New Virgin Box

I clicked here expecting a review on the new Tivo box...

Sorry Rackkit, hopefully someone out there can help both of us.

Well on the basis the standard tivo is slower than continental shift patterns, I am going to throw it out there and guess it is indeed faster.

garyi posted:

Well on the basis the standard tivo is slower than continental shift patterns,

Ah so it's not just mine then. 

I've taken the plunge and ordered one. If anyone's interested I'll let you know how it goes, although its not due for another month.

Yes please, I get very frustrated by the lethargic operation of my box. What's more, as it's not very intuitive, press a button by mistake and it takes ages to get back to where you want to be. Aargh!

For anyone with the TiVo box, how do you find it loading up iPlayer etc ?

Ours takes an age so just wondered if that's par for the course or we need to get a technician out. Works fine otherwise, but just seems a bit slow do anything with catchup. 

James

See GARYI's post above. that sums up my experience too, especially iPlayer. The new box (V6) connects to your hub so should be much faster.

I've got two coming on Thursday and I'm told they are lightening fast

james n posted:

For anyone with the TiVo box, how do you find it loading up iPlayer etc ?

Ours takes an age so just wondered if that's par for the course or we need to get a technician out. Works fine otherwise, but just seems a bit slow do anything with catchup. 

James

 

I have two and both are glacial. Having moved from SKY last year I am distinctly unimpressed with Virgin telly. Excellent broadband. Lousy TV.

I choose to watch iplayer etc. through Amazon fire. It's very quick and can use either the Amazon remote (with voice control no less, that works incredibly well) or through the iphone app which also works right out of the box too. Wayyyy better than Virgin/Tivo.

+1 on the remote control, I have a Fire TV and the voice control is superb

I was out of contract so had a chat with the retentions dept today. Result being a decent reduction on the monthly bill and a V6 box arriving on Tuesday morning to replace this laggy & slow Tivo box. Looking forward to it so long as there aren't any set up or connection issues. 

New box is excellent if anyone is still interested. They've done a great job - pity it took a threat to leave to get the bloody thing. 

Don't consider Virgin unless you're getting this new V6 box. 

I had a Superhub 3 and 2 V6 boxes installed today.  To start with the engineer, a contractor working on behalf of Viirgin,  was useless, failed to set the V6 boxes up properly, tried to tell me he had no Ethernet cables on his van because they were out of stock and left without giving me the proper remote controls.  He also messed up my network but to be fair that was fairly inevitable.

Once I had fettled the networks and set the boxes up properly it became clear that the Superhub 3 is, in my network, a huge step forward over the SH2.  Much quicker over wifi and I am getting over 210 meg for the first time in a long time.  Really impressed with it.

The V6 boxes, once I got them talking to one another, are also excellent.  Much faster than the TiVo, and they talk together really well so that you can watch anything recorded in any room in any room, pause to downstairs and continue watching upstairs etc etc.  Again really impressed.

Couple of things to be aware of though, my V6 box will not play nice with a little 10/100 switch I had in my living room, appears to be a common problem, and once I realised what it was I was able to put in a different gigabit switch and it worked fine.  The engineers appear to be paid by the box and they do the quickest install possible which means to get full benefit from the V6 boxes you have to be prepared to set them up yourself.

Its not night and days difference, they still look the same on the screen, but the user experience and their ability to play toegther and with your mobile devices is a big plus.

Virgin sent the engineer back with two remotes who has just turned up and complained that he had to drive for an hour to pick some up - makes me wonder why he didn't just put them on his van in the first place.  Anyway, remote is smaller and more intelligent than the original and doesn't require line of site enabling the boxes to be hidden away.  They also have a find my remote function which is useful when you live with a 13 year old who hides them

dayjay posted:

Virgin sent the engineer back with two remotes who has just turned up and complained that he had to drive for an hour to pick some up - makes me wonder why he didn't just put them on his van in the first place.  Anyway, remote is smaller and more intelligent than the original and doesn't require line of site enabling the boxes to be hidden away.  They also have a find my remote function which is useful when you live with a 13 year old who hides them

Well that's his own fault!

I didn't get off to the best start with the lad who installed mine. He walked straight into the lounge in his dirty boots! 

Where do Virgin get these guys from? 

Still, at least the install was straight forward. I already had ethernet from the Apple router (i use the Superhub 3 in modem mode) so that things easy enough for him. 

I did need another TOSLINK cable to connect up to the AV2 though as the V6 box uses a different type of socket. 

dayjay posted:

Virgin sent the engineer back with two remotes who has just turned up and complained that he had to drive for an hour to pick some up - makes me wonder why he didn't just put them on his van in the first place.  Anyway, remote is smaller and more intelligent than the original and doesn't require line of site enabling the boxes to be hidden away.  They also have a find my remote function which is useful when you live with a 13 year old who hides them

Sounds like you won't be having .............

Tivo box is indeed slow to get to things like iPlayer etc. Right now, I don't plan on changing as I have so many films on it - making the most of the half-price offer from Virgin - and I think I'd lose them all of I switched boxes!!

Wouldn't I??

We'll probably look to ditch the TiVo box when the contract is up. For what we watch, Freeview would do the job and Virgin's prices just continually creep up for no real gain. Saying that internet is always great and over the 11 years we've been with Virgin we've had relatively few problems. 

I must disagree concerning price increases, I’ve found the opposite.

 A couple of months ago virgin told me my package was going up from about £53 to £73, my 12 months free line rental had come to an end. (XL TV, superfibre 50, virgin phone/line rental.

I phoned them up and told them it was far to expensive, the girl asked to hold for a few minutes while she sorted out a cheaper price. To my surprise she came back with a total cost for the same package of £40/months for a period of 18 months.

 I was surprised at the price I’m now paying and surprised I didn’t have to go through the usual rigmarole of threatening to leave, leaving, receiving a call or two from the retentions department offering me a reduction.

With regards to the speed on Tivo, catch up is extremely slow, but I don’t find changing channels is that slow, I timed it the other day at 10 seconds using my favourite’s folder.

I've always found catch up very slow particlarly iPlayer. Also navigating between menus is usually very slow, changing channels not always so bad. My V6 is coming on Friday, do they install a Hub3 as a matter of course or choice?

If you want to speed up the Tivo box, remove the card in the back, power down for a minute and reboot.

 I found it speeds up scrolling through the menus and channel changing, but doesn’t speed up iplayer.

fatcat posted:

I must disagree concerning price increases, I’ve found the opposite.

 A couple of months ago virgin told me my package was going up from about £53 to £73, my 12 months free line rental had come to an end. (XL TV, superfibre 50, virgin phone/line rental.

I phoned them up and told them it was far to expensive, the girl asked to hold for a few minutes while she sorted out a cheaper price. To my surprise she came back with a total cost for the same package of £40/months for a period of 18 months. 

Did they fix the cost at £40 for the whole 18 months or just started you off again at that reduced rate ?

James.

The girl on the phone said the price was fixed for 18 months. But looking at the contract, the period states 12 months, but it also states the charge during the promotional period is £40 and the promotional period is 18 months.

Virgin’s pricing policy seems baffling to me. If they’d have sent me a letter saying they could extend the free line rental for a further 12 months’ I’d have quite happily continued paying £53 a month. But as it is I’m now paying £40.

I phoned up to query my cost of 110 quid per month and they promptly dropped it to 94 quid, added in HD sport and film channels, increased my broadband speed to 200meg and added in free mid week calls.  He also gave me a number to call in October to have it reviewed again and gauranteed it will not go any higher at review.  I got two V6 boxes and a Superhub 3 included in the deal which have improved things no end