Are You A Virgin Media Customer Looking For A Better Deal?

virgin price rise 2022Are you a Virgin Media customer looking for a better deal following their price hike announcement?

Virgin have announced that on the first of March they will be increasing the prices of their broadband packages across the board, affecting people both in current contracts and those who have been with Virgin for more than 18 months and continue to pay their legacy pricing.

If you’re in a contract reports suggest that you could end up paying £56 per year more for your data, while those who never changed after their contract expired could face increases of up to 45% depending on what package they were on when they were in contract.

Virgin put a price freeze on their broadband prices in 2020 to help people adjusting to Coronavirus as we all needed to use broadband for work, school, entertainment and news, but this increase is the second since then. Because Virgin doesn’t have an annual price increase clause in its contract there is a way out if you’re affected by those price increases and you’re not happy. Virgin are giving their customers until February (some reports say the fifteenth, some the eighteenth, so we’d suggest acting before the fifteenth to be on the safe side) to cancel their contract without incurring a cancellation fee. Read more

What is Dolby, and why is it so important to Home Cinema enthusiasts?

Dolbydolby, tv sound, sound quality first came to prominence as a noise reduction process, invented by Thomas Dolby in the 1960s. Before his noise reduction process was developed static and hiss on magnetic tapes and optical film would spoil the sound of a movie. Various ways were tried to get around it, such as reducing treble but using this method could only go so far before the dialogue began to be distorted or muffled.

As tape was rapidly superseding optical sound reproduction (a process where the sound is recorded as a visible signal on the edge of the film and converted back into sound when the film is run through a projector which is fitted with the right audio capability) the Dolby Noise Reduction (NR) was applied to improving the sound on tape by electronically suppressing the noise which is inherent in magnetic tape recordings. Read more

What Happens If You Stream Pirated Moves Via VPN?

home cinema, tv hanging, tv mounting, tv wall hanging, tv wall mountingYou’ve got your VPN set up to protect your anonymity online, now should you use it to watch pirated streaming movies?

First of all, of course not! That would be illegal and, as we all know video pirating is killing the entertainment industry.

But… As there are so many foreign language streaming sites out there which only give you the title of the film in English you might have absolutely believed that you were on a legitimate website right? And of course the VPN (Virtual Private Network) disguises your location anyway, so IN THEORY nobody would know it was you in the first place.

The purpose of a VPN isn’t to protect you from unwanted advertising, nor stop your web browser from tracking your visits and keeping cookies, and won’t stop anyone you live or share a computer with from seeing your history. So while there are many VPNs available, free or subscription based, using browser extensions or apps, they’re not necessarily the best, and certainly not the only option for more secure video streaming. Read more

Why Is Turning On Smart Lights So Frustrating?

phone, smart phone, unlock smart phone screenAccessing your Smart Home environmental controls via your phone is handy. It’s the easiest way to control your lighting, heating, air conditioning, even answering the door. So why is it so difficult to take master these controls without having to unlock your phone?

It’s not the worst of all First World Problems, but it does create a frustrating delay when what we all want is immediacy and the instant satisfaction that we get from flipping a switch.

Smart Home integration is supposed to be quick and convenient, but if you have to unlock your phone every time you want to dim the lights, it’s a bit of a faff. Other functions don’t require your phone to be unlocked. Want to snap a fast photo? You can do that without unlocking. Need to pay at a shop counter? No need to unlock there either when you’re using ApplePay (providing it’s less than a set amount). But when you want to adjust the lights, or put the heating on you have to fumble around unlocking the phone, going to the app and sliding the toggle. Read more