Sky or Virgin or BT Vision?

Posted by: JAB on 12 February 2009

Hi guys

I'm about to move house so will need a phone line, broadband and maybe telly package. any experience with any of the above?
Thanks
Josh
Posted on: 12 February 2009 by djh1697
I'd use different providers for different things! BT for the telephone, they have been doing it for decades. They don't cut you off so quick when you can't pay your bill. Only thing is you'll have to pay to ring Sky TV.

TV, I would go for sky, simply because they are the only provder with a HD feed!
Posted on: 12 February 2009 by JAB
although with sky the line rental and broadband are incredibly good value it seems.
Posted on: 12 February 2009 by Jay
We are moving soon too and have been considering the options.

I think we will plum for sky hd, bb and maybe even the line and calls.

we have Virgin+ (with is HD but with only 1 channel!) and it's been good. setanta is incl which is nice but I want a change..
Posted on: 12 February 2009 by Tony Lockhart
We're moving at the end of the month too!
We will probably stay with BT for phone and broadband (so easy to carry over the current contract, and no complaints so far about service)and also stay with Freeview. The new pad does have a Sky dish already, so we may go with Freesat... the cheapest way to get HD.
Posted on: 13 February 2009 by Occean
I would also suggest Sky - is has by far the best HD feeds and with the phone and broadband package is pretty good value.
Posted on: 13 February 2009 by TomK
We went with Telewest (now Virgin) a few years ago because they were offering phone and cable TV for less than BT was charging for the phone. We later added Blueyonder broadband.

Phone is reliable and still inexpensive (I think - haven't compared for a while). However their accounts department acts far too quickly. Several times we've received reminders before we've actually received the initial bill, and we've been disconnected a few times for being no more than a day or two late with payment.

TV only has one HD channel (BBC HD) so Sky wins there but there's a useful catch up feature which lets you watch a large selection of programmes for a week after first broadcast. There's also a load of on demand stuff. I think it's better than Sky's equivalent. The V+ box is better than basic Sky+ (three tuners, 160GB HD).

Broadband is superb though. We're now at 20Mbits/sec and regularly achieve 16+ according to my benchmarking packages. It's also approaching 100% availability. I can't remember the last time there was a problem with it.
Posted on: 13 February 2009 by Nigel 66
Like DJH I also use different providers for different services.

TV - consider Freesat. I've got the Humax HD PVR which has a large storage capacity, good SD picture and HD channels as well (albeit only BBC & ITV at the moment - the 6 Nations looks good in HD !). Might not have the HD content/channel numbers of Sky but I refuse to pay their ridiculous monthly subscriptions !