(Prices for TiVo):
Existing Customers
VIP= Free - Set-up fee £0 - Install fee £0 - Monthly fee waived on XL
XL TV/Triple = Free - Set-up fee £0 - Install fee £0 - Monthly fee waived for 12 months
Existing XL TV= Discounted - Set-up fee £149 - Install fee £40 - Monthly fee £3/pm
New Customers
(coming from competitor) Set-up fee £149 - Install fee £40 - Monthly fee £3/pm
(new intake) Set-up fee £199 - Install fee £40 - Monthly fee £3/pm
These are all subject to change but, this close to to launch I highly doubt it.
33 comments:
Does XL TV/Triple mean you have TV, broadband and phone with Virgin? If so, that's me! Excellent.
No, it means you have XL TV, XL Phone, and XL Broadband.
ah they kidding me, i payed 100quid for that crappy V+ box and now i have to fish out another 150 and installation feee crazy! been with them 4 years aswell got TV and broadband with them.
I don't get it. Why would they offer existing customers free box, set up and subs for 12 months, while stinging new customers for the whole package?
I mean I'm not complaining - I'd love to get it all for free - it just seems unlikely to me...
It should all become clear when VM announce officially the pricing.
i have tv XL, phone XL and broadband XL ... but i dont think they are classed as the XL triple
so does this mean just if you have all three XL in any way at all... or if you explicitly have the "triple XL" deal?
What makes you a VIP customer? Is it having TV, phone, broadband AND a mobile phone account?
VIP: http://shop.virginmedia.com/bundles/bundles-with-extras/very-impressive-package.html. It's 20 or 50 meg broadband, XL TV, XL phone and the Sky Sports & Movies pack. It doesn't include mobile.
I am paying £80.50 per month for XL TV with Sports/Movie in HD and 10mb broadband.
Is it worth me upgrading to the VIP package for £92 to get the TIVO setup and install for free?
If I did this would Virgin want me to go into another 12 month contract? As I don't really want to do that as I live in rented accommadation and wouldn't want to be stung if I moved to a non cable area.
@Forever: Oh. Damn. Bad pricing then. I won't be upgrading, as the usefulness of TiVo isn't worth paying nearly £200 for - especially as I already paid that in August 2009. If we RENT the boxes, I can't see how they justify this cost.
Also, if my V+HD box had a catastrophic malfunction, would I get a TiVo replacement?
Having been commenting on this blog for a couple of years now, I cannot believe the crap that I am reading.
You moaned when there was no HD, the HD arrives, you moaned when there was no HD sports/movies they arrived, you moan about the red button that arrives in January. Now the Tivo box is finally here which does more than you know, and what do I read now moaning. Nobody is forcing anyone into getting the Tivo box, and so what if you have to pay for the box, do you think VM get these things for free, of course not, they have to pay for the development, design, marketing etc..., all this costs money. If VM were to give everything for free, they might as well just stick a sign up that says "going out of business".
You should be a bit more grateful, VM offers more than Sky could ever do and the costs are almost the same, but there must something that though that VM do, because you all seem to stay.
Sorry the above is not aimed at everyone
Well some various and interesting comments which is summed up perfectly by Square Eyes!
I am a VIP50 customer so I am paying top money to VM every month so can see why, potentially, the fees etc will be waived or seriously discounted and rightly so.
VM will want as many people on the top package as possible, existing and new, so they will try and entice as many people to that package and TIVO will be a tool to do that.
I completely understand not everyone gets a great service but I for one am loving the service I am getting from VM at the moment and the future looks brighter with VM than SKY. (I have been a SKY customer before and I am now a VM customer and can confirm the grass isn't greener!!!)
Glad been on VIP has its advantages, I can't wait to get the new box
Well said Square Eyes. As owner and proprietor of this blog I'm sometimes taken aback by some of the comments made both here and on the Forums about VM.
2010 has been an outstanding year to be a Virgin customer, and I for one am one happy chappy, delighted with the additional services we've had over the last eighteen months. TiVo? Can't wait.
Well said square eyes,If the pricing is proved to be true i think they have been very fair on the pricing.People who are paying top prices for vm products are yet again being rewarded and thank you for vm not just giving it free to vip but also aknowleging people who are paying top prices for phone tv and broadband (xl/xxl)
The prices for VM's new services will probably put some people off, but there's no question that what they're now offering is a huge improvement over just a year ago. And most people who have been with VM for a while will find that they can usually negotiate a better-than-advertised price anyway.
Just to offer an alternative take on Square Eye's take on things.
One of the reasons, I think, that people come on these forums and moan about Virgin (leaving aside personal gripes with service), is that Virgin, very stupidly, allow all manner of rumour to get into the blogosphere, most of which Virgin then fail to live up to.
Why did people moan when Sports and Movies HD finally arrive? Because, in spite of the rumours, we had to pay an extra fee and we only got 2 sports channels and no red button. Virgin must have known, from the minute they concluded negotiations with Sky (and most likely for quite some time during negotiations) that this would be the case. But they continually allowed the rumours to circulate, and then disappointed people.
We're seeing the same thing with Tivo. No information from Virgin beyond the occasional bland commercial message. So rumour starts circulating about it being free etc. Then along come Virgin (eventually, though still not yet at the time of writing), and fail to satisfy the rumours.
Quite frankly, it's crappy communications. Their Comms unit needs to be a hell of a lot better at handling these things, if they don't want to disappoint and upset customers.
Also, just on a personal level, I think they've got their pricing badly wrong (if the rumours are accurate). It's too steep a jump for someone on, say, XL TV with sports and movies and HD, XXL broadband and M phone (who has to pay almost full whack for Tivo) to someone on XL TV, XL Phone and and XL Broadband (who basically gets it for free). I'm in the former camp, because Virgin's phone service in my area quite simply blows (they can't even do called ID display). But, by the looks of this, if I want Tivo, I'm going to have to pay £149 for a box that I'm only renting, plus install cost plus monthly fee. That just doesn't make sense.
So will there be an announcement on Wednesday 1st Dec perhaps? Maybe my Christmas wish will be granted after all!
prices do seem exceessivly steep - especially for people who already have 3 services costsing around £80p/m - hopefully this info is noy accurate and maybe VM are just teatsing for reactions - what exactly is the advantage of TIVO?
read all the stuff on here and I dont quite get it - seems to have a nicer looking interface and more storage space - apart from that it seems to do all the same stuff the current VM boxes do?
I am on VIP and have to say that I am pleased, and shocked with the free upgrade to Tivo. I was hoping for a big discount having been a little ripped off about the HD Movies/Sports. But I have to say that I was expecting a £40 - £75 fee to swap my box over for a Tivo one, So I am very pleased with a £0 fee.
I am however, slightly surprised at the whole point of the bigger hard drive inside? I would have thought that Virgin would have taken a bigger advantage and moved towards Cloud Storage, where their customers were offered virtual storage at their end, and the number of hours available for recording was dependant upon their packages.
For starters, it would require less hassle upgrading set-top boxes all the time, with all storage increases handled in their own data centres, there own streaming of on demand content is also fast enough to make streaming "recorded" content just as fast as we have it now with hard storage so no noticeable slow down to the end user, and then there are huge extra revenues available for them if they could offer bolt-on packages where a customer could order an extra 250 hours of storage to suit their needs for say an extra £2 a month.
And then the current set top boxes with their built in hard drives would be used for live pausing instead, of which only a small hard drive is required and never needing to be updated for many many years to come.
But as it is, the new Tivo will be a big step up, and hopefully the 500 hours will not run out too quickly, although having said that, considering how HD content is much better and widely available and uses up more storage, you have to consider whether we are still limited to 125 hours or so of footage on these new Tivo's..... and then that cloud storage recording with bolt on packages if you need more sounds much more appealing!
@EXO
cloud storage would swamp the network completely and bring everything to a crawl... it struggles with VoD at peak times as it is!
Local storage makes sense, but it should be at least 2TB storage given today's technology. It shd also allow to connect external hard drives.
btw I'm on V+ TV XL, BB L and phone M. if i upgrade to XL triple now, would I get free upgrade to Tivo?
I stress again that nothing's confirmed until VM officially announce.
I still can't believe it will be completely free to VIP and higher tier customers - there must be an engineer call out or something.
Just out of interest, what incentive do Virgin give you to write this blog? Thanks Xxx
@theprgeek: absolutely none whatsoever. This blog has been running for three years and for the first two years it was very critical of Virgin Media's lack of HD (check out some of the archived posts). These days, with the HD service and TiVo on its way, I'm a fan more than a critic.
But I've never had a penny from them for my troubles (unless you count the odd AdSense Virgin ad placed by Google). Honest.
Out of interest, here is a question that I'm hoping some of you will be able to answer (even gut feeling would do).
I'm not a VM customer, and haven't looked at it (or Sky) as I'm quite happy with Freeview.
However, I just changed job, and I need a super fast internet connection. I therefore thought (and decided) to sign up with XXL broadband, M+ TV and M Phone. Particularly as they have some rather appealing offers at the moment (free installation, £50 credit). Now, I've read about Tivo for years, and I definitely think that's for me.
Is there therefore any point in signing up with them at the moment. If I do so, will I be able to "upgrade" to the Tivo as soon as it is available, or will I have to wait 12 months? If the box comes available within the month, will I also have to fork out huge amounts in order to pay for the replacement of the V+ HD box?
(forgot to sign up for follow-up notification. new post seems the only way to do so... apologies!)
I guess if they go down the high price for lower teir subscribers route for Tivo, it's really about demand management.
If they want it out of the door before christmas but dont want to prevent anyone from having it if they really want to, tying it to higher teir subscriptions makes sense - as there are fewer of those about. It also allows them to sign up loads more VIPs and Tripple Play subscribers.
FX HD get extra hours from January 5th 2011.
FX HD will broadcast everyday from 8am to 2am on Virgin Channel 158.
Pricing looks pretty brutal for those on more normal package levels (I'm on 50mbit BB and 'XL' TV, plus the cheapest phone package).
For that much money I'd be getting a nicer looking interface and a bigger HD. Think I'll pass.
@Wabiloo
Same dilemma here. The guy in the Virgin told me (off the record) that it would be better to sign up ad a new customer when TiVo comes.
That said, he seemed to know less than the people here.
tivo looks expensive.http://crave.cnet.co.uk/homecinema/virgin-media-launches-tivo-box-to-give-your-telly-magic-powers-50001845/
You can now register for the Tivo boxes!!! http://www.virginmedia.com/tivo/
Alas, doesn't sound like they'll be here before Xmas though ...
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