OK.

Less than one week in, and I have to eat if not humble pie, then at leat some humble on toast.

Broadband is spotless for us. 45 Megabit wireless (802.11n) around the house. Wired, I seldom get under 65 Megabits and as we aren't even close to the traffic limit, that's no problem.

Television is another issue. The engineer turned up 10 minutes from the end of the booked time slot. He was in a foul mood which he shared with me quite openly. I spent a fair bit of the next hour calming him down. After he'd gone I realised he'd installed a 1TB Tivo box instead of the 500GB we were expecting.

That was the last good experience of Virginmedia television.

Sound dropouts, video freezes and dropouts, complete picture loss for a few seconds at a time (grey screen and static) all evening.

So I organised an engineer call. He turned up while I was away. according to my daughter, he spent about 3 minutes looking at the television, diagnosed loose connections, tightened the plugs, and left.

That did fuck all. The problems were just as bad, so I organised another engineer call. This one actually bothered to check the line. 'Too strong' he announced, and fitted an attenuator.  Then he ripped out our 1TB Tivo box and fitted a 500GB one. Bye bye all our recordings, favourites etc.  Bye bye our brief possession of a 1TB box.

So far I have to report his visit has done fuck all - apart from really really piss me off.