After months -- perhaps even years, depending how you look at it -- of promises, Virgin Media have finally launched some HD channels today (besides BBC HD, that is).
To get HD via Virgin you have to pay a £69 installation fee and £5 a month. Actually, no -- that's only if you argue with them on the phone, because otherwise they'll charge you either £99 or £150 for that.
But still, once that's set up you get all four current HD channels, with two more announced on the way. Right?
Wrong.
You get BBC HD, and rumour has it C4HD will be free when it arrives, but for their other channels you need to take out their more-expensive XL package. Yes, despite paying £5 every month for the privilege of having an HD box, you then need to pay however-much-more to actually get most of the HD content. Incidentally, there's no mention of this on their HD info page -- it just names the available channels -- and in the 'complete' list of channel-by-package, it conveniently doesn't list any of the HD ones.
It's a rip-off, but it shouldn't come as a surprise. After all, this is the company who insist on you taking an £11 monthly line rental for most (all? I didn't check) of their services... but don't include this £11 in the quotes slapped all over their site -- so when you sign up your monthly bill will always by £11 more than that nice low number advertised in such a big font. Yes there's a footnote to the effect of "when you take £11 line rental", but if it's always the case then why isn't it just included in the quote? To make the price look smaller, obviously.
Getting a vaguely equivalent package on Sky still works out more expensive... but, actually, not that much more -- and what you get for your extra cash is a massive load of extra HD channels and a more upfront approach to them. I don't say this as a Sky advocate, but as someone who took Virgin because they'd be cheaper and is now stuck in a long contract for a less-than-impressive service.
As you can tell, I'm not best pleased.
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