So is Tiscali TV any good ?
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I'm thinking of moving from Sky, and the Tiscali TV, phone and B/B package looks very good, compared to the other usual suspects.
I'm only really interested in Kids TV and Sky 1 from the digital, as I'm going to use the sky mobile service for sports.
It just seems a LOT cheaper than the competition and I was wondering if I get what I pay for.
I'm only really interested in Kids TV and Sky 1 from the digital, as I'm going to use the sky mobile service for sports.
It just seems a LOT cheaper than the competition and I was wondering if I get what I pay for.
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http://www.tiscali.co.uk/products/tv/index-tv.html?code=ZZ-NL-11EE
Sky 1 is included in the £24.99 package and Kids' Mix would be £6 per month extra. The phone deal includes free calls to many international destinations (including some international mobiles) as well as UK landlines.
At present they are offering the Tiscali+ PVR for free (you won't own it, but there are no rental charges) and it's a reliable PVR, allowing for the very occasional, fixable glitch - far fewer glitches than most of the Freeview+ boxes (and I should know, I have several including Tiscali).
It's a brilliant deal, I reckon.
parthena
If you look around this forum you'll find one or two others who are not complaining.
parthena
But have been useless selling the IPTV service and have closed the Italian IPTV servce.
http://www.iptv-watch.co.uk/2007/12/13/tiscali-targets-200000-broadband-tv-subscribers/ Not good and am not sure what the current TV customer numbers are?
Just recently Tiscali TV setup costs have been reduced, CPW have decided to merge Tiscali and AOL and rebrand with Talk Talk!
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/mediatechnologyandtelecoms/5295302/Carphone-buys-Tiscalis-UK-broadband-business-for-236m.html The broadband and TV costs are now very competative, they seem to have a good STB with HD and Canvas coming which could be as good as Sky+, and if marketed correctly could take off in 2010!
The issue could be the savings of between £40m and £50m they want to make to boost profits!, if they don't improve the IP network to take account of the extra traffic and also improve customer service with staff who know the broadband and TV services inside out, like Sky provides, the rebranded Tiscali/Talk Talk IPTV service could still fail!
From
http://www.thinkbroadband.com/
I was wondering how reliable the service was as well - I guess if your internet goes, then so does the TV, or is the PVR also a freeview box ? Is it a dual input box i.e. record one program, watch another or record internet, watch terrestrial etc.... ?
What's the quality of the picture ? Can you get HD ? 8Mb seems like a slow connection speed to be promising all that it does. Does it degrade whilst a couple of PCs are accessing the internet as well?
Anybody been able to compare this with say BT vision, which is a lot more expensive, and I am starting to wonder why this is.
Yeah, my exchange is tiscali BB and TV enabled.
The TV takes about 2mb of my internet speed up, I get around 5mb down my line so it leaves 3mb for the net. The Tiscali+ box has twin freeview tuners so you can record 2 freeview channels whilst watching an IPTV channel or you could record 3 things if you watch terrestrial through your TV. If you are watching a freeview channel through the Tiscali box your internet isn't used and your internet speed goes up.
I was stuck between Tiscali TV and BT Vision but chose Tiscali as its £19.99 a month and has Sky1,2,3 FX, Comedy Central etc. One thing to mention though is that Tiscali don't offer catchup services for ITV or C5 - they just offer BBC, C4, FX etc.
The only issue I have had is that my sound sometimes goes crackilly via HDMI but Tiscali are looking into this (it seems a common fault but only occurs for 1minute every few hours) - Scart works fine though.
Hope this helps
Picture quality is very good quality Standard Definition. HD is not currently available, but there has recently been a trial where a Harry Potter movie (or more than one?) was made available for download in HD - I don't have HD TV so can't comment on it. But "things" are obviously in the pipeline. There is no red button interactivity yet.
I have 2 laptops running by wifi off the router and there is no noticeable effect on BB speed when the TV is being used.
parthena
Although I have had problems recently with my TV package I must say that Tiscali customer services are generally very good, especially as the help lines are now 5p per minute and not premium rate and you usually get a £5 credit if you do have to make any calls. Also the online help is very good. So, although I'm not happy with the fact that problems caused are due to my distance from the exchange (which I think I should have been warned/advised about)
I would recommend Tiscali.
Like Parthena I am a happy Tiscali customer & have no connection with them whatsoever (apart from the phone line, obviously)
I think that the service is criminally undersold at the moment but am hopeful that with the new ownership bedding in and such developments as Canvas and potentially higher broadband speeds courtesy of Talk Talk's network they will take the opportunity to roll out the TV service nationwide.
It does have its drawbacks, red button functionality, or lack of being a major bugbear but generally it's great for the money & I don't think I would switch to Sky now even if I could as I rely so much on Tiscali's on demand and catch up services (not totally comprehensive agreed but there's enough for me).
As for customer service it has improved immeasurably if my experience at the weekend was anything to go by - I had lost the 'Net and was talked though the reset procedure by a very helpful chap who had me back up & running within 3 minutes of my making the call.
I hope that I am not coming over as a Tiscali apologist - I just genuinely like the service and think it deserves to be made more widely available.
Cheers,
David.