{"id":1745,"date":"2017-06-20T13:54:16","date_gmt":"2017-06-20T12:54:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wordpress.apeconsulting.co.uk\/wordpress\/adrian\/?p=1745"},"modified":"2017-07-24T22:39:20","modified_gmt":"2017-07-24T21:39:20","slug":"virgin-media-tivo-v6","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/home.apeconsulting.co.uk\/adrian\/virgin-media-tivo-v6\/","title":{"rendered":"Virgin Media TiVo V6"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Virgin<\/a><\/p>\n

I can’t remember the last cold call I received during the day where I came from the call happy. \u00a0I’m registered with the Telephone Preference Service (TPS)<\/a> although this doesn’t seem to stop the endless stream of calls to help me claim PPI, damages from no-fault insurance claims, home improvements, etc. \u00a0To be honest, the call in question was probably best described as a ‘warm’ call, as it was from Virgin Media and even though I didn’t ask them to call, I have been a customer for several years.<\/p>\n

I get my broadband, telephone, and cable TV from Virgin, with the latter through a fairly old TiVo box. \u00a0It works fine, but is very slow and has limited internal storage that is almost always full. \u00a0I knew Virgin had launched a newer box, but when I checked, they were charging existing customers just under \u00a3100 with a \u00a320 activation fee. \u00a0I decided to leave it until my 12-month contract was up when I usually call them to renegotiate the cost with the aim of saving a few GBP’s!<\/p>\n

To be honest, if it weren’t for the super-fast broadband and a daughter who likes watching the Disney channels, I’d probably switch to another provider as we don’t use it for much more than that, and could get a reasonable channel line up through Freeview. \u00a0Virgin broadband is more than twice as fast as BT Infinity, so this is the main reason for handing over almost \u00a370 a month.<\/p>\n

Anyway, Virgin called me on Friday last week and offered to send me a V6 box free of charge! \u00a0No activation fee, no change to my existing\u00a0packages or contract. \u00a0What most people would call a no-brainer, so after checking this a couple of times on the phone (expecting a catch) I happily accepted and was told to expect the new box today. \u00a0They had checked I was happy to self-install, and<\/p>\n

They had checked I was happy to self-install, and as I had expected, it wasn’t much more difficult than disconnecting a few cables and reconnecting these to the new box. \u00a0I probably spent longer than required trying to tidy up the cables, as the new box is much smaller and doesn’t hide them quite as well as the old one. \u00a0That’s probably the only real criticism though, and I’m not sure making it smaller is something to grumble about. \u00a0If I was really finickity, the lack of indicator lights on the front is slightly disappointing, as with the old box I could tell it was recording by some red LEDs. \u00a0I guess it will make the room a little darker in the evening, and given the new box has six tuners, I probably won’t need to know it’s using some of them to record programmes. \u00a0Not sure I can imagine a situation where there are seven shows on at the same time that I might want to watch!! \u00a0It also has twice the capacity (1TB) of the old box, so shows I’ve recorded will hang around a little longer before being removed for newer recordings.<\/p>\n

So what’s it like? \u00a0Other than being significantly faster, there’s very little difference, and I’m sure my partner wouldn’t even notice if the box looked the same! \u00a0But the speed does make a massive difference, as the old one was so so slow. \u00a0Navigating menus is snappy, and they open almost instantly, whereas on the old box there was always a delay. \u00a0Using other services like the BBC iPlayer and Youtube are also much quicker, although I typically watch those through my Apple TV. \u00a0The remote is also a little smaller than the old one, although it feels a little fatter in hand. \u00a0I don’t actually use the remote as I have a Harmony Elite that controls all my devices, and is much easier to use for everyone which I blogged about here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

One thing worth knowing if you switch from an old box to the new is that it’s possible to copy across all the series links and thumbs. I knew I’d lose all the recordings, but being able to copy the series links means things will automatically start recording as they did on the old box. A big help when you have 50+ series links! \u00a0Go to\u00a0http:\/\/anywhere.virginmedia.com\/tivo\/boxswap<\/a>\u00a0and simply select the old and new boxes. \u00a0I think it will work up to two weeks after you’ve removed the old one or it’s been taken away by an engineer!<\/p>\n

I suspect I might have been a little disappointed if I’d paid \u00a3120 for the upgrade, but given it didn’t cost me anything I’d have to be a very grumpy old man not to be happy \ud83d\ude09<\/p>\n