Following on from the Internet and phone move to A&A, we just lost Virgin’s TV service when the cancellation period expired. This was the one bit I wondered about: A&A’s Internet offering is definitely an improvement, with few drops (and if it does drop, they tell you, rather than you having to guess), and latency and speed way improved (this really showing up in work Zoom meetings), and a router placement that works better for us now.

The phone, too, is good. We don’t use the “landline” much these days, but having had it for over 30 years, i wasn’t ready to drop it. Having it in SIP adds flexibility- I can have it present on my mobile if I want, and the cost is trivial.

Back to the TV though. We now realise just how many of the channels Virgin offered were just crap- noise in the TV guide- almost too much choice, and terrestrial Freeview combined with the free streaming services actually fill our requirements pretty well. A bit of fiddling with my 14 year old Onkyo AV amp and ARC settings and we can get surround too, and one less remote. Our TV can stream the common services as standard, and the fact the router is closer means it’s never going to struggle for bandwidth.

The only thing we’re missing so far is the ability to pause or rewind live TV, but if we really, can’t live without it, we can buy a Humax box with the savings from just 1 month’s subscription.