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What has happened to Virgin's newsgroups?
mike1948
Posts: 2,157 Forum Member
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I have been on VM's newsgroups for a number of years, subscribing to about 10 of them. One has about 100 posts on average every day. However, in the last five days there has not been a single post on any. Has VM closed access to them? I even tried accessing via my only PC and still no joy.
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I was going to ask the same question, specifically about
alt.binaries.teevee
This was an excellent group for tv, sports, etc. I sent a tweet to VM asking about it, but they just suggested I ring 150. That would no doubt be a complete waste of time. I just rang them and there didn't seem to be an option for this subject. I tried under tech.
If anyone has any info, or if anyone is still getting that group, I would like to hear.
Thanks guys.
Yes, that was the message I got.
I phoned Virgin Media's helpline yesterday to ask what had happened to the newsgroups. They were not aware of any issues but have promised to investigate and get back to me. I told them that I have used newsgroups for more than 10 years and have the same set-up on two PCs. They took me seriously because of that. They have their IT people working on it.
The last lot of msg headers I received was on December 5,
Great job, mike1948, keep us posted, buddy.
If the groups are gone, then so am I. I could join plusnet and pay less than half of what Virgin are charging me, and pay for a separate usenet service.
I would have thought that VM's technical support would have known about a decision to drop newsgroups. The ones I subscribe to are merely msgs, not attachments, and most certainly not copyright or offensive material.
After speaking with the VM support technician, I was transferred to someone more senior and he, too, was not aware of any issues.
When they get back to me I will post an update here.
If that's true, why didn't you move to Plusnet a long time ago and pay for an additional usenet service? It'd still be cheaper overall.
Simply because I've been with VM since 2000, back in the days when it was blueyonder and I got comfy and complacent. It's a pain to change ISP's, but by dropping the newsgroups that I use every day I now need to buy a separate newsserver and If I'm going to do that, there's no way I can aford to spend £54 a month on my ISP as well. If Virgin/Highwinds have dropped newsgroups then it's the incentive I needed to move on.
Nothing yet. I will give them until Friday then phone 151 again.
Cheers!
I've always thought it a little odd that they carry some of the newsgroups given their content. IIRC it seemed to improve when they had that spat with Sky...
Personally, I've had no trouble (in fact, I didn't know there was an issue until I saw this thread). My downloader software uses VM as its primary server and falls back to other (paid) servers if an item is unavailable on VM. I've checked my logs and find that the ratio of data taken from VM against fallback servers over the last week and the last month has been about the same as usual. I just grabbed 2 current episodes of a US show and the data came exclusively from news.virginmedia.com.
Perhaps this depends on the software you use to access usenet. I use SABnzbd which uses nzb files to find content, so there is never any need to mess with groups and headers. If Virgin have come up with a cunning plan to hide group headers with the aim of discouraging binary downloads, finding content via nzb files may be a solution. Just guessing - I'm no expert in this area.
It isn't a software issue. I've used Xnews and grabbit every day for more than a decade without any trouble. The groups just arent there anymore. I've read the thread on virginmedia community and after a week of misinformation and misdirection it seems now to point to what I have believed all along, that Virgin are in the process of fazing out their usenet service altogether. Anyway, It's astraweb and plusnet for me, I've already rang and cancelled my service with VM.
They just arent competitive anymore. Overpriced,undermanned and overzealous.
Today I phoned Virgin Media's technical support people about the absence of access to newsgroups. They did not really seem to know much about it and all they could say was that I should try to access them at another time. If it did not work then there was nothing more they could do.
Pretty obviously they have ceased to provide access to newsgroups but no one has bothered to tell the technical support people.
I think the solution is either to find another means of access or not bother with them any more.
To use newsnab-based clients like Sab, you also need an NZB indexer site. You can get a free account at Nzbplanet - limited to 5 grabs a day, but again, it will get you started.
Thanks for ringing again, Mike.
@ Fenlander: Despite having been on VM's newsgroups for a number of years, I am still green about them in general. Are you accessing VM's NGs, or from another provider?
I use Agent to access VM's groups. Since having problems that began about December 6, I configured Thunderbird to access VM's NGs but did not have any more joy than with Agent.
I have PM'd you.
Thanks. I'm a few months overdue for ringing them "to discuss what they can do for me". One of my jobs for the new year...
I tried SaBNZBD and unless I'm doing it wrong, still no joy - server retention mesage.. Oddly the same content but on the sort of groups that want you to complete a survey before handing over the password to a file (allegedly, obviously didn't actually go that far!) will download with no problem.
http://www.eweka.nl/
They are located in Netherlands, have their own servers, good retention, etc. They offer a 7-day free trial and the monthly rates are £5.74/mth for 50Mbit and £7.25/mth for 100Mbit. You can pay month to month, and payment can be by PayPal.
I'm on the 7-day trial and so far all is good - and they have a.b.teevee!
Eweka gets good reports. It looks like they currently have 100mb unlimited monthly accounts at 7.50euros (£5.73). You could also grab a free account at xsusenet.com - slow, but useful as a fill-in server and fine for anyone who just wants access to text-based groups. Free accounts have to be confirmed monthly by logging in to your account.
Just an update on Eweka. I've not been getting the full 100mb speed. I get about 7000KB/s about half speed of what I get on the VM100 service. So if I use them again, and I probably will, I'll go for the 50mb speed, which on the trial got a solid 5000KB/s all the time.