Virgin media equipment

[stuartR1963]

Hi all, first of all I know you are technically not allowed to interfere with virgin media equipment or cables, and any alterations should be done by an engineer or installer .My question is what is the worst that can happen if you do it yourself? such as extend or move the existing cable to move the tv around the lounge, or add a new tv point to another room for instance. sorry if this sounds daft,but if you buy good quality cable like wf100 or similar with proper crimp compression fittings and the correct type of splitters then what is the problem? What are the consequences if you do this by yourself and how would virgin media find out? just curious but lets say the braiding touches the center core accidentally what exactly would happen? would the tv just go a bit funny like with an aerial system? or would you cause a riot with your neighbours somehow? what exactly would happen? would there be any immediate effects if this were to happen? I just want to know the reasoning why virgin media feel justified to charge about £99 just to connect move the tv around or connect a daft bit of coax together? Why are virgin media so fussy about this?
thanks

 

[Harry Bloomfield]

Nothing would happen, if you know how - just get on with it. If you get it wrong, you will know straight away and not do any damage.

 

[Lucid]

Worst case scenario - in theory - you could break Virgin's cable service. Not all of it, but maybe cause some problems for your neighbours also on the same local node. You see, unlike Freeview and satellite, with cable, your home is physically connected to the same network as everyone else.

In practise though you'd have to do something monumentally dumb such as short a cable permanently or use really poorly-shielded that allowed lots of interference to affect the network. Given that so much low grade RG6 is sold via Ebay and the likes, and yet the net isn't full of "Oops, Virgin banned me" stories, then we can probably presume that it's not a huge instant problem. Maybe the Virgin installers and engineers have to deal with the occasional issue, but no one is making a big fuss.

I think the more likely scenario is that some householder does a bit of a DIY extension job, then runs in to an issue because they bodged something which means calling out Virgin to sort out the mess. Virgin might decide to charge the customer for the time to fix it. again though, there's no Internet uproar about this, so hardly a significant problem.

The one thing I would say is that Virginia uses a triple shielded cable. Webro product code is HD100. It's available to buy retail or online.

Webro's cable is better spec than the stuff Virgin now use, so if an installer ever called then they'd have no reason to complain about the coax quality.


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[Iamchamps]

Virgins biggest and most time consuming thing for network engineers is noise or ingress caused by customers doing DIY along with damage on cables by other things (dogs, gardening etc)

If they trace this problem to your property they will make an unsuspected visit by just turning up and asking to come in and resolve or they will block your service until someone can come round and resolve.

If the cause of the problem was by you then you do face being charged. Like mentioned if you do a good job then nothing will probably happen but I have outlined the worst case above.

Your contract does state you will not fiddle with anything installed by Virgin.

 

[jim63]

The thing is Virgin media or telewest as it used to be known is a huge network, the system is far bigger than just your house, so if you make a mistake you could potentially affect everyone else in the street not just your house,if an engineer traces the fault back to your house, the price may be a lot higher £99. Virgin media is a totally different ball game from sky and freeview and its a lot less forgiving, hence why virgin media use specialized triple screen coax because it is imperative that interference is kept to a bare minimum. As mentioned above virgin media engineers biggest issue is dealing with noise ingress on the network, mainly caused by diyers messing about with the equipment using mediocre cable and connectors from B & Q.
A friend of mine is an aerial and sky engineer and even he said he wouldn't touch virgin media with a barge pole because of how complex the system is.