[Archived] Best Broadband/ Phone & Tv

[Hughesy]

Im looking to get the best deal I can.

Im thinking sky (inc sports), phone & broadband. Whats the best deal out there - anyone know? They dont have to be with the same company.

Sky offered me £35.50 for Sports & Variety package, with a free Sky+ box.

[Sandiway Blue]

Im looking to get the best deal I can.

Im thinking sky (inc sports), phone & broadband. Whats the best deal out there - anyone know? They dont have to be with the same company.

Sky offered me £35.50 for Sports & Variety package, with a free Sky+ box.

We have sky for tv but our phone and broadband is with virgin.£30 on average per month for line rental,calls and 10mb broadband...

[Hughesy]

Sky offered 20mb, unlimited download broadband for £10 and £10 for line rental that included free unlimted uk evening and weekend calls.

[dj54nna]

Sky offered 20mb, unlimited download broadband for £10 and £10 for line rental that included free unlimted uk evening and weekend calls.

I'd like to see you get 20mb from a DSL line (through your phone). Most broadband companies go through a BT leased line and hardly any actually reach near what they offer.

With cable you'll get a much better broadband speed.

Rest of the Sky deal sounds sweet though. Can't beat their tv package.

[American]

I'd like to see you get 20mb from a DSL line (through your phone). Most broadband companies go through a BT leased line and hardly any actually reach near what they offer.

With cable you'll get a much better broadband speed.

Rest of the Sky deal sounds sweet though. Can't beat their tv package.

Not sure my exact speed, but I do get some really good download times, up to 400 kb/s at times, on my Sky broadband, through a BT line.

Edit: Clocking 617 kb/s right now on something.

[Hughesy]

I have 02 broadband currently at my girlfriends and download speeds of 700-800kbs through a BT phone line.

So would Phone & Broadband be better going through Virgin you saying?

[Big Fat Sam]

Im looking to get the best deal I can.

Im thinking sky (inc sports), phone & broadband. Whats the best deal out there - anyone know? They dont have to be with the same company.

Sky offered me £35.50 for Sports & Variety package, with a free Sky+ box.

What do you want to do Hughesy???? If you download a lot Virgin is not the answer, ours always drops towards the end of the month. But we all download a lot of stuff. 100 GB + a month. Tiscali was always great back home never one issue, but no idea what they are like now.

Who ever you go with keep a eye on your line speed the buggers will try anything.

10Mb virgin line we have is never above 6Mb and when we started on it it was 1-2Mb alot of phone calls and money later we got nearer what we where supposed to have, it was serious hassle.

[Hughesy]

Lots of downloading - at least 3-5g a day

[Big Fat Sam]

Lots of downloading - at least 3-5g a day

Every weekend mate without fail (sometimes sooner), our downloads drop from between 700-1Mb to 100Kb. I generally run two PC's at once with one more attached and if all three want to play say Iplayer It won't work, when it drops. They say its unlimited but when we got back from holiday having missed the first part of the week (thursday), we obviously had some catching up to do. Our connection did not drop at all till wednesday (so was good the whole weekend) then it went back down to about 100K till the end of the week.

Speed test generally says between 1.5-2 once limited, 250-400 up load. We pay for 10Mb unlimited. There customer Service is a Joke when we first got it we couldn't access works site at all, the speed was shocking google would take 30 secs. Cost about £20.00 in phone calls and some seriously frustrating calls, before they sorted it out, 6 weeks.

If your a downloader I don't reccomend Virgin, especially if your a member of a site.

[LeftWinger]

Get a Eurovox HD.

[Alan75]

Sky offered 20mb, unlimited download broadband for £10 and £10 for line rental that included free unlimted uk evening and weekend calls.

I changed from BT to Sky for cheeper Broadband - cant wait to get back to BT.

Speed and router problems with sky is unbelievably bad.

As the saying goes - you get what you pay for

[dazmaz]

having used to work at BT as customer service from the storys iv heard your best staying away from talk talk turd customer care and tend to tie you into contracts you didnt ask for, Virgin limit bandwidth for no reason, and Tiscali (from my own experience) are utter shyte. BT aint that good either (but i still get BB for free off them) and all i hear is glowing reports about sky.

what speeds are you reciving at the moment with o2? and what should it be up to? http://speedtest.net/ will tell you your speed. ill be honest you will never get 20MB on a BT matained line unless you live onto of the exchange (well not untill they finish rolling out fiber optics anyway) and you loose about 1.5MB speed for every mile away you are from the exchange. assuming you live in blackburn your exchange will be in town (near registry office to be exact)

[stuwilky]

If you arent a current subscriber - remember to use www.quidco.com or similar to get a few auid cashback - virgin currently give £150 for a new customer and sky were on £80 last time I looked!

[Hughesy]

Get a Eurovox HD.

WTF?

Cant get virgin tv or id of done the quidco deal.

02 broadband has been awesome for me, think li just get a BT line, 02 Broadband & Sky TV................oh and maybe Eurovox???????

[LeftWinger]

You'd need Virgin to get a Eurovox. They basically pick up all the channels even if you only have the basic TV package. The boxese themselves are not illegal, but it is illegal to watch the channels you haven't subscribed too. You've just got to make sure you remember to delete the channels you haven't paid for . They don't have any feedback on the boxes, so the only way Virgin would know you had one was if they physically saw it in your house.

[Big Fat Sam]

You'd need Virgin to get a Eurovox. They basically pick up all the channels even if you only have the basic TV package. The boxese themselves are not illegal, but it is illegal to watch the channels you haven't subscribed too. You've just got to make sure you remember to delete the channels you haven't paid for . They don't have any feedback on the boxes, so the only way Virgin would know you had one was if they physically saw it in your house.

Tell me more????

How many channels do you get???

Perhaps there is a reason to have virgin, is it like having the old black box you attached to the back of the box???

[Hughesy]

Ah that box - yeah iv heard about them before. Do the cards not get blocked though? And are you sure that there is no feedback to virgin??

[Jim J]

You'd need Virgin to get a Eurovox. They basically pick up all the channels even if you only have the basic TV package. The boxese themselves are not illegal, but it is illegal to watch the channels you haven't subscribed too. You've just got to make sure you remember to delete the channels you haven't paid for . They don't have any feedback on the boxes, so the only way Virgin would know you had one was if they physically saw it in your house.

Are you able to record one channel and watch another like with Sky+?

[LeftWinger]

A friend of mine has the old model.

Basically you get all the channels you can get through Virgin. You also get the pay per view stuff for free too – which is great for boxing. There is a newer model out the EX7000 HD which is the same thing but with HD capability and you can also record to it and pause/re-wind etc. I’m not sure if you can record one channel and watch another like Sky+ or not. They occasionally roll the keys on them, which means you either have to download firmware or manually input two codes (very easy to find you can get a toolbar on your pc). They haven’t changed the codes since May though – and even when they do it just takes a couple of minutes to update the thing. If you do look for one, I’d recommend reading the forums on techwatch for more info. You need to make sure you get a genuine box and not a cloned one – they’ll tell you where you can get one. As I said, my friend has had one for 2 years and gets absolutely everything for the cost of the basic tv package on Virgin. One thing it does lack is the red button features like you get on Sky – but beggars can’t be choosers.

There is definitely no feed back feature on it to Virgin.

[Glenn]

<!--quoteo(post=810641:date=Aug 20 2009, 21:45 :name=Hughesy)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Hughesy @ Aug 20 2009, 21:45 ) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=810641"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Sky offered 20mb, unlimited download broadband for £10 and £10 for line rental that included free unlimted uk evening and weekend calls.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->

I changed from BT to Sky for cheeper Broadband - cant wait to get back to BT.

Speed and router problems with sky is unbelievably bad.

As the saying goes - you get what you pay for

Sorry to hear about that Alan. When I recently became redundant I tried to save money wherever I could and one of those things was switch my BT Phone and Demon Broadband to Sky (as well cancelling Sky Sports and Movies), the switch over took around 3 weeks, but I managed to save a total of £30 a month on the broadband and phone, got three months free line rental, free evening and weekend calls and my rather flaky broadband became rock solid. I'm not just really annoyed I didn't do it years ago.

Based on my own experiences alone I'd definitely recommend it to others.

More Info of the package I got here.

[adopted scouser]

When I moved into my new flat I ordered it from Tiscali. £14.99 a month but they pay the line rental.

I'm getting 3.5 to 4.0 meg connection speed for £2.49 a month. I've got Sky HD and all that but their broadband is a bit cack.

[Dan Furness]

Cant look any further than Virgin Media. By far the fastest line speed out there and once they put that cable into your house no need to pay the monopoly that is Sky £££££'s for their movie channels and sports ha ha ha

A friend of mine has the old model.

Basically you get all the channels you can get through Virgin. You also get the pay per view stuff for free too – which is great for boxing. There is a newer model out the EX7000 HD which is the same thing but with HD capability and you can also record to it and pause/re-wind etc. I’m not sure if you can record one channel and watch another like Sky+ or not. They occasionally roll the keys on them, which means you either have to download firmware or manually input two codes (very easy to find you can get a toolbar on your pc). They haven’t changed the codes since May though – and even when they do it just takes a couple of minutes to update the thing. If you do look for one, I’d recommend reading the forums on techwatch for more info. You need to make sure you get a genuine box and not a cloned one – they’ll tell you where you can get one. As I said, my friend has had one for 2 years and gets absolutely everything for the cost of the basic tv package on Virgin. One thing it does lack is the red button features like you get on Sky – but beggars can’t be choosers.

There is definitely no feed back feature on it to Virgin.

Didn't see this response before I wrote mine. Good explanation on something that we should not be penalised for mentioning as the boxes themselves are not illegal - only once you modify them are they.

[Alan75]

Sorry to hear about that Alan. When I recently became redundant I tried to save money wherever I could and one of those things was switch my BT Phone and Demon Broadband to Sky (as well cancelling Sky Sports and Movies), the switch over took around 3 weeks, but I managed to save a total of £30 a month on the broadband and phone, got three months free line rental, free evening and weekend calls and my rather flaky broadband became rock solid. I'm not just really annoyed I didn't do it years ago.

Based on my own experiences alone I'd definitely recommend it to others.

More Info of the package I got here.

To be fair, since my original post in August my Sky Broadband speed has improved dramatically in the last month and touch woood loss of connection has been very rare. If it continues like this I shant be reverting back to BT, as similar to you I'm saving in the region of £30 a month for broadband and phone line.

Hope to job search is going well.

[Glenn]

Hope to job search is going well.

I'll be self employed from 1st Dec (the stupid terms of my redundancy means there is no financial incentive to earn before then), so whilst I still read the job ads, finding full time employment (rather than freelancing) is very much plan b.

Oh course, it also means that I have no contractual complications with being involved with this site any more

Anyway, to keep this on track. I love my iPhone and wouldn't want to be without it. Between it and various google mobile sites, I've never been so organised.

[American]

Aren't most Sky phone/broadband connections through BT anyhow?

I love my Sky connection here, super fast speed on downloading and page loading. Ran one of those tester things a short while back and I was above average for the area.