Virgin Media v Sky

Our contract soon comes to an end with Virgin Media. Sky Atlantic is being launched and all the programmes we want to watch will be on there. It's a shame - I thought Virgin's on demand stuff was coming on leaps and bounds. It was great to start watching HBO series such as Six Feet Under and Big Love. But now they've lost it all to Sky. I have (perhaps, somewhat sadly) kept a careful eye on whether Virgin would be carrying this channel, but it is now obvious they will not. I've been weighing up the pros and cons of moving the lot over to Sky:

Virgin's pros....

1) Their broadband is quicker than the rest. Best I can get over ADSL is 3Mbps (despite what they'll have you believe), but VM gives me 10Mbps at worst.

2) TiVo is coming. Looks good, looks quick, looks far better than Sky's kit. They need the quality content though.

3) Their customer service, while not as good as once was, is far better than I have previously experienced with Sky. No need to sit in endless premium rate phone queues only to be cut off, or get nowhere (i.e. as Sky certainly used to do to you).

4) HD channels are part of the TV package I'm subscribed to with no additional HD subscription cost per month.

Sky:

1) Sky Atlantic. Sky have bought up all of the HBO content, including back catalogue series. A must have channel as far as I'm concerned.

2) Many more HD channels than VM carry, so it seems.

3) Sky's kit (speaking from previous personal experience) does not cut off the end of every recorded programme like the Virgin kit (Samsung box) does. Sky's is also more responsive in terms of EPG, menus, playback, etc. VM are working on a fix for sometime in 2011 re the recording problem. That's not good enough Virgin. We like to watch all of our programmes.

I've been joining in the debate on the "Sky Atlantic" topic on the VM forums and mulling it over. What seems peculiar is that VM sold all of their channels to Sky in an effort to avoid the whole "you can't have Sky1 situation" all over again. "It will allow us to focus more closely on our strategy of exploiting Virgin Media’s super-fast connectivity to offer our customers a range of the very best content through a highly versatile next generation entertainment application” said Neil Berkett, CEO of Virgin Media. Oh well, that sounds good, doesn't it? So who was it that failed to anticipate Sky closing all of those channels down and creating new ones that Virgin would have to start with from scratch in negotiating for? Sky seem pretty clever in that regard and VM pretty clueless.

Contrary to the "expert" commentators' opinions that "people don't just subscribe because of one channel", that's exactly what I've done. Bye bye Virgin Media TV and hello (reluctantly) Sky+HD. I'm sticking with the VM phone and BB though. Incidentally, this way works out cheaper for me per month, and I've gone up to the top phone package as well.

When we called to cancel, the woman working for Virgin Media asked us why we were electing to go to Sky. "Because you won't be carrying Virgin Atlantic", we told her. She didn't challenge that statement, despite what is obviously the stock response elsewhere: "we are always looking to add new channels......", blah, blah, blah and so on. She then attempted to tell us that the HBO programmes we wanted to watch were actually carried on the FX channel. So we asked her "when is Boardwalk Empire showing on FX then?"

"Um....."

"When is Treme showing on FX?"

"......oh, the new HBO stuff is showing on Sky Atlantic, yes."

Precisely the point isn't it? But not only that, so is most of the back catalogue. I thought that was a pretty feeble and uninformed way of trying to persuade us to stick with VM telly. Oh well.

Our new Sky installation has had it's bedding in problems, but mostly down to the engineers sub-contracted by Sky. After what turned out to be a wasted weekend thanks to a company called ABC, all now appears to be in order. I was suitably impressed with Sky's telephone customer service (when measured up to previous experience a couple of years back), although that was countered by being lied to over and over again by this ABC shower. Stick with your own engineers Sky......