Of all your complaints the issue with the poor quality of DVR recordings is the one I can relate to most. I find it increasingly frustrating that DVR technology is so poor, and it seems to me that the technology is fundamentally flawed.
As for the broadband quotas they're imposing, I sympathise and agree they're ridiculously low. It appears no one working for Virgin is aware of the current everyday uses for internet connections, let alone what will almost certainly become mainstream in the near future.
But to blame these quotas on people using the connections they've paid for is absurd. If you buy a 4Mbit connection why can't you use that connection as much as you want? Do Western Digital come into your home and swap out your hard drive for one half the size; saying you’ve stored over 20gb, and you’re abusing the service we sold you.
To cut people’s internet connections in half because they decide to make use of them during the hours they're awake and not at work seems to be grounds for trading standards investigations. So quitting your service and looking for someone that doesn't blame their inadequate investment in infrastructure on everyday internet use seems to be a good move to me.
And it can be done. I live in Alaska for God’s sake, yet I pay about 150 quid a month for TV (including the equivalent of Sky Sports, 3 movie networks, SF and so on), telephone services, mobile phone services and unlimited downloads on a 4Mbit cable modem connection. I don't live in a street by myself. I live in a city of close to 250,000 other broadband internet users, and my local cable company doesn't seem to have a problem delivering modern day internet services as and when I need them.
No one buys the bandwidth capacity to cover 100% usage of the services they sell, but most analyse what they currently need, allow for expansion and then make their investment. They don't look at what we did in the 90s and say anything more is abuse of service.
How is Virgin going to cope when video conferencing, peer to peer distribution of business application upgrades, IPTV and the distribution from Hollywood of movies to HDTV owners the same day they’re delivered to cinemas becomes as normal as VOIP is today?
I can’t really see them lasting that long if they can’t cope with a few gigabytes of data being downloaded during normal usage hours. They will have to actually go out and buy the bandwidth they need to support the services they’re selling at premium prices – or they will have to go out of business. Andy
