As a student, you’re gonna be watching a lot of TV no doubt. There’s a few different choices you can go for…you can either stick with the standard 5 terrestrial channels. You could go for freeview…you could even get sky. However, the most popular method for a student is usually Virgin Media (used to be NTL). The reason for this is that they usually do a whole package where you get broadband and phone too. Although it has to be said, no one ever really uses the phone!
Remember, Virgin Media requires that you sign up for a 12 month contract to recieve its services. However, the main problem with this is that student lets are usually 11 months. This means you will either have to pay for an extra moth whilst your not living there, or one of the salesmen told me a couple of techniques to get out of a contract early - if you’re interested in finding out then drop a comment below and I’ll reveal all.
In order to see their pricing etc and to check whether or not you can get Virgin Media at your new student house, then goto their website at virginmedia.com.
I’ve had NTL once (was NTL before being Virgin Media) and I’ve had Virgin Media for one year too. They use nearly identicle hardware, the only real difference is the branding and user interface. Both times the package we got was for Broadband (4mb), home phone (never used) and for their digital TV.
The broadband is great because unlike most other providers which cap your connection (e.g. they give you 30gig a month) they instead offer unlimited access within fair use guidelines. If you are seen to be downloading too much then rather than cut you off, they will just lower your download speeds for a bit which is a much better solution than cutting you off like the others will. The broadband also offers really good speeds up to 20 meg depending on how much you want to spend monthly.
We never used the phone we got with it, the only reason we got it is because it made the package cheaper per month funnily enough. We all had mobile phones so we used them instead.
As for their Digital TV, we had all the channels apart from Sky Movies. Of course we had Sky Sports - this is a must have for any Male. You’ll notice that it doesn’t have as many channels as Sky in total, but lets be honest - 90% of the channels on sky are absolute crap. One major downside is that at the time of writing this, Virgin Media and Sky have had a bit of a falling out and as a result you cannot get Sky One, Two or Three…Sky Sports News and a couple of other sky channels. This sucks for anyone who loves the Simpsons.
So I guess you want to know how much we paid. Well, each year we paid around £50 for the whole lot. Now, you may think this seems expensive..but each year I lived with 3 others…so it worked out around £12 per month each. This is ridiculously cheap for Broadband and Digital TV.
When you arrive at your accomodation, if you are in a cabled area then it’s likely you’ll have a Virgin Media leaflet posted through your door (the sales people know the student houses, and know when you are likely to move in!). Have a look at these, cos they usually have great deals. Each year we got free Sky Sports for 12 months which was amazing. Not only that, but with Virgin Media we got free Setanta Sports for a year 2 which was great - so much football to watch!
Not only this, Virgin Media also has a Video On Demand (VOD) service. This is pretty amazing in my opinion, and I used it loads. There are 2 main sections I used, one was Catch up TV on Demand. This has the last weeks worth of the main shows available from the BBC, Channel 4, Bravo and a couple of others. These can be watched at any time, for free providing you have a decent tv package. This was really really useful for catching up on Eastenders, Dragons Den, The Apprentice and Hollyoaks! Not only this, there is also a TV Choice on Demand section. This has loads of TV shows on it available, such as Father Ted, The Office etc. Also kids shows like Drake and Josh, Hannah Montanna…also Documentaries such as Air Crash Investigates etc. This really is a great option - again it is free providing you have a decent TV package. Their Video on Demand stuff really is impressive!
Now, moving on to the hardware and set up process!
Once you order Virgin Media, you will be given an installation date - this is usually a few days to a week after you have been accepted (credit check etc, but this is easy to pass).
Most houses have had Virgin Media media in the past or are already set up to recieve Virgin Media services. You will know if your house is set up for it, as you will be able to see a little box on the outside of your house. Click on the images below to see larger ones.
Those are a couple of pictures of the external boxing which will need to be attached to your house in order to recieve Virgin Media. It basically allows their cables from the street to get into your house. The first image shows how one normally looks, the second one shows our one when the front fell off the box. Not much cabling, just gets it from the street to your house.
Remember to ask your landlord before you go installing Virgin Media for the first time (i.e. have to connect it to the side of the house and drill through the wall). Most are completely fine with it, and 90% of properties already have been connected in the past so still have the box on the wall.
Now, both properties I’ve lived in have already had this done so I can’t comment how long that part takes. However, if that has already done - you can expect it to take under an hour for the engineer to set up the rest of the equipment - set up the digital TV digibox, install a phone point - and to plug in your modem too.
Like I said, we got TV, Broadband and Phone. The hardware we got was:
1 x Digibox, with remote control, power cables, scart cable - everything you need to watch it.
1 x Cable modem, with power cable, ethernet cable and usb cable.
1 x Phone point (never used)
So they give you everything you need in order to use everything they install.
Now, both times the engineers weren’t very chatty fellas - they just got on with their job which is of course what they’re there for. However, they fail to explain a few things. Getting the TV working is fine - they’ll leave it on for you, then you can just have a play with the remote to find your way around. However…neither of the engineers we had told us how to get on to the internet!
Well…here’s how.
Configuring the Cable Modem and Connecting to the Internet
When you join Virgin Media you get a nice little pack through the post. Also when the engineer comes, you get given some booklets and a CD as pictures below…as with all images, click for bigger photo:
The welcome pack contains your details which you will use when setting up your internet. Now, you will need to connect your new cable modem to your computer in order to set it up. When it was NTL (couple of years ago) the modems had a connection for an Ethernet cable and also a USB cable. However, the Virgin Media cable modem we recieved only had an ethernet connection. I’m not sure if this is the same for every new unit, but be warned that when setting up the modem - you may well have to do it by Ethernet only. Here’s some pics, check them out by clicking on them for a bigger view!
You’ll notice how the new Virgin Media cable modem and old NTL cable modem are pretty much identicle apart from a different colour and branding. However, there is one other difference - the old NTL modems used to have a USB post on them which you could use to connect your computer to. It looks like they’ve dropped this feature on the new modem - funny though how I still recieved a USB cable for it 
.
Anyway, now its time to set up your cable modem. Ideally you will use a router to connect your computers to it (I’ll cover this stage in a moment). But for the setup process you must connect your computer directly to the cable modem via the supplied ethernet cable in order to set it up. At this point, run your set up CD and follow the on screen instructions. It asks you to put some information in which you were supplied with in your welcome pack (we had to phone up Virgin Media as we were missing a letter, think we lost it rather than it was undelivered! but they were really helpful). Anyway, follow the instruction and chose a user name and password etc and set up your new Virgin Media email address…which I doubt you’ll use anyway! Get to the end of this and you are ready to start surfing on the net! Now…it would be a really bad idea to share the cable modem between you so only 1 could get on at any one time. You’re going to want a router to share the connection between everyone.
Connecting the Router to the Cable Modem.
Now, when buying a router you don’t need to go out and get the most expensive one you can find. Instead, have a shop around and see what’s available. Remember, you have a cable modem here so you will want to buy a cable router rather than an ADSL modem router (for use with BT lines). You can check out all the normal online stores such as dabs.com , ebuyer.com etc. But a great thing I’ve recently discovered is pcworld.co.uk . They allow you to order stuff online (with cheaper prices!!) and pick it up in store (u have to wait 1 hour for them to get it ready, but its bloody cool!). This is a great method as I hate waiting for delivery of items even if it is only 1 day.
We got a Wireless Belkin Router which was aroun £60, so between 4 of you really isn’t very much money. You’ll want to go wireless as no one wants wires going all around the house. I’ve written up another guide on connecting wirelessly, click here to see a list of that guide and others I’ve written.
Here are some pics of the wireless router we got, it wasn’t expensive and provided great wireless range throughout the house and didn’t drop connection more than 5 times throughout the whole year.
As you can see, the Belkin wireless modem also has 4 ethernet ports which allows you to connect to it wired if you really need to. We had 4 systems connected via wireless and 1 connect via wired and it handled it all fine. As mentioned, there was the occasional time when the wireless connection would hang…but all that was required was a quick router reboot and it was fine again. As you can see from the back pics, theres a ethernet port for the cable modem. You will therefore plug the cable modem into this port. This will then allow the router to share the connection between all of the computers connected to it.
When setting up the router, don’t use the setup CD..this often causes problems. Instead connect to it by typing either 192.168.1.1 or 192.168.2.1 into your web browser when connected to the router. This will take you directly to the routers web interface where it can be configured.
As with the cable modem, you will need to connect to the router directly to its ethernet port. This will then allow you to set up the wireless etc. With our router, we didn’t even need to tell it about our cable modem - it had already picked it up, and was sharing it fine. All that we needed to do was set up our wireless connection and wireless security, and also tinker with a couple of settings (resetting the default password etc). It only took like 10 mins tops. We could then all connect wirelessly fine. If anyone wants me to put up a step by step guide with screenshots of how to set up a router, then leave a comment below and I’ll do one for you .
So, that now covers the cable modem and getting it connected to the internet. Now we can take a look at the digibox
Virgin Media Digital TV box.
If you’ve ever seen a sky tv digibox, then the Virgin Media one is a very similar size, and looks kinda similar depending on which model you have. We got given a nice Samsung one both years we had it. Check out the pics below, as always - click on the images to see bigger ones.
So here are the pics. The front of the digibox has a few controls which allows you to change the channels and volume (unlike sky the box also has its own volume setting. So you tv could be turned up max, but the box is at a low level etc.). This is a pretty handy feature. Not only this, it has a little display on the front which tells you what channel you are on. This is kinda useful I guess, probably not for most of you.
As you can see from the back image, it has most of the outputs you would expect. Although there are a couple we never used, nor could find a use for. These are the ethernet port, and also the USB and test ports. These aren’t used - I guess they’re there for future expansion and gadgets. One thing which they are lacking are audio outputs (red and white connections) - something which is used to connect seperate audio equipment to. This is something which sky boxes do have but are missing on this. Other than that, they are pretty similar.
In terms of the interface to change channels etc whilst watching tv - it’s pretty bad. I don’t have any photos unfortunately but all of the menus are black. I find it a big sluggish compared to Sky. Having said this, when looking at the tv guide - you can still watch your programme on a small screen in the top right corner which is a really cool feature. There are also some major differences such as Virgin Media’s Video on Demand service - although Sky now have Sky player. In all, they’re pretty similar - I mean, they both let you watch TV so how different can they be!
Now…the most important part of any TV set up - the remote control!
Virgin Media Remote Control
The remote control is quite a bit different that the Sky one and has much more of a plasticy feel. Not only this, the back of it isn’t half as good. I love playing with the Sky one which usually ends up with the latch getting broken. The Virgin remote just isn’t as satisfying!
So I think that covers pretty much everything about the hardware. But how does it look when it’s all connected?
Connecting everything up:
Don’t worry, the engineer will install everything for you and set it all up - but you will need to attach your own router if you are going to use one. Apart from that though, they will sort the rest out.
Anyway, here is a pic of how everything connects up:
There you go - that’s how everything connects together. The image on the right shows the cable splitter which they use. You will only have 1 cable come into your house for your broadband and TV. That cable is then split into 2 by that splitter, and it will then connect to your cable modem and your router. So both sets of data travel down the same cable. This means that your modem will need to be situated very close to, or right next to your tv digibox. Which means that it’s usually best to have a wireless router as this will need to be pretty close too unless you have a long ethernet cable.
Of course, the engineers are there to do a job - so if you want the cable modem elsewhere then I’m sure they won’t mind putting some additional cable to get it to a different part of the house. Just think though, do you really want a big white cable running around your house? No…so just get it next to the box and get a wireless router .
As you can see, I’ve put the ethernet cable showing the connection between cable modem and router. The picture is missing a few wires such as power cables, and also the scart cable for the TV. But this gives you a good idea of the hardware and how it connects together. That splitter cable will be joined through the wall to the box on the outside of your house (if you can remember that far back, I have gone on quite a bit in this guide!!).
Well there you have it…pretty much everything I can think of telling you about Virgin Media and how it’s set up and works.
If you have any questions at all then please leave them in the comments section below. Also, if you want me to write up any other guides then let me know and I’ll do it for you.
I’ve written up a load of other guides which you may find useful, so if you fancy checking them out then please click here for a list of all of them.
Well if you’ve made it to the end then I applaud you - I didn’t realise how much I had written. Anyway, hope you found this useful - Thanks .
Great guide, just wanted to know the techniques of getting out of the contract earlier please