View Full Version : TV/Broadband/phone BT/Sky/Virgin any recommendations?
I'd like the orgs opinion on Sky, BT and Virgin for their bundles of tv, phone and broadband as I'm paying over the odds for broadband and phone and might as well get fancy tv too.
So far I've found I can't have Virgin cable and BT don't seem to offer HD channels apart from on demand stuff.
Your thoughts please oh mighty org.
:thumbsup:
Just be carefully.who.owns the cable to.your.house.
I.had a spell.with car phone scare house.
When the line went up the creak i had to.leve as they couldn't get bt to fix it.
What mobile company are you with monkeyboy? I'm with O2 and got a pretty good deal with their broadband and home phone package (£22/month for unlimited downloads and line rental). Couple a fast broadband link with a new smart TV and you won't have to bother with the likes of Sky etc.
You're welcome :D
metalangel
21-06-12, 01:33 PM
Sky's done okay for me. I don't really watch much TV and the boxes are generally okay, provided you know how to get into the engineer's menu or which buttons to hold on the front to reset it when it knackers itself (to save yourself the cost of an engineer). The broadband copes just fine with Xbox Live and PC games like ArmA and EvE and is very reliable.
I'm also ready to go on a sim only plan and o2 can't touch Tesco.
Please explain the tv thing? Bt are pod for price but I can't find out what channels they do and it doesn't look like they offer HD channels.
Owenski
21-06-12, 01:41 PM
We have sky tv phone and broadband at our current place but we're moving and not planning on taking sky with us.
In my opinion they charge a lot and provide not very much.
I'd prefer to go to BT but subscribe to this thread in the hope it may show me the light ;)
Spank86
21-06-12, 01:44 PM
Just be carefully.who.owns the cable to.your.house.
Openreach owns it. BT and all the other providers are in the same position so any difference is purely down to their customer service.
Please explain the tv thing?
It's something like this (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Samsung-UE40EH5300-1080p-Smart-Wi-Fi/dp/B007JURFXY/ref=sr_1_1?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1340286369&sr=1-1).....a computer built into your telly. Just means you can access all on the on-demand stuff (BBCiPlayer, 4OD etc) straight from the TV without having to have a PS3/XBox/Media centre.
The btw vision is a sd free view recorder.
Can cope with 2 programs intuitive series recording.
The catch up(4do i player )don't add to your download limit.
We can just get in under the 40gig limit .
They do stuff you with day time call charges.
Typical an extra £10 for my bill.
Free view programs are a bit pants imohp .
Openreach owns it. BT and all the other providers are in the same position so any difference is purely down to their customer service.
well with sky who could only provide the brood band via bt line at home.(out in the sticks) the usual speed was 1.7 meg
When we went back to bt this jumped to 4 meg
So not exactly cricket ?
Spank86
21-06-12, 02:10 PM
Two things.
One is that you don't mean gig,
The second is that it sounds like that was more to do with the exchange equipment than anything else and sky mostly use their own.
If it was the line then it would have stayed the same no matter which provider and bt wholesale don't throttle throughput like that.
Ops edited my post.
I did ask sky to look into it, but that never changed even after months of calls .
I do miss sky (euro sports mostly + son misses the kids stuff) but that's got to be offset by the costs . BT customer care experience so far has been notably better than sky but.
Spank86
21-06-12, 02:41 PM
I'm not saying they are all the same, just that who owns the line is irrelevant. If the order is raised to go fix the line, the engineer goeth and fixeth, no matter where the order comes from.
I've heard good and bad reports of all the providers and a lot of those who give good reports are those that haven't had any problems... Well that's not really a reflection of customer care because any provider can do nothing with equal effectiveness, it's only when stuff goes wrong you really see what they are like.
If you want sky tv then I'd say get the lot from sky, it'll probably be cheapest, otherwise it's down to what you want, I'm not a fan of bt vision myself but they are really the only other competitor on the tv side unless you have a vigin cable to the property already.
Mum BT line had to be dug up 3 times .
2for old age water ingress one the gas board broke it.
They were fine.
Sky did my head in.
Even canceling it was the mother of all frac ups .
Spank86
21-06-12, 03:13 PM
That's still anecdotal evidence.
I could give you hundreds if both thousands of people who have had both experiences with any of the companies.
I'm not buying another telly Davies!
Yep . but they are my own experiences that with the rest of the org my help him decide.
Oh and i did all the calls on mum n dads behalf. They are both in there 70s
_Stretchie_
22-06-12, 09:19 AM
We went with BT to save money, and the phone and internet is fine but the BT Vision (TV) is crap, Sky is expensive so been pricing Virgin up, but we've had Virgin in the past and had nothing but problems with them so not sure.
Viper told me to stay away from BT as he had the TV and said it was crap but it was just so much cheaper than sky, and that's for a reason. It's just clunky to use, the 'user experience' isn't great and I think the movies and recorded stuff is horrible to use, the movies on demand we have to plan to watch, you pay for it and then it starts to download the movie so you could be waiting for a couple of hours before you can start watching it, there is no point where we are trying to watch it while it's downloading because you'll catch it up and and have to wait for it to buffer the next X minutes before stopping again. Sky movies we used to just press 'Watch' and it was there,
I where I am I have priced up Virgin and Sky and they are about the same price for similar packages, so I will be going with one of those two.
I MISS DISCOVERY SHED
grimey121uk
22-06-12, 09:51 AM
There's always the possibility of just getting broadband then getting "dodgy sky" rumour has it you can get a full Sky HD package with all the channels for under £10 per month.
Although you will need to be slightly technical to get it going.
Milky Bar Kid
22-06-12, 11:22 AM
I looked at them all in feb here and I ended up with Sky for tv and Talk Talk for phone an broadband - BT wanted to charge a fortune for broadband because I wasn't taking the package with Vision.
I would have gone for Virgin media but can't get it here either.
SoulKiss
22-06-12, 11:24 AM
Mum BT line had to be dug up 3 times .
2for old age water ingress one the gas board broke it.
They were fine.
Sky did my head in.
Even canceling it was the mother of all frac ups .
However you DID manage to watch Battlestar Galactica on it :p
And its spelled Frak :p
SoulKiss
22-06-12, 11:27 AM
Get the fastest unlimited Broadband.
Forget Sky etc - haven't had it for a year now, don't miss it.
I use a few Torrent sites (including one that specialises in UK Broadcast TV) so just download the programmes I want to see from there (very few) and Yank stuff from other sites.
However you DID manage to watch Battlestar Galactica on it :p
And its spelled Frak :p
Thing was it was only stuff like that which made the so£22 a month worth while .
When thrown psu gave up on the box and the so so caprica.
It was not worth while paying for a new box.
But lately the free view signal is so bad i might get sky again .
SoulKiss
22-06-12, 12:03 PM
Thing was it was only stuff like that which made the so£22 a month worth while .
When thrown psu gave up on the box and the so so caprica.
It was not worth while paying for a new box.
But lately the free view signal is so bad i might get sky again .
I just downloaded from the Yanks - got it all months/weeks in advance.
Currently re-watching Galactica - 8 episodes to go, then The Plan, then Caprica.
I'm keeping an eye out for news on Blood and Chrome (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battlestar_Galactica:_Blood_%26_Chrome)
http://www.buzzfeed.com/catesish/leaked-battlestar-galactica-blood-and-chrome-tr
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