Virgin TV

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Robborevolution

Member
I know there has been a couple of threads on this in the past. If you have a decent Broadband speed is the picture quality on the Virgin 360 box as good as Sky? Contract due up this month and the Ultimate Volt package looks really good value. Already have Virgin broadband and my wife has an O2 sim only so that would be nearly £50 on its own. Sky package with all channels is probably going to be £75 on its own and that doesn’t include BT Sport. I have multi room but main concern is picture quality, have a decent UHD telly so don’t want to change and have a poor picture. Anyone experience of both and what do you think?
 
I'd be careful what you are seeing advertised. We're stuck with VM broadband for any decent speed. Loads of appealing adverts for deals, but they're not available to existing customers.
 
If you do go for a virgin, I have a £50 referral code that would give us both £50. Get in touch if you would like this .
 
Is the multiroom any good? And does it have to be hard wired? I need to sort this out as we've built an extension and split one long room into 2 rooms as part of it, so only wifi/smart TV apps in back room so far.
 
Haven’t had Sky direct for many years but have it through Virgin and picture quality is very good, My Virgin TV box is hard cabled, I’m not aware you can get it through wi fi although if you are hard wired you can get a mobile wi fi extension via an app on a couple of designated devices of choice like a lap top or a mobile phone.
 
London_Boro said:
Is the multiroom any good? And does it have to be hard wired? I need to sort this out as we've built an extension and split one long room into 2 rooms as part of it, so only wifi/smart TV apps in back room so far.
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The Virgin multi room has to be hard wired, whcih came as a bit of a shock to me as the Sky system was wifi connected.

the Virgin is also wifi connected but has to be connected by a co-ax cable to the main box.

I found the Virgin wifi to be cack, so only use it as a cable modem feeding into a standalone wifi router and extender to make sure we have wifi all over the house, in the garage and down the bottom of the garden in the summer house.
 
Robborevolution said:
I know there has been a couple of threads on this in the past. If you have a decent Broadband speed is the picture quality on the Virgin 360 box as good as Sky? Contract due up this month and the Ultimate Volt package looks really good value. Already have Virgin broadband and my wife has an O2 sim only so that would be nearly £50 on its own. Sky package with all channels is probably going to be £75 on its own and that doesn’t include BT Sport. I have multi room but main concern is picture quality, have a decent UHD telly so don’t want to change and have a poor picture. Anyone experience of both and what do you think?
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I don't think the Virgin picture quality is anywhere near as good as Sky, and I had over 500mb connection on Virgin until I binned it.

From how my virgin (v6) looked to how my mates Sky Q looked, it was night and day. Even the virgin HD seemed worse than the Sky HD I had 10 years earlier and the standard channels were shocking, even compared to old terrestrial TV.

I'm not sure on the difference with 360 mind, but from what I've read it just seems like software/ speed for the interface (V6 was way worse than Sky Q), but don't know if they've done anything with the picture quality.

To me, the HD on virgin got worse over time, and many others seem to report the same thing, it's strange, as it should have got better, especially as TV's got better.

Your best bet would be to have a look round a mates house who has 360 HD, and then compare that to another with Sky HD, but make sure they've both got half decent TV's, of similar size.
 
Not much to choose between Sky Q and vIrgin 360 now( see Link ) . Broadband much better on Virgin Media but would recommend a Mesh Wi-Fi ( depending on house house/ build). The picture quality did used to be superior on Sky but their is not much between them now.
 
Pear-Drops said:
Beetroot......
Cancel and get wife to apply as new customer ?
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This is exactly what we done last year when our deal expired. Spent ages on the phone listening to an adviser telling us it wasn’t allowed as it’s on the property not the person. Put the phone down and done it all online in no time 👍
 
Lightweight said:
Not much to choose between Sky Q and vIrgin 360 now( see Link ) . Broadband much better on Virgin Media but would recommend a Mesh Wi-Fi ( depending on house house/ build). The picture quality did used to be superior on Sky but their is not much between them now.
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Don't confuse that by thinking that because they both do HD and 4k, that they're both equal, as they're not, it doesn't work like that. The article doesn't compare actual picture quality, just whether they're 4k or HD capable etc.

It's like if you compare a decent HD TV with a crap one, they're both HD, but won't look anywhere near the same.

Same as you can send a crap quality image and scale it to a HD resolution, and you can send a decent quality image, that hasn't been scaled etc, they're both "HD", but the latter will look a lot better.

To me the problem is not so much the Virgin boxes, it's what they're doing to compress the signal, so it takes up minimal bandwidth going down the fibre line.
 
Cheers to everyone for the replies so far, seems to be a real difference in opinions. Andy-W, I think your suggestion is probably the best bet. Find someone who has it and have a look. The picture quality matters a lot to me so wouldn‘t really want to see a dip. I have had a quote from Virgin and reckon overall it could save me over £30 a month. Do have a mesh system to strengthen broadband around the house
 
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Andy_W said:
Don't confuse that by thinking that because they both do HD and 4k, that they're both equal, as they're not, it doesn't work like that. The article doesn't compare actual picture quality, just whether they're 4k or HD capable etc.

It's like if you compare a decent HD TV with a crap one, they're both HD, but won't look anywhere near the same.

Same as you can send a crap quality image and scale it to a HD resolution, and you can send a decent quality image, that hasn't been scaled etc, they're both "HD", but the latter will look a lot better.

To me the problem is not so much the Virgin boxes, it's what they're doing to compress the signal, so it takes up minimal bandwidth going down the fibre line.
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The link was comparison for the general difference between Sky and Virgin Media as the op is changing his entire package.
By your original post you have no experience of the the Virgin Media 360 box so not sure how you can pass opinion on it. I work in for a broadcast company and have 30 plus years working on various radio ( uhf/ vhf / microwave) system and TV broadcast. We have tested the delivery of broadcasts through most providers and provided people calibrate the TV correctly and the input is error free there is very little difference between the major providers.
The problem you may encounter if you check Virgin Media picture quality on a mates TV is if they have not spent time setting up their system correctly.
 
Lightweight said:
The link was comparison for the general difference between Sky and Virgin Media as the op is changing his entire package.
By your original post you have no experience of the the Virgin Media 360 box so not sure how you can pass opinion on it. I work in for a broadcast company and have 30 plus years working on various radio ( uhf/ vhf / microwave) system and TV broadcast. We have tested the delivery of broadcasts through most providers and provided people calibrate the TV correctly and the input is error free there is very little difference between the major providers.
The problem you may encounter if you check Virgin Media picture quality on a mates TV is if they have not spent time setting up their system correctly.
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Fair enough, I was posting mainly about the picture quality.

Aye, I've got comms experience too, mainly V/UHF radio, GPS and radar etc among others, but not TV broadcasts which are mainly UHF I think?

I've got plenty of experience on their and sky's HD offering though, they've booth been doing both for ages (17 years), and Virgin's picture quality for what they call HD looks worse, and for me was worse than what sky were showing many years earlier and got no better with all the virgin boxes up to V6. This was in numerous premises, with numerous TV's. In fact I don't think I've ever seen a virgin HD picture, look as good as a sky HD picture. I've had virgin for maybe 2/3 of that time too. I'm not pro sky either!

The HD quality on the V6 should have easily been as good as sky's HD, for the last decade, as both boxes could easily handle the processing of them, so it must come down to signal, what they're doing to it when they send it/ before it gets to the box, or how they set the box up? I can't imagine it's so much the setup of the TV, other than contrast and brightness etc, they can't polish a turd so to speak, so can't really improve the quality of a signal which has already been sent. There was also noticeable difference with HD content on youtube or whatever, compared to the HD sports for example.

They may have changed their game with the signal they send mind, with the 360 rollout, and with broadband speeds increasing, giving more bandwidth, but this would surely also improve the signal to V6 boxes, which to me still looks no different from last year to last week.

May be different on FTTP, but not sure if Virgin even do this en-masse yet, from what I've seen it's mostly FTTC, so the rest of the way to your house is coax and maybe subject to interference (with that bit being analogue), or losses going from Digital>Analgoue>Digital. Obviously FTTP doesn't get effected in this way. Obviously sky is through the dish, so just digital, and will either work or it won't. You either get full good signal, half a signal or none, it shouldn't degrade for the bits you see etc, and the signal from the satellites is always the best it can send (I think).

Virgin broadband is far better and their packages seem better value and easier to get a deal too if you live in Teesside, as nearly everyone knows someone who works in the call centre.

Can't comment on the menu/ system on the 360, as not used it, but Sky Q was/ is much better than V6.
 
Andy_W said:
Fair enough, I was posting mainly about the picture quality.

Aye, I've got comms experience too, mainly V/UHF radio, GPS and radar etc among others, but not TV broadcasts which are mainly UHF I think?

I've got plenty of experience on their and sky's HD offering though, they've booth been doing both for ages (17 years), and Virgin's picture quality for what they call HD looks worse, and for me was worse than what sky were showing many years earlier and got no better with all the virgin boxes up to V6. This was in numerous premises, with numerous TV's. In fact I don't think I've ever seen a virgin HD picture, look as good as a sky HD picture. I've had virgin for maybe 2/3 of that time too. I'm not pro sky either!

The HD quality on the V6 should have easily been as good as sky's HD, for the last decade, as both boxes could easily handle the processing of them, so it must come down to signal, what they're doing to it when they send it/ before it gets to the box, or how they set the box up? I can't imagine it's so much the setup of the TV, other than contrast and brightness etc, they can't polish a turd so to speak, so can't really improve the quality of a signal which has already been sent. There was also noticeable difference with HD content on youtube or whatever, compared to the HD sports for example.

They may have changed their game with the signal they send mind, with the 360 rollout, and with broadband speeds increasing, giving more bandwidth, but this would surely also improve the signal to V6 boxes, which to me still looks no different from last year to last week.

May be different on FTTP, but not sure if Virgin even do this en-masse yet, from what I've seen it's mostly FTTC, so the rest of the way to your house is coax and maybe subject to interference (with that bit being analogue), or losses going from Digital>Analgoue>Digital. Obviously FTTP doesn't get effected in this way. Obviously sky is through the dish, so just digital, and will either work or it won't. You either get full good signal, half a signal or none, it shouldn't degrade for the bits you see etc, and the signal from the satellites is always the best it can send (I think).

Virgin broadband is far better and their packages seem better value and easier to get a deal too if you live in Teesside, as nearly everyone knows someone who works in the call centre.

Can't comment on the menu/ system on the 360, as not used it, but Sky Q was/ is much better than V6.
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Agree with most of that.

Historically SKY HD picture quality was significantly better for years but the gaps have been closing for a number of years. If you are an existing Sky customer you will appreciate the menu structure and find the Virgin Media interface clunky but there is an in house team who are testing and making constant adjustments to improve the customer experience which is beginning to bear fruit For Virgin Media.

New build on most of Virgin Media is FTTP but existing and areas still use FTTC. Both BT and Virgin Media are building new networks and I know the VM new network will offer 10Gbps asynchronous upstream and downstream by 2028 Link
 
Lightweight said:
Agree with most of that.

Historically SKY HD picture quality was significantly better for years but the gaps have been closing for a number of years. If you are an existing Sky customer you will appreciate the menu structure and find the Virgin Media interface clunky but there is an in house team who are testing and making constant adjustments to improve the customer experience which is beginning to bear fruit For Virgin Media.

New build on most of Virgin Media is FTTP but existing and areas still use FTTC. Both BT and Virgin Media are building new networks and I know the VM new network will offer 10Gbps asynchronous upstream and downstream by 2028 Link
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My bet is they've increase bandwidth dedicated to the signal, as broadband speeds have gone up, mine went from 50mb, to 100mb and then to 500mb, but I didn't notice any increase in picture quality, and that's with improving TV's. I suppose increasing TV sizes could offset that mind, as HD resolution on a 40" TV would look better than HD resolution on a 80" TV, from the same distance.

I suppose the bandwidth for the TV signal may not change per property though, and they would have to cater the signal to the lower speeds so they actually could still receive the signal at those low speeds. Then once the lower end improves, they can scale that up.

VM need to sort out their call centres and nuisance calls, the guys in the UK are great on the whole, but sometimes it takes a fair effort to get to speak to them, unless you cancel of course and get through to retentions which I think is all UK based.

Glad that FTTP is becoming standard on new builds (mine is with BT now), and hopefully they're not monopolising it like they used to, where it was either BT or Virgin fibre, but never both. There were some dodgy things going on there, where one wouldn't let the other have infrastructure on the same site, and then once the roads were tarmacked the development ended up being locked/ protected for a number of years (as there is/was a ban on excavating tarmac within a number of years of it being laid, unless for an emergency). There should be both systems cabled up at least, even if they're not both installed with the hardware in the premises, but I still don't think this is happening.

Broadband (and wireless broadband) speeds are both increasing at a rate where they are now easily able to handle the best picture quality that the eye can see, and still only take up a tiny part of the bandwidth. Now we just need more recording/ content/ signals sent out in 4k/8k etc, but I won't hold my breath on that.
 
“I suppose the bandwidth for the TV signal may not change per property though, and they would have to cater the signal to the lower speeds so they actually could still receive the signal at those low speeds. Then once the lower end improves, they can scale that up.”

The way the VM signal works is everyone receives the same upstream (15 to 65/85 MHz) and downstream (120MHz ro 1200Mhz ) using DOCSiS. The CMTS set the speeds for each speed profile as per customer packages by sending a config to the cable modem. The TV signals are on separate QAM channels within the downstream.
 
There shouldn't be much difference between sky and virgin, really HD should be the minimum standard now its not high end at all. Its UHD and HDR where its at in terms of high quality. If you have a decent 4k tv with proper HDR its fantastic, some of the stuff on iPlayer like the Attenborough nature docs look superb. Incidentally i was surprised to see that now some iptv channels as well as being in 4K the HDR logo was appearing on my tv to indicate they were in HDR as well.
 
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