BT Vision and Broadband

[m4ttm4son 198]

As Virgin doesn't see fit to put fibre optic round our way, we've been subsisting on 6mb/s Broadband for the last couple of years and nothing more than Freeview telly [not even HD ]. Now that BT Sport is on it's way, I thought I'd have a look at what they're offering.

BT Vision Freeview HD

BT Sport Channels and ESPN for free, plus the possibility to have Sky Sports 1&2

BT Vision + box with puse rewind and record [something I've missed from Virgin for three years!]

BT Broadband @ 37mb/s :D

Oh, and a phone line that I never bloody use anyway.

All for about £20/ month more than I'm paying now. Interestingly, it also includes BT Vision Film which sounds a bit like LoveFilm which I spend too much on with too little back from. Has anyone got any experience of this service and the films it puts up?

I'm looking forward to the changes, but it hasn't gone through yet, so anyone want to warn me off before I sign and it's too late?

[BURTON 0]

I had one of the early Vision boxes, years ago and it was pants, but I think they have moved in the right direction now!

Only thing I would see is make sure that the channels you get are what you want, just done the switch from Sky to Virgin but had to check the channels first, a lot of the ones we had on Sky we didn't watch anyway.

[Calm Chris 749]

Aren't BT and Sky Sports having a bun fight at the moment? Last I heard BT had been told by Sky that they don't want to share the PL games, so unless things change BT will have a limit of 38 games a season.

[Waylander 1,351]

BT have offered 12 months free on an 18 month contract for BB to Orange customers - my sister just signed up to it.

[Twinspark 299]

Just remember that BT Vision relies on a decent terrestrial digital reception - so if you're serviced by a 'Freeview Lite' transmitter, you'll miss out on a lot of channels.

[BURTON 0]

Just remember that BT Vision relies on a decent terrestrial digital reception - so if you're serviced by a 'Freeview Lite' transmitter, you'll miss out on a lot of channels.

Which is another reason I didn't go with them at the time and sent everything back, as the transmitter at the time hadn't been upgraded to Freeview!

[DanG 104]

Well thats me out then. I can get 7 digital channels where my house is, and even then BBC1 is very jerky.

[m4ttm4son 198]

Official Freeview Availability Page says I can receive all the Freeview channels and HD ones, so that shouldn't be a problem, hopefully.

If the Vision+ box is no good, I'll send it back and tell them to give me one of Sir Alan's ones. TBH I thought that's what I was getting. Oops.

[m4ttm4son 198]

Just a mini update to let you know how carp BT are.

The phone and Broadband was supposed to switch over on 29th May. On 30th May I finally received my MAC from Virgin to switch over, so I called BT to hand it over and they couldn't find my order on the system. Instead of telling me this, she started a new order. I only realised what she was doing when she had booked the engineer's visit to set up the BB, ordered the Hub to be sent out and then asked me what TV package I wanted to go for! Having no idea what package I'd already ordered I said I'd order separately. Having been on the phone so long I couldn't be bothered to cancel the whole order, but I probably should have. Then, about ten minutes later I realised the Virgin BB had ended, so four days with no home internet

Anyhoo engineer is supposed to come today. I called BT because we haven't received the Hub. It hadn't been ordered :smashfreak: so a new one ordered by the customer service guy who said the ordering system they have reminds him of the Commodore 64 Let's hope the engineer has one on board his van when he installs today. Otherwise I think the wife will run him over with his own van.

The mobile internet usage will be interesting this month. Have been using it to tether with the iMac over the weekend. It has been ok as a stopgap to be fair. Not quite 37Mb though.

[Twinspark 299]

I've come to the conclusion that all UK Telecoms providers are awful.

T-Mobile would rather let a customer walk than match Carphone Warehouse pricing. Vodofone and O2 don't work at all where I live, and Three forgot to mention when I took out a new contract, that I couldn't activate international roaming for 60 days.... which is a bit of an issue when you're on the bike in Germany! Particularly annoying as I'd made a point in asking about transferring my old number before the weekend as I was off to Germany.

[m4ttm4son 198]

Ha ha, he didn't even bother calling, just left the Broadband modem on the doorstep with a note saying 'Plug this in to your phone line'.

I called BT when I couldn't set it up which is when I realised what I had wasn't the Hub and I need to wait for it to be delivered. Hopefully it'll arrive today. I'm not having a good week of it, really.

[chody 10]

who left the modem on your doorstep, the openreach engineer, I cant believe that, well I can, mobile workforce are a joke under trained, mostly ex army boys but no motivation for the job and loads of hassle off some **** of a manager who they have zero respect for and I dont blame them.but bt have paid for a managed install to fit a adsl face plate and remove any star wiring or other problems that you may have with extension sockets with capacitors and fit an adsl kit to get a cat5 to your tv for the vision

Edited June 12, 2013 by chody

[m4ttm4son 198]

Guess what else they left on the doorstep. Well, I can't blame BT, Parcelforce left my new Hub outside. Happily, there's no problem doing that round here.

Plugged in last night and everything works straight off the bat, like it was Apple or something. Speedtest - 36.77Mb/s :D

Today's job is to see how much I can scare them into giving me a better deal for my TV order if I threaten to send it all back