i pay a fortune for our shitty virgin i ought to do the threat to leave. the speed is bang on 60mb but the tivo and tv service is rubbish. i could swear they have cut loads of channels off recently.

im sort of stuck tho as i tend to watch a lot of the non freeview channels otherwise i would just get rid.

im sure its £60+ pm for internet, hd tv stuff and a phone line i dont use.

the phone is the one that i really hate. 16pm line rental for what? we only have it for her mum to call us on from OZ. we hardly use it as the calls cost and we both have mobile contracts
 
Wow, I pay £100 a month for my Sky, but I'm a real man who likes sport so I pay a bit extra :poke:
 
Bish said:
I got done :(

Ill be requesting free HD at the end of this contract or im walking.
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Thats really strange as the you should have it free as part of the family pack:
http://www.sky.com/products/sky-tv/family-bundle/

But i wish i could get rid of my phone line too.. dont use it ever.. got stung a few times as didnt have the minimum £2 per quarter of calls fo they charged for caller display and VM.
 
Thanks for everybody's comments, Still no nearer a decision....

The 'sell it for as much as you can get away with' business model is why I don't like Sky. They charge what they can, for as long as they can get away with it.
I don't watch sport any more precisely because of Sky, and their massive overselling- which started with Football and is now pissing over all the other sports they have purely to drive their subscriptions.
A Beezer Homes League 3 Match between Frogglesham Town and Wibbleminster Athletic is not "devastating" to lose or " crucial" to win.

I would happily do without a landline, but the Mrs TTT calls her parents in Scotland. For hours at a time. Most days.
Her dad has internet, but her mum has only just got a mobile phone ( yes, it has buttons and an LCD screen) and can barely text.
I could go up and set her up with skype but she'd leave it turned off!

The only complaint with Virgin from me is that it was down for one day when we had those winds, and it was to do with their Power supply (it's not very windy in cable land)
I also can't see the problem with Tivo. I mean " Oh no - I can only record two programs whist watching another" is massively 'First World Problems' isn't it?
It's a bit slow booting the On Demand Stuff, but not much slower than running them on a laptop, and you can do it through the EPG.
I've probably only had to reboot it four times in 18 months, which is the usual test of how good a set top box is - it was weekly with our Freesat Box, and Twice a month with the Freeview HD box we had)

I can't see my Missus fathoming out XBMC having tried it for a bit.
Looks like Freeview, Freesat+ or through Youview. I have Freeview and freesat boxes so I think I'll see what the signal is like before choosing.

And finally,,,,
Real Men Play Sport, as opposed to sitting in your lounge drinking diet coke and eating pringles watching it....
 
I'm on Virgin Cable and it's fab, no problems, Tivo not the best PVR but OK.

I'd recommend either Freesat HD or Freeview HD, with a Humax HD PVR. More channels on Freesat.
 
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