If you are thinking of switching from Virgin/ntl to Sky you might like to know..

[princesscc]

I've just been to my local Morrisons and Sky have a stand down there and are offering free installation and a £20 Morrisons voucher on payment of your first bill. That makes initial outlay about £70 cheaper! I'm sure its not just my Morrisons, so you may want to 'think on!'
I also plan to ask for more discount if I recommend a friend - in for a penny in for a pound as they say!

I actually really like the (what was) Ntl On-demand things - lots of movies to choose from, and the Free TV Picks seem to have lots of the things I "miss" for various reasons (like Dragons Den and Top Gear ).

am getting rid of the whole thing and getting that HUmax tvr with freeview soon anyway

Yes - I LOVE the on-demand TV stuff. And the demand tv catch up too.

Also that you can record more than one programme at a time, and not have to be watching one.

Murdoch does not control a monopoly. Sky is doing well, but measured by viewers it is 3rd. Hardly a crushing force, ad very far from a monopoly.
News International papers used to regularly print tables of the most watched TV shows.
See that very often now ?
The Sky at Night often beats most Murdoch channels, and he doesn't want to expose just how small his figures are. The figures for Sky Sports are not exactly in the lague of Dr. Who, more like C4 Daytime TV.

It has a small minority stake in ITV, not enough to control it, but enough to keep out Richard Branson. Lord Branson is of course a master of PR, and given the fear and loathing of many in the meedja, even Tony Blair won't take the bung for letting him have ITV.

No Sky IS The largest shareholder in ITV

It is the largest single shareholder.
Let me put this more simply.
Sky has 17.9%. Everyone else has 82.1 %

If there is a vote for something Sky wants, but is not in everyone else's interest, they will lose.
That's what "small", and "minority" mean.

Sky can prevent mergers with Richard Branson's empire, probably, but even that is far from guaranteed.

I understand why so many people dislike Murdoch, but if you're going to attack him, read the facts first.

we just pay the same to sky all the time

it's only hcnaged when we have swapped movies in and out

it's not really a choice for us as we want sky sports

and the ntl/virgin offer has never bettered our alternatives

after my argue with tiscali i have free 8mb broadband so i do recommend an argument if you have the energy to get what you think is a deal you deserve

Had a nice chat with Virgin/NTL yesterday.
They've knocked £10 a month off my package for the loss of Sky 1.
The trick with these people is to go through to disconnections who are empored to make this offer, and not to use the premium rate numbers that both Sky and NTL use to rip off their customers.
0800 0 730 591
from a landline is free
The excellent Say No to 0870 site is helpful here.

The queue for disconnections at Virgin is long, you don't want to be paying 10p a minute.

MIL complained about the loss of channels too and she has been given the family paclage completely free for 6 months.

DD1 v. pleased, she gets Nick Jr now.

I personally prefer sky though

thanks DC for your advice- have just got £11 per month knocked off the bill

definitely wouldnt leave virgin for sky. cable broadband is so much better and reliable than adsl broadband which is what sky provide, who cares about sky one anyway? would rather give my money to branson than murdoch anyday

I'm sticking with Virgin too. I want to wait it out and see what happens.

The Sky packages confuse me and it looks like an great expense and too much faffing about changing back. I left Sky/BT because I found them very expensive.

I'm happy with my channels atm. Just going to wait and see what happens.

I'm not sure Branson is a better person than Murdoch, who has the criminal record one might ask ?
Branson is a consummate PR guy, so much so that the BBC often carries his press handouts as official news.
Murdoch upset a lot of journalists by insisting that they use computers to input their stories. A nasty strike ensued, and the meedja will never forgive him.

But speaking as a techie I agree that cable modems are inherently superior to ADSL.
Last month MS gave me a licence to every single piece of s/w they produce, approximately 270 gigabytes. Average downlad speed on my 10Mb connection was around 8, on ADSL, I'd have been lucky to sustain 1.5 to 2. Odds are it would have died of something horrible during, yet not one of the 100 odd large downloads failed.

On most Sky or BT packages they'd have barred my acocunt very quickly for this, but NTL/Virgin don't give a stuff.

That's an extreme test, though I've still not achieved the glory of my wife who at one point was responsible for more than 1% of all the email in the world

NTL technical suport is not great, but it seems less awful than others.
But the killer is that all the technology is theirs. That means you don't get the standard shit with ADSL of the ISP blaming BT who blames the ISP who then blames your modem, and then blames Microsoft even if you're running a Mac.
NTL is responsible for it all, and they don't manage to screw that up much.
However be aware that telcos of all kinds are 'B' Ark crew.

TBH I wouldn't be surprised if it wasn't some big lossleader deal on Branson AND Murdoch's behalf, setting up the bitter rivalry to eliminate Murdoch's monopoly problems, then Virgin will get Sky back and oh look lots more.
I shall stick with Virgin but only if Domini's number works for me too! I've got a Freeview box upstairs and seem to spend more time watching that than Virgin, even when it did have Sky so I wouldn't miss it. But as we're still waiting for digital cable round here I think I can wait a bit longer then compare it with Sky.

I phoned NTL in October and told them I was leaving as SKY had a better package and as if by magic I was transferred to the concessions (?) department who agreed there and then to do HALF PRICE EVERYTHING (tv, broadband and phone) for 3 months. When I phoned again in January, I got the phone half price for 3 months and the rest half price for another 6 months.

They can only do it for a certain amount of time but its worth the call. Not sure what will happen at the end of this concession

The thing that is a rip off is "bouquet pricing", ie m,aking you buy channels in packs.
I'd pay for Sky 1, but not for Sky Art, because I'm not interested and expect them to do it badly anyway.
But the current situation is pretty unstable...
Producers have noticed that many films make more from DVD sales than cinemas, and that boxed sets of TV series are now a major revenue source.
Sky and Virgin are going for smarter set top boxes that can record, and time shift, but that's not altruism because they both know the technology is very limited, and that's on purpose.
With decent broadband producers can simply send 24 or the Simpsons or any film to your PC very cheaply. They would cut out the middleman big time.
The long term business model is the same as for books. You don't get forced to buy Harry Potter when you want an Agatha Christie book, just because they have the same publisher, so why should you buy TV shows that way ?

TV on demand as currently offered is garbage. What we want is Amazon. You search for "soviet era pornography", and you get a list of content + reviews + suggestions for pictures of E. German shout putters, give them your card number and the stuff pops up on your PC.

That technology is lying around, proven and stable. Channel 4 is using it right now in a pilot.
In less than 5 years Sky and ITV will seem as quaint as the 1980s when the government was really unsure about allowing there to be as many as 4 national TV channels.

I agree the only channels we watch are sky sports and uk tv drama

withe the odd other programme thrown in

don't use most of the others unless in wallpaper mood

uk tv drama is my unwind instead of drugs

Whats a topfield? might be interested in one of those.

It really gets on my nerves when you get 100's of leaflets from Sky offering this great deal all in for £25.00 and when you get in touch with them - its oh sorry its not available in your area, why keep sending me the leaflets then. Rant over.

Rang today, and VirginMedia have cut our bill by 20 quid a month, and included all our phone calls foc.

So I'll be saving 240 per year, plus dh won't be mithering me about how long I'm on the phone to my mother or sister.

Result, wish I'd done it 2 weeks ago.