The Virgin Media Thread

Let me think - I got it when I moved into my current house, so around 8 years ago!

I don't expect them to keep upgrading my box annually, but as a regular paying customer, surely I should not have to wait until I've virtually grown into the sofa before the menu loads? My friend recently got Virgin, and he has a much, much faster box than me.

Also, minor complaint really, but I wish they'd make the menus look nicer. I liked the old blue ones. Maybe the same but black would be good.

Anyway.

I've got the V+ box and it's probably as slow as your old C&W box. Another gripe I have with it, is that at times when I press a button on the remote control, it'll do something else ie pressing the volume up button whill change the channel. Great!

stv has gone black (but with sound) for the third time. This seems to happen if I dare leave the box on without a reboot for a week. What a sin.

That happens when the remote control batteries are running out. Change the batteries and it should fix it.

They were new batteries when we put them in. I think it is a problem with the box as my friend has the same problem.

So I see Virgin now want to pollute my beautiful new samsung box by peddling their crappy challenge jackpot channel.

after threatening people with disconnection, having dodgy broadband ads and now jumping on the gambling bandwagon everyone else has already fallen off, I really do wonder who is running the company.

Or as their PR man put it "an exciting way for viewers to interact with the Challenge Brand in the 21st Century."

I think it's good that Virgin are starting to use their interactive technology, as it's severely lagging behind Sky and even Freeview.

I think this is only 'interactive' in the same way as making a phone call is interactive. I don't think it uses the STB technology in any way.

Its good to see Challenge going back to an updated version of what they used to do though, phone-in competitions. I'd much rather they do this than make stuff like "Its not what you know" or "Chris Tarrent's Its not what you know" as it later became known.

It will probably do quite well too. Virgin will likely give it a good EPG position, it will be cross promoted on Challenge/Bravo etc and I don't think Virgin Media customers have seen many of these types of channels before, so there is also the novelty of it all too.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/7/7f/Zippy.jpg/250px-Zippy.jpg

Him.

Either way, has anyone else had problems with both Virgin TV and Internet lately? Frequently I've had problems when the picture has broken up (often in the middle of a redraw) and the sound has stopped, and sometimes my modem has suddenly decided it'll lose my IP address. It did so yesterday, in fact.

Considering they fib about how much speed is affected by distance from the exchange, and that they also think it's acceptable to 'prioritise' traffic before dropping the connection when the DHCP server is down, I think their service is becoming quite depressingly poor.

I have felt that there has been more general rubbishness with the broadband lately - random DNS problems for minutes at a time, but this might just be some halo effect from everyone mourning the demise of the glorious Telewest days of old, where the same people probably complained about the service just as much.

That being said, I just had VM installed in my new house yesterday, at the same rated speed as my last place, where I've been with Telewest/VM's BB for about 8 years, and it did seem noticeably faster. This wasn't exactly an in-depth study though.

I don't have many complaints about Virgin, however, I have noticed recently that at around certain times the picture freezes, for upto a minute sometimes, at about 11pm to 12 am. As it's so frequent it must be due to something technical I imagine.