New Direction

cable is never going to be a option for most.
at best only 55% of UK household have the "potential" to get Virgin cable. (that means the household is in cabled area but not necessarily with a cable running to the property).

IPTV at the moment can only ever be classed as a "backup" method. it's not reliable enough to be used for primary TV viewing.
and even then it relies on the end-user have a good relibale internet connection with no monthly bandwidth limits.

motorised satellite - that's in the realms of fantasy for your average tv viewer.
 
As I understand it, you need the Virgin feed to be 'live' to be able to use it. That is, you need something like Virgin broadband running already. Even if you have an old Virgin connection, it's no good if you don't subscribe to any of their services. I doubt many of those with Sky line will be willing to pay the minimum package each month to get that Virgin line in and live.

IPTV can be decent but you have to find the right service. I've been trialing a few and the variation in quality is massive. One provider's 'HD' channel's were so obviously a stream of a stream of a stream it wasn't even SD quality in the end.
 
As I understand it, you need the Virgin feed to be 'live' to be able to use it. That is, you need something like Virgin broadband running already. Even if you have an old Virgin connection, it's no good if you don't subscribe to any of their services. I doubt many of those with Sky line will be willing to pay the minimum package each month to get that Virgin line in and live.

IPTV can be decent but you have to find the right service. I've been trialing a few and the variation in quality is massive. One provider's 'HD' channel's were so obviously a stream of a stream of a stream it wasn't even SD quality in the end.

No, this isn't necessarily the case - there's a lot of people on here who don't have an active service from VM but there line is still live.
 
Really? That's is surprising. Is there any way to check if the line is live if you don't have any hardware to connect to it?
 
No, this isn't necessarily the case - there's a lot of people on here who don't have an active service from VM but there line is still live.

the line needs to have been active at some point previously.
 
Thanks. I do have an NTL box still attached to my house from the previous owners. Would be over 10 years since they used it though. I might get lucky, nowt to lose.
 
They rarely shut them down after been activated,
My understanding is If you can borrow a virmin box and the freeview chans display then the line is active.
 
they do if they are new builds.
virgin have been known to install lines at the point of buidling, and they won't have a service on them at that point.
 
they do if they are new builds.
virgin have been known to install lines at the point of buidling, and they won't have a service on them at that point.

Really? ... If they're building a new estate for example, I can understand them cabling the street whilst the groundwork is being sorted but it doesn't seem very cost effective for them to send the engineers / technicians back out to put a terminal into every property without getting anything out of it.
 
They rarely shut them down after been activated,
That's true. Up until a few years ago they used to employ people to go to the cabinet and physically disconnect people after they cancelled their services. They don't do that anymore.
 
Really? ... If they're building a new estate for example, I can understand them cabling the street whilst the groundwork is being sorted but it doesn't seem very cost effective for them to send the engineers / technicians back out to put a terminal into every property without getting anything out of it.

less cost effective than having to send someone out each time someone wants it and having to dig a trench thru their new garden/driveway to get the house?

think about it and you'll see why.
 
To the house, yes as I said whilst they're doing the groundworks it makes sense but it doesn't make sense that when the houses are complete, they send someone out to put a terminal inside each house which may never get used.
 
i never said they did send someone back out.
i said to the house, you said to the street.

so you can have a cable connection to the house, but it not be live.
 
Well even if it was to the house, it wouldn't actually be going inside the house would it so you'd still need to drill through the wall into your house and terminate it etc.
 
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