Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!
More Virgin Trickery
Some more Virgin 'magicks': One good: one not so good
First the good.
In my ongoing quest to get a consistently decent internet connection, my conversation with Virginindia a week or so back resulted in another piece of equipment arriving at my door. This time it was a new Virgin Hub which replaces modem and wifi with a single piece of equipment (just adding the link there, I see there's also a 'Super Hub'!).
Scepticism about the likely efficacy of this new wunderbox and reluctance to spend the inevitable hour or so with Virginindia getting it working means I've dragged my feet over connecting it. I did so this morning with heavy heart and after a frustrating 90 minutes, it's connected, channel selected as guided, and it does seem to be giving me a better connection.
Virigin seem to give you a piece of equipment as if it cost no more than a second hand beach novel. So, if you're having connectivity issues, talk to Virgin and tell them your modem keeps going off and I imagine it won't be hard to finesse a new Virigin Hub.
Now the bad.
As part of Virgin's 'We love you really' package to me on my last complaint to them, they sold me a new Virgin Tivo at the knockdown price of £50 (free to new customers). I've never really liked the V+ Box so I was happy to take up their offer. Happy until I started using it, that is.
First, I'm not that sure about the user interface. It strikes me as a bit of a dog's breakfast; it's half Tivo and half Virgin.The Tivo half deals with the equipment settings and recording. It's pretty much unchanged from the format of the interface on the Tivo Box I ditched after starting my affair with V+ and works well (and, critically, includes the essential Tivo p'doop-p'doop noise as you enter a command).
So far so good. On to the Virgin half, which controls the channel selection, iplayer, films on demand and new Youtube, and Twitter interfaces. To me it looks like a beta (test) version. It has a scrappy look and the text is unnecessarily small. I don't like it. Why couldn't they just have mirrored the much better designed and proven Tivo interface? And, sorry to be picky, but both sides of the interface are red. Red? No one picks red for a user interface because it doesn't work well on any level.
Don't like it, but I can live with all of that. What's led me to unplug the new box and go home to my V+ Box is a dumb design short-cut that means it doesn't work properly if connected to your TV via a SCART socket. (I have to come out of the closet here and admit to being a CRT TV owner. Don't stone me. I've delayed replacing my fantastic old Sony CRT since, till recently it's been the equal of, or better than, the newer flat screens. It's now outclassed and needs replacing, but I'm eking a little more life out of the old dear yet a while.)
Reading round the grippingly exciting cable TV forums on the interwebs, it seems that the Virgin Tivo Box designers, for some reason, decided not to activate the connections to a couple of the SCART pins. This means that the TV ratio format doesn't autocorrect, and can only be manually corrected on some broadcasts. As a result the picture ratios are wrong; the picture is squeezed in at the sides and everyone looks like they're sucking lemons.
Now maybe, just maybe, I could live with that if I was making a massive cost saving. But I'm not. I'm paying more for the privilege. My understanding is that there will be a software release to correct this before Christmas. Am I convinced? Mmmm.
In the meantime, be warned and for me, it's back to ole V+ Boxy-woxy.
Tags for Forum Posts: broadband, virgin, virgin media
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Nigel Lupton (luptonn) on
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Thanks for the Tivo review Hugh.
I've been pondering swapping our V+ for the Tivo option for a couple of months but we use the scart connection and a Slingbox (http://uk.slingbox.com/go/home) to get TV on our computers, so until they fix the aspect ratio its a NO for now.
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Permalink Reply by Alan Stanton on
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We'd been getting occasional dropped internet connections for some time. Solved by turning the power off and on again to the modem and wireless router. Then it got more frequent. So I gritted my teeth and waited my turn in the Virgin Media queue. Without any hesitation they said our modem needed an upgrade which they would send in a day or two.
Yesterday the new one arrived as promised. I smiled when I read the label which said "Replacement Modem as Really Old". The new box was the combined Netgear hub pictured by Hugh.
One call to Virgin Media's queue - and having to hear some awful music - and it was activated. My PC worked fine. Then began the struggle to get Zena's PC to link to the hub. Fortunately, I have a brother who runs his own small PC business, who talked me through the steps.
Some lessons I learned. (1) I should have been far more pushy and not waited until a Virgin Media tech person finally agreed that our modem was "Really Old". (2) Unless you have a knowledgeable family member, ask for a manual on CD with the new modem. (3) Benefit from Hugh's experience. My brother also mentioned that Virgin Media had promised that a software patch was "coming out" for his own set-up.
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Permalink Reply by Hugh on
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And the downside of the new 'Media Hub' - Mac filtering, a security feature which you can use to allow only specific computers to access your wifi is strangely configured. On my last set-up, I could use it to allow all my devices to connect and by default block all others. On the new hub I can only block specific computers by adding their Mac no.. Everything that isn't blocked is allowed. This is an odd set up as in effect it means that you can only bolt the stable door after the horse has bolted. How do I know which computers I want to block?
Who designs Virgin's software fro goodness sake? How different would this be if there were true competition to supply us with services down the wire?
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Are you sure Hugh - that would be a very odd way of enabling MAC filtering. And the page you link to suggests
"Devices that appear in the Trusted Devices section are those that are allowed to access your network." So I would expect it to be an allow rule, although everything else suggests you block by MAC.
Very confusing.
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99% sure. As the Virgin guy said on that page, "I've checked the configuration page and am unable to see an option that will allow users to set up an 'access list' which will enable permitted devices to connect via wireless.". And the original poster says, "Ok, at least I wasn't being dim.". Sounds, rather like us, that he can't quite believe what he's seing.
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Permalink Reply by 3dabemynv2wyk on
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Thanks for this. Also considering the Tivo and since we have a fairly new telly* with a digital connection cable (also sent out as though it was Dan Brown's back catalogue) it would probably work.
I don't find the current V+ box interface that great either so will expect even less!
*for any thieves cruising HoL, it's not that new, or big, and is, ahem, bolted to the concrete floor.
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Permalink Reply by Malcolm on
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During my own 6 month quest to get a reliable internet connection, I've been informed by Virgin engineers that they need to dig up a large chunk of Hewitt Road to replace the cables. Don't know if that's causing some of your problems as well.
Alas the work order to do this was "lost in the post", so I'm still waiting. Meanwhile I can recommend a 3G dongle (mine's from 3). I get great signal, it's very reliable and the speed is only slightly worse than cable. Best of all, Virgin are paying for it.
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Permalink Reply by Yvonne on
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What speeds are you getting Hugh? We currently have up to 10mb and were getting nearer that level (as measured by the Gadget Show) until recently. I am considering upgrading to up to 30mb at the moment.
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I can now pretty much rely on getting what I'm paying for. I've just run a test on speedtest.net and got 18. I'm top back of the house; hub is bottom right at the front. If I'm downstais, I'm up at 20. I'm happy with that.
If you go for 30mb, you get a better hub which is supposed to have more efficient wifi.
What service are you paying for?
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Thanks for that Hugh. We have the bog standard up to 10mb at the moment and the modem is downstairs. My son keeps complaining that it's too slow for his PS3 at the top of the house.
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