I was thinking the same, a phone call that goes...Originally Posted by 3dcandy
Saracen: Good morning Virgin helpdesk, please come and take away my unwanted V6 box.
Virgin helpdesk: So your V6 box has arrived? Thank you, deactivating your V3 box now!
And the reason behind pushing out v6 boxes is that they're converting from MPEG2 to MPEG4 for HD broadcasts, with SD to follow. The older V boxes don't do MPEG4. But I think the Tivo should be OK, so no reason to panic just yet...
Which, given I'm not locked in by contract initial period, would be followed by
Saracen : Deactivate the V3 box if you wish. If you do, cancel the contract, including TV and phone, effective of the date and time you deactivate the V3, thereby depriving me of the service I'm paying for.
Bear in mind, I record all such calls. If I ask them to collect the V6 and they deactivate the V3 instead, it is, first, breach of contract, and second, effectively makes a decision for me that I'm on the edge of anyway.
See, I don't need Virgin at all, and am not convinced I want them given the monthly spend.
Do they care about my few quid a month? Doubtful. Do I care if I have Virgin ... or any equivalent? Not much, and certainly not if they treat me like that.
So, if they do react to a "collect my V6" instruction that way, well, okay. So be it.
Could well be. I don't know if that's hypothesis or based on hard knowledge, but my guess is, as you say, V3 deactivation isn't imminent. But if it was today, I still wouldn't "panic".
If/when they do, I could simply revert to Freeview. If that subsequently vanishes, well, by then I suspect I'll either be, or be ready to be, fully retired. And I'll get what little news and current affairs I want from BBC Radio. And I can get enough bandwidth to carry in with Hexus via BT wifi hotspots. Also, at that point, there's a question over whether I'd still be in the UK, so it could all be academic anyway.
It's been mooted that the change over to mpeg4 (with h.265 if I remember rightly to keep bandwidth down) has been mooted for a bit. It would make sense to move everyone over at some point.
Saracen drives ahem a hard bargain... in the current climate I doubt they'd be bothered to be fair. Virgin appears the best for us at moment but it could change. We do pay £85 a month for 2 x V6 boxes and 200 meg tinternet (get about 240 down). Next would be Sky but the sameish service would be near enough £100 a month and we'd have to have a Q box setup as we live in a flat
Old puter - still good enuff till I save some pennies!
Not really. At the moment, they're providing a service, and I want it, just about enough to pay for it. If they cease providing the service I want, I'll cease paying for it.
i'm at an age where what I need has changed, and what I want is changing. I can, for instance, just see me opting out of most of the rat race. In the past, fir personal reasons and business purposes, I kept ahead of changes in technology, and was lucky enough to be in a job that enabled that. Now, I don't do much on tech, and to be honest, in large part its because there's not much that excites me. My career ran through the days when computers were unknown in the vast majority of homes, to bulletin boards (and I mean dial-up), to the evolution of PCs from 8088 todays power monsters. I had digital cameras when most oeople had barely heard of them and never seen one, countless scanners, both film and flatbed, and I had the first inkjet printers, first inkjet colour printers, first colour laser, and so on. It was exciting, because so many technologies that we take for granted were being released, and then evolving from barely good enough to be useable, to one model being barely distinguishable from another.
But these days, it's about marginal improvements over the previous already good model. Yawn.
The one recent-ish tech that does interest me that's still got huge development potential is 3D printing .... but while it inrerests me, I don't have any real-world use for one.
And so much of what's going on us about online this or online that. The snag is, more often than not, the price of new gadgets is that their makers snoop and data gather on you. I will not, in all but very rare cases, agree to that. So, I very rarely shop online, don't bank online and go to considerable lengths to avoid putting personal information online, other than in carefully selected situations and, usually, a very guarded way.
It would not, therefore, be much of a wrench to go offline almost totally. The one thing I'd really miss would be HEXUS. I can certainly see me selling the car, and going semi-hermit. With a home in a quiet area, hobbies like reading, music and making things at home, and with getting the vast bulk of shopping from small, local suppliers, I could easily get a cab to a lical supermarket about once a month for a stock-up, and get consumables from those local, village shops, including a superb butcher and a green-grocer that sources seasonal produce locally. Oh, and grow my own, of course.
I don't need a service like Virgin at all, and there's precious little nww and innovative enough to make me badly want it.That brings me full circle - I can probably get enough "new" content by buying a boxset from time to time. At the moment, other than keeping my journalistic library up to date without completely redesigning my system, about tge only thing keeping the Virgin account active in inertia, and if they jerk me about .....
There is a LOT about what modern life is turning into that I not only don't want, but increasingly am growing to actively despise. Top of the list .... politicians.
Oh no we have descended into politics...
Yup I'm not that fussed about Virgin, but the better half watches lots and lots of tv. The virgin service has been great for us, plenty of content including BT sport and we never struggle to find something. Hooked up to the projector and surround sound setup and it can be amazing...
Old puter - still good enuff till I save some pennies!
The white boxes have analogue output via the 3.5mm jack socket - just need a 99p cable
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zsoUsEDnxnw
I find nowtv boxes to be a pretty good interface to the free catchup services iplayer, itv, channel 4 too - even if you don't bother subscribing to sky packs.
Or more likely the move to cardless boxes (to get rid of the dodgy card sharing / caching etc)
Last edited by mikerr; 31-01-2018 at 01:18 PM.
Now you mention it... I think I gave away my white boxes though. Only got black ones now, and one of the ones with the terrestrial tuner built in.
Composite video isn't the best though, my remaining SCART kit uses RGB.
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