Anyone change from Sky to fibreoptic ?

recipio

As above people, I had an Eircom guy at the door trying to persuade me to change from Sky TV to fibreoptic TV/phone/broadband.
Trouble is, I've never seen fibreoptic TV. Is it as good as satellite and will it cope with the new Ultra high definition Oled TVs available soon ?
The financial package is definitely attractive compared to Sky.

L1011

Evision has very few channels, impacts your broadband speed and the image quality is less than ideal

recipio

L1011 wrote: »

Evision has very few channels, impacts your broadband speed and the image quality is less than ideal

Well that says it all !
Is Evision the name of Eircom's TV/broadband service. ?

coylemj

recipio wrote: »

Is Evision the name of Eircom's TV/broadband service. ?

Yes... https://www.eircom.net/tv/

'Fibreoptic' is a just a marketing term, it describes the trunk network running around town and which is broken out into co-ax or phone lines at local distribution boxes i.e. before it arrives at your door so don't think for one minute that a fibre optic cable is going to run into your house which is what you might be lead to believe by the hype.

The term has been used by UPC for a few years now, Eircom have finally woken up to the value of the term for marketing purposes but they have had fibre-optic cables joining up their exchanges for years.

recipio

Thanks.
The rep indicated that there was a 'box' just 30 metres from me. I actually thought they ran a fibreoptic cable into the house - that was the selling point for me. I'll ask them directly after checking their website offers.

L1011

There are only a miniscule fraction of houses served directly with fibre - you're going to be using copper from the cabinet. UPC is the same, fibre to the node then coax (copper, but capable of far higher speeds) from there.

Rosahane

recipio wrote: »

As above people, I had an Eircom guy at the door trying to persuade me to change from Sky TV to fibreoptic TV/phone/broadband.
Trouble is, I've never seen fibreoptic TV. Is it as good as satellite and will it cope with the new Ultra high definition Oled TVs available soon ?
The financial package is definitely attractive compared to Sky.

I have it and am very happy with it. Not as many channels as sky but has the Main ones. We have the multi room and the HD PACK. Pretty much means less crap channels available that you never watch in any case. The only real omission is Eurosport.

I also have high speed broadband from eircom and use netflix which works perfectly at the same time as the eVision. I think it just means that the broadband is capped at 50 meg - I had 70 before the eVision, nit that there is any difference from a performance perspective.

diarmaidol

The channel selection is up on their website.

I've found it quite good to date. The sd picture quality is better than Sky by a mile and 1/2 (bit rate used is 3.5-5M for SD stuff, I don't have HD)

Only issues I have is that there's no stacking for the recorded programs and the EPG doesn't have categories for the stations.

The EPG isn't as good as sky's but it's grand. Considering it's 180EUR cheaper per year.

I wouldn't be so hot on getting it however if your down speed is closer to the 30Mbps Mark.

recipio

Thanks all.
I have two HD boxes and am fussy about the quality of the picture. Why not - I think HD has been the great advance in the past five years and is only going to get better.
I can't understand how you can get a perfect signal down the co ax cable and ama little annoyed at the 'fudge it' attitude by Eircom reps.

Rosahane

recipio wrote: »

Thanks all.
I have two HD boxes and am fussy about the quality of the picture. Why not - I think HD has been the great advance in the past five years and is only going to get better.
I can't understand how you can get a perfect signal down the co ax cable and ama little annoyed at the 'fudge it' attitude by Eircom reps.

Having gone from Sky HD to eircom eVision HD my impression is that the HD on eircom is actually better!
I also have two HD TVs and multi room. It's especially good on the Samsung LCD set.

Rosahane

L1011 wrote: »

Evision has very few channels, impacts your broadband speed and the image quality is less than ideal

I have to disagree with you there.

With the exception of the option of tuning in UTV on " other channels" on the Sky box eVision has pretty much the same channels as SKY. OK SKY has dozens of crap channels that nobody ever watches.

My eFibre speed only dropped from 70 to 50 mb. I have experimented and can watch HD TV on two sets and run netflix on the iPad simultaneously without any issues.

I find the HD quality better than SKY.

Also, the total package is significantly cheaper, eircom are an irish company employing thousands and their call centres are based here - not in India!

L1011

Rosahane wrote: »

With the exception of the option of tuning in UTV on " other channels" on the Sky box eVision has pretty much the same channels as SKY. OK SKY has dozens of crap channels that nobody ever watches.

I would find myself at a loss to find anything to watch on evision most of the time. Over-emphasis on kids TV, timeshift channels which are an anachronism these days, and a fair amount of utter junk - EWTN anyone?

Rosahane wrote: »

My eFibre speed only dropped from 70 to 50 mb. I have experimented and can watch HD TV on two sets and run netflix on the iPad simultaneously without any issues.

Losing about a third of your potential speed is a fairly major impact, with further impact from the channels being watched. Do a speed test when you've got your two HD channels running, I'd be amazed if you're getting more than 35mbits anymore.

Rosahane wrote: »

Also, the total package is significantly cheaper, eircom are an irish company employing thousands and their call centres are based here - not in India!

Eircoms owned by foreign venture capital firms, both UPC and Sky have call centres in Ireland also. I wouldn't make the ridiculously huge compromises to use evision based on something as spurious as this.

Rosahane

L1011 wrote: »

I would find myself at a loss to find anything to watch on evision most of the time. Over-emphasis on kids TV, timeshift channels which are an anachronism these days, and a fair amount of utter junk - EWTN anyone?

Everybody differs I suppose. We mainly watch the irish and UK national channels, occasionally the history and national geographic ones. Other than Eurosport I can't see what I'm missing!

Losing about a third of your potential speed is a fairly major impact, with further impact from the channels being watched. Do a speed test when you've got your two HD channels running, I'd be amazed if you're getting more than 35mbits anymore.

I don't agree, as i said I have tested and no problems watching both televisions and streaming netflix to an iPad simultaneously. We don't have any online gamers in the house.

Eircoms owned by foreign venture capital firms, both UPC and Sky have call centres in Ireland also. I wouldn't make the ridiculously huge compromises to use evision based on something as spurious as this.

I must be missing something here as I fail to see any compromise in using eVision. I have moved from SKY which was increasingly expensive and had UPC before that which was plagued with outages.
Despite its international ownership eircom employs thousands of people in Ireland - not just a few poorly paid call centre staff which has a huge knock on effect for the economy.

Once my mobile contract finishes next month I'm actually going to upgrade to the eircom four in one bundle - mobile, fibre broadband, eVision TV and home phone which is on offer for €62 per month rising to €99 after six months. Even when I add in the eVision extras such as multi room, HD and the extra pack it will only be €120. I think that is unbeatable!

L1011

Rosahane wrote: »

I must be missing something here as I fail to see any compromise in using eVision.

Broadband speed and channel package. Image quality is a matter of personal perception (as well as whatever setup you came from), but I find it to be woeful.

Once my mobile contract finishes next month I'm actually going to upgrade to the eircom four in one bundle - mobile, fibre broadband, eVision TV and home phone which is on offer for €62 per month rising to €99 after six months. Even when I add in the eVision extras such as multi room, HD and the extra pack it will only be €120. I think that is unbeatable!

I have it rather easily beaten.

Paying UPC 77.something for 200mbit BB, full channel pack (much more than evision offer), HD, multiroom, home phone. Paying Meteor 20 for my phone.

I don't see why anyone with UPC on offer would even countenance using evision. UPC also have rather a lot of non-callcentre staff in Ireland, as it happens.

7upfree

Rosahane wrote: »

I have to disagree with you there.

With the exception of the option of tuning in UTV on " other channels" on the Sky box eVision has pretty much the same channels as SKY. OK SKY has dozens of crap channels that nobody ever watches.

My eFibre speed only dropped from 70 to 50 mb. I have experimented and can watch HD TV on two sets and run netflix on the iPad simultaneously without any issues.

I find the HD quality better than SKY.

Also, the total package is significantly cheaper, eircom are an irish company employing thousands and their call centres are based here - not in India!

The statement of channels being "better than sky" is quite surreal - as most of the channels are sourced via Sky.:)

Regarding "India"........

http://www.ledp.ie/featured/upc-completes-e600000-investment-ledp-call-centre/

http://campus.ie/surviving-college/jobs/sky-hiring-staff-new-dublin-customer-contact-centre

7upfree

Rosahane wrote: »

Despite its international ownership eircom employs thousands of people in Ireland - not just a few poorly paid call centre staff which has a huge knock on effect for the economy.

Am I missing something here or do I see main vans for a company called KN Networks working on behalf of Eircom??

bk

7upfree wrote: »

Am I missing something here or do I see main vans for a company called KN Networks working on behalf of Eircom??

KN Networks are subcontractors who both Eircom and UPC (and probably ESB in the future for their FTTH rollout) contract to upgrade their network and do new customer installs.

A lot of people who work for KN are former Eircom employees. Eircom has been laying off employees at a very high rate. They are aiming to reduce their work force down to about 3000 by this year, down from about 10,000 at it's height!

All ISP's nowadays outsource the majority of their customer support and line staff, keeping only a small number of experts for emergencies, etc.

BTW UPC employs about 800 people here in Ireland. ALL customer support is based here in Ireland, there is no Indian call center. They also employ a large number of various types of engineers, management and technical staff (ops, networking, new installs planning, etc.) in their HQ in Dublin.

Eircom has been behaving much better over the last two years, however for years due to their monopoly position, they totally held back broadband in Ireland, ripped people off with one of the highest line rentals in the world and sent almost 5 billion to foreign investors, putting the company in massive debt, resulting in massive layoffs.

Meanwhile UPC spent 500 million investing in upgrading their network and brining some of the fastest broadband speeds in Europe to the people of Ireland. It is only because of the very strong competition from UPC and the number of customers Eircom has since lost to UPC, that Eircom has finally started to change it's way and finally started investing in it's network and has some what competitive products.