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Review by sharon - 22 February 2008
This service is rubbish. The amount of times I sit down to watch telly and the channels are unavailable. Very annoying. On demand is just a joke. I wouldn't bother....
Sharon's rating:

Review by andy fisher - 16 February 2008
Well i have now had virgin media for several years. When we originaly got it it was NTL who to be honest where the best service you could possibly ask for. there was never any problems untill my branson came along and decided to take over the company and then virgin "grabage" media was created. From then on the modem has broken, they introduced quotas on bandwidth during peak times, there is endless service cut outs (just look on the live service status on there site) and all together a poor service and not to mention they now charge premium rate lines if u want your brodband fixed HAHA. Just dont bother with there broadband but the tv service is pretty good but overall poor service We where going to move to sky but thats another story
Andy fisher's rating:

Review by pat d. - 16 February 2008
Broadband is great, likewise the phone, TVneeds investment in better IT. Tends to need to have the set-top box`rebooted very frequently sometimes daily when it has lost information, freezes or in some other way does not respond. The customer service has been good and average depending on the engineer. Telephone message at the start of costomer enquiries is just annoying!!
Pat d.'s rating:

Review by jason c - 12 February 2008
the main issue with my virgin is that you never know what the bill is about, it never comes the same month to month, there always seems to be some additional charge for something with no explanation. how you supposed to manage a account the even virgin can't manage???
Jason c's rating:

Review by Brian - 24 January 2008
Very disappointed at the start,enginer fixed up the broadband in ten minutes. He left then it started from one helper to another,this went for approx.two hour's gave in phoned around and got a computer man in it took him twenty min. to get me up and running a cost of £30.00 well worth it to stop the worry. Since I have been on broadband its another world ,hard to explain that it is just great I shall split the rating into two parts 2 for uploading the system and 5 for the product
Brian's rating:

Review by Rodger - 21 January 2008
I've been with Virgin for years, and although it's never been the cheapest, it has it's advantages such as Unlimited useage. I've now got Phone and Broadband bundled together, and whilst I pay for an 8Mbps service, it regularly runs like a snail. I've complained to Virgin so many times it's unbelievable, and they always ask me to jump through hoops just to prove to them that it's their problem. Even then they refuse to do anything about it. I'm in a 12 month contract which expires soon, and when it does, I'll be moving on. I don't mind paying for a good service, but I refuse to pay for a poor service and even poorer support (at Premium rate telephone). They've got worse.
Rodger's rating:

Review by d marsden - 31 December 2007
i have just got virgin media broadband two weeks ago seems slow.i need to put a wireless router on so the kids laptop can work on the net .so i whent out and got rangemax;net wireless-n cable router for cable broadband. inserted disk ERROR. NO ip address NOip subnet mask and no gateway ip address. do you think virgin media broadband has not sent me this and why
D marsden's rating:

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Virgin Media

WHAT IS VIRGIN MEDIA TV?

With its fingers in virtually all pies, it was inevitable that Virgin would get involved in the Digital TV market. Its new service has a comprehensive and reasonably-priced range of offers to suit you, whether you're a casual television fan or a full-blown couch potato. All services are provided via cable, so if you are not keen to adorn your home with a dish and you live in a cable-connected area, this could be the perfect service for you.

CHANNELS, GLORIOUS CHANNELS.

The number of channels to which you have access depends on how much you pay. A simple concept. The three packages they offer are helpfully named M (for Medium), Large (for Large) and XL (for the couch potatoes!). The prices (provided you are a Virgin telephone subscriber) range from absolutely nothing up to £20.50 for the heftiest package.

M - Excluding costs for the extra V+ and On-Demand services, this service is free to all Virgin telephone subscribers. It has around 35 channels like E4 and Film4, so approximates to the Freeview package. The differences between the two are to be found in the installation charge you'll pay with Virgin (make sure you read the small print carefully), and on the more positive side, technical support 24 hours a day and the all important chance to access the V+ and on-demand services (see below for details).

L - Despite the Large label, the cost of this service is actually fairly minimal. For £11.50 a month you get the standard channels of the M package, plus another 50 or so. These extras include big favourites like Eurosport and Discovery Channel.

XL - This hefty package costs £20.50 for telephone subscribers and includes over 120 channels including National Geographic, The Disney Channel and 6 Sesanta sports channels. The other advantage is that if you take the L option, you don't pay extra for the V+ service. You pay installation, but monthly subscriptions are waved for you. It's worth noting that if you want to see every single Premiership game, then you'll still need to pay more. In total you'd need to shell out £47 a month, for the XL TV package, the phone service and Sky Sports. Virgin claim that they are in fact the cheapest provider of Sky Sports, so watch this space for a price war...

WHAT YOU WANT, WHEN YOU WANT IT - Virgin Central, V+ and On-Demand

Virgin Central is a rather special channel which is included on all of the above packages. It is almost like a free taster of the luxuries of on-demand. Whenever you flick to 119, there will be 6 programmes raring and waiting to go for you. The selection is changed frequently, and sparkles with TV gems such as Nip/Tuck and Spooks.

V+ on the other hand does cost. And fairly heftily so. The installation costs are £150, and then unless you take the L package, you'll pay an extra £5 subscription. Like the BT Vision box (installation for which is only £30 incidentally) V+ allows you to pause, rewind and record live television programmes. Imagine an evening full of your favourite television, all on at the same time... With V+ you have the best chance of catching it all! You can simultaneously record two programmes and watch a third, which goes above and beyond the capability of the BT Vision box.

On-Demand Virgin have amassed an impressive selection of on-demand music, programmes and films. To be precise, there are over 500 films to watch costing £1.75 for a classic and £3.50 for new releases.

HOW DO I GET A PIECE OF THE ACTION?

The Virgin Media website will tell you whether the area where you live is eligible for this cable service. Even if you aren't, don't panic since they will be extending the service out to non-cable areas in the near future.

If you are attracted by the Virgin media offering, and want to take advantage of the prices quoted here, you'll need to switch your telephone provider to Virgin too. This is the same as the BT deal, and is actually fairly common these days.

IS VIRGIN MEDIA FOR ME?

The most dedicated TV and Sports fans will undoubtedly be attracted to the reasonably priced subscriptions from Virgin Media. However if you are keen on the stop/start V+ function, you may be put off by the high installation costs. They claim they don't impose any equipment costs, which sets them apart form Sky and BT, but that's a nonsense when the installation costs are so high.

However, if you want the basic package of the standard 35 Freeview channels, this could be a better deal than going out and buying your own digital set-top box. At least you have professional installation and on-going technical support.