Virgin Media(ex-Telewest/NTL) Pulls plug on Sky News, Sky One etc

Virgin Media has confirmed that it will rollout a traffic management system designed to reduce the downstream speed of customers who download lots of data during peak hours.

The cableco defines peak as between 4pm and midnight, and claimed that only the top 5% of downloaders on each speed tier would be affected. Customers on tier M who download over 350MB during peak will have their downstream speed reduced to 1Mbps and their upstream restricted to 128Kbps for four hours. Customers on tier L who download over 750MB during peak will have their downstream reduced to 2Mbps and their upstream restricted to 192Kbps. Customers on Virgin's flagship XL service who download over 3GB during peak will be restricted to 5Mbps down/256Kbps up.

The traffic management system is being implemented at the same time as 20Mbps downstream services are being rolled out to XL tier subscribers.

http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=75

http://allyours.virginmedia.com/html/internet/traffic.html

That will be where 3 channels now carry it, forcing people to pay 3 seperate fees, which of course will end up being more than the £50 season ticket we get just now?

Or is there one universal box that translates all incoming programs and subscriptions?

If you have Virgin Media you can get it all through that. But you have to pay over £120 to Setanta for a years subscription. Then whatever you pay for Sky Sports on top.

Since it was £50 for a season ticket for Sky you're now going to have to pay an extra £70 to get the same amount of matches.

Of course I think you get the SPL games with that. So erm yeah that makes it all worthwhile doesn't it?

You're quids in if you're an old firm fan I suppose.

And tomorrow all sky channels we lost are back again.

why do you love sky news?

Because it's the best news station. And unlike anything else owned by fox it's unbiased politically.

and BBC 24 is dull shit

haha I forgot to watch the Simpsons. Oh well I will see it tomorrow.

I already own tonight's episodes on DVD! boo. But last night I saw Treehouse of Horror XIX, which was a directionless mess that didn't remotely resemble any era of The Simpsons I know (and it hasn't been that long since I was occasionally seeing new episodes, only a couple of years).

Sky Arts, which I've never seen before, looks like it could satisfy some of my BBC 4ish middle brow hankerings. But overall I don't think these new channels at my disposal does too much for me trying to find something to watch at 4am.

Yeah, I have seen all of the ones shown tonight. Bloody typical!!

As for 4am watching, you cant even watch UK Gold then now. The couldve put old dr whos or something on then. Booo.

I don't know if this is of any use to anyone, but Virgin Media currently have a deal where if you sign up and pick their "XL" TV package you can get a V+ (like Sky+ only for Virgin) for only £50 rather than the usual £100; and when I spoke to them today they eventually admitted that if I wanted to I could cancel the XL package and go back down to "L" without any recourse, thus instantly saving me £50 and not being saddled with paying more for a bunch of shitty channels I don't care about. Dude seemed genuinely amazed that nobody had mentioned it before...

so it goes...

BSkyB buys Virgin Media TV channels in £160m deal
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/10238515.stm