Freesat versus Virgin V+

[STONEISLAND]

Phone the helpline today to enquire about the free sat STB as I want one that records. There not out yet but will be at the end of the year.

I cannot wait as this will save me a fortune as all I watch is BBC, ITV, C4 and BBC HD, bonus to get ITV HD as Virgin do not offer this.
All this for nothing a month.

I think when this box does come out it will be a big kick up the a$$ that V+ need to get there HD content sorted.

Anyone agree?

[Graham M]

I doubt it to be honest, the V+ is hailed as a PVR first and a HD content viewer second, I don't think we'll see a big rise in real HD channels for a long while, the ammount of VOD HD content I would have thought will increase in leaps and bounds however.

[STONEISLAND]

I doubt it to be honest, the V+ is hailed as a PVR first and a HD content viewer second, I don't think we'll see a big rise in real HD channels for a long while, the ammount of VOD HD content I would have thought will increase in leaps and bounds however.

For what your paying I disagree. Yes you have on demand but when do you use it? That’s what you have record for.
Yes you can buy movies but you have to pay more than what you would pay at any blockbusters. Most of the channels aren’t even worth watching except Bravo for the UFC

[Chris]

Phone the helpline today to enquire about the free sat STB as I want one that records. There not out yet but will be at the end of the year.

I cannot wait as this will save me a fortune as all I watch is BBC, ITV, C4 and BBC HD, bonus to get ITV HD as Virgin do not offer this.
All this for nothing a month.

I think when this box does come out it will be a big kick up the a$$ that V+ need to get there HD content sorted.

Anyone agree?

I've edited your original thread title, there were a few too many Vs in it for clarity ... :spin: ;)

Top of my Crimbo list this year is the Panasonic Viera TV with built-in Freesat tuner, so no STB required:

http://www.johnlewis.com/230483473/Product.aspx

However a Freesat-enabled PVR is a close second, and I'll be buying both together if budget permits.

I'm not really interested in VOD, as you have said, that's what the ability to record stuff for yourself is all about, and when you have a PVR rather than the limited space on a DVD recorder or on old VHS tape, you can afford to set the thing to save everything you might possibly want to watch for days in advance.

VOD of course means you don't even have to remember to set up a recording, but personally I don't think it's quite the vast leap forwards it's made out to be.

Anyway it's all a little academic for me, I'm off-net so I can't get cable. Only Virgin ADSL in our house. I'm an ex-sub of Sky, and I still have a standard Sky SD box, but I can't wait to ditch it for Freesat.

[STONEISLAND]

I cannot help but think I’m paying way over the odds every month just to have HD telly with V+ when I will be able to get it FREE when this new box comes out.
V+ and SkyHD will have to make there services far more attractive and competitive once this box comes out.

[Chris]

I cannot help but think I’m paying way over the odds every month just to have HD telly with V+ when I will be able to get it FREE when this new box comes out.
V+ and SkyHD will have to make there services far more attractive and competitive once this box comes out.

Some very high-up people in the BBC agree with you. One of the reasons Freesat finally got the go-ahead, after years of it 'coming soon', was when they were finally sick of Virgin and Sky using BBC services to upsell their customers onto their own subscription-based HD products. That, and Ofcom's dismal, scandalous failure to guarantee there will ever be sufficient spectrum to broadcast a meaningful, terrestrial HD service in the UK.

BBC services are meant to be free, and while you could, technically, get BBC HD without subscribing to a Sky service (you could, and still can, by buying a free-to-air satellite receiver that's not even Freesat approved or branded), in the absence of any clear consumer branding or marketing it was effectively unavailable to the vast majority of TV viewing households in the UK.

[Freesat-Box]

Well all the Freesat boxes have Ethernet ports on the back. There is talk of this being used to link up to your broadband connection to enable you to do VOD via BBC iPlayer, and potentially, in the future, ITV Catch Up, 40D and Demand Five.

The Freesat PVR boxes and V+ box could be direct competitors in the near future.

[Chris]

Well all the Freesat boxes have Ethernet ports on the back. There is talk of this being used to link up to your broadband connection to enable you to do VOD via BBC iPlayer, and potentially, in the future, ITV Catch Up, 40D and Demand Five.

The Freesat PVR boxes and V+ box could be direct competitors in the near future.

This is a definite part of the Freesat business plan, rather than just 'talk'. The e-net port is part of the core spec for that reason. However, while it will certainly allow catch-up services to be offered over broadband, it's never going to quite match VOD, unless you have an exceptionally fast broadband connection to hook it up to.

[Freesat-Box]

However, while it will certainly allow catch-up services to be offered over broadband, it's never going to quite match VOD, unless you have an exceptionally fast broadband connection to hook it up to.

As far as I can gather, parts of TopUpTV work by downloading programs during the night, so why can't you download programs to the box, which then get deleted after a pre-determined time span, and use some kind of technology where you can't record those programs to external equipment such as DVD/HDD recorders?

[Chris]

As far as I can gather, parts of TopUpTV work by downloading programs during the night, so why can't you download programs to the box, which then get deleted after a pre-determined time span, and use some kind of technology where you can't record those programs to external equipment such as DVD/HDD recorders?

No reason at all. However that's still not comparable to Virgin Media's VOD. It doesn't offer anything like the breadth of programming that VM offers, and it wouldn't even match TopUpTV, which is broadcasting to your box, using acres of terrestrial UHF bandwidth, rather than being squeezed down the relative confines of an ADSL connection.

[saabmania2]

will you still have to have a bt line with freesat? i don't really like bt :confused:

[Chris]

will you still have to have a bt line with freesat? i don't really like bt :confused:

No, because the box doesn't need to 'phone home' for anything. However it is equipped to make use of a broadband connection, if you have one - so a phone line could be useful, indirectly.