Is it really worth moving to Eir Fibre broadband

chonix

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120813933#Comment_120813933

Mind me asking which router you bought?

davejacko

Been with them for almost 2 years. Getting fibre in was a complete mess but once it was in, I have found it to be reliable. I like the Apple TV, it's great having all apps on one box. Eir TV is fine but we are not heavy users. Customer service is awful but in fairness I haven't needed to contact them in a good while.

My pricing started at around €40 almost 2 years ago, its now €95 so when the contract is up I'll be looking for a steep discount or I'll be gone.

abdc1243

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120988935#Comment_120988935

Deciding on whether to get Eir TV or Sky Stream. From reading the threads and the post above, it seems that Sky Stream is limited in recording BBC whereas Eir TV is not. I'd like to be able to record MOTD at a minimum and the occasional decent drama as well as stuff like Wimbledon or Glastonbury. Can someone confirm that I can record these shows using Eir TV?

babelfish1990

I can confirm that eir TV does not have the same limitations as Sky Stream when recording BBC. You can record and series record MOTD, externally produced drama as well as BBC produced material. I am not aware of any limitations on recording BBC on eir TV. It's great. because even in UK, viewers complain about not being able to get MOTD on BBC iPlayer. Paradoxically, there are limitations on recording RTE on eir TV. but at least you can fall back on RTE player for locally produced content.

abdc1243

Thanks for the reply. Eir TV, it is then!

IceGiant756

All of these chats have been very useful as I was considering switching from my current Virgin Media 360Mb. It’s an old contract called Connect 360 and it’s €64 per month so I think I’m paying more than I need to. Historically (pre Fibre) Virgin Media’s (Cablelink) copper cable blew everyone else out of the water for speed but that’s all changed now with FTTH.

But one thing that makes me cautious about switching is the consistency of VMs cable connection. Every time I test, it’s never gone below 300Mbps download and 30Mbps upload and generally much closer to the provided 360/30 and that’s plenty for our household. I almost went with Eir recently as they have just rolled out in our area of Dublin which has lots of houses in the local area by the way. They were offering 1Gps for €40 I think so from a cost point of view it’s a no-brainer. I rang Virgin Media and said I was thinking of changing and the sales guy said beware of Eir’s contention ratio, that they say “up to” 1Gps but we'll never get near to it,

I see Sky say “up to” that too. We've been with Sky for TV for years.

So I’m worried that I’ll actually drop speeds if I go with them as lots of houses nearby and lots of people sharing my fibre connection.

My question is: Is anyone else on a Sky or Eir fibre connection in a built-up area and noticing drop in speed or is it ok? Maybe the VM sales guy is spoofing me to stop me from switching?

Thanks for any feedback

P.S. I have opinions on SkyTV which I’ll reply to separately 

IceGiant756

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120990029#Comment_120990029

There are some questions about SkyTV compared to Eir etc. I haven't used Eir's but from a general usage point of view, I'd be amazed if any of them come even close to Sky Q for user experience. I have their 2TB SkyQ box and the older satellite dish with coax. Everything is pretty much perfect, the signal is nearly always perfect, the user interface is excellent, the remote is lightning fast, the recording and series recording is excellent with very very rare hiccup. We watch a lot of BBC, Channel 4 and some Sky channels like Arts and some RTE. 

We never watch live and just record everything onto the 2TB box and fast forward through the ads. I can get through a five minute ad break in less than 5 secs sometimes with the remote :) Lots of Sky users dont know about the feature where if you pause first and then use the right direction button, it skips a minute of ads so once you get used to it, the ad breaks are toast. Most users just use the normal fast forward where they are 30 times live fast forwarding which is slow and also mental on your eyes for an entire ad break. The minute skip is infinitely better.

Also we have our Netflix and Apple TV+ on the SkyQ box so everything in one place.

One bad thing that drives me nuts (1st world problem I know) is that they charge and extra €10 per month for HD resolution, not even 4K. So if you don’t pay that you’re just getting 720p which is like viewing through vaseline and I think almost unwatchable, but I refuse to pay it because they are fleecing customers by charging them for HD when it should be free a decade ago at least, let alone now. It's not 720p on all channels though, they can only charge it on their own Sky channels and others like Eurosport. The “normal” channels like RTE, BBC, CH4 and Virgin are all full HD 1080p in their standard package. I get Eurosport as an extra for LeMans 24hr but that’s on 720p now as I cancelled the extra cost for HD that I got as free-be after complaining a couple of years ago, so now I'm back to vaseline tv :) and I’m considering subscribing to Discovery Plus directly and trying to Apple TV mirror it to my tv to get it separately as that’ll be HD/4K as standard I think. 

So yes, Sky TV is relatively expensive but if you watch a decent amount of terrestrial TV and are willing to pay 10 per month extra for HD for non-standard channels then go for it. Or if you'll only watch RTEs, BBCs, CH4, Virgin even better so. I’d argue that the user experience is so good that it’s worth the extra cost for an easy life.

By the way, I know lots of people have 4K TVs these days but we don't, we just have a very good quality 40 inch TV so full HD 1080p is perfect for us. So if you "need" 4K then you might want to look up Sky's charges for that resolution.

Anyone has anymore questions on Sky, please ask and I’ll try to answer