I have already mentioned how I really like the Microsoft Surface Pro 3, and one of the reasons why is that watching Virgin Anytime on it is really good. The bigger sized screen improves the viewing experience (mainly sport for me) and one of the top 25 reasons that I love the Microsoft Surface Pro 3 that I mentioned in a recent blog – http://www.smallbusinesssalt.co.uk/blog/25-reasons-why-i-love-the-microsoft-surface-pro-3/ – the wifi access being very strong, means that there are very few Kevin Bacon stylee buffer faces going on. By and large it is a seamless experience. However, that wasn’t quite the experience from the start.
When I first went to watch Virgin Anytime on the Surface Pro 3 it wasn’t quite as easy as I hoped, so I thought I would share the experience with you to save you a lot of time, having to call customer services and losing the respect of your children, all good things to avoid.
Quite simply, I started the process setting up Virgin Anytime with Google Chrome. Now, I don’t know if you have noticed this, but Google Chrome has been going slow for a while for me, so recently I have started using Mozilla Firefox as a browser. However, Google being Google, it won’t let me run my clients’ Google Adwords campaigns from Firefox, so I have had to keep both browsers running side by side. This is why when I first set up Virgin Anytime I just used the browser that had most recently been opened, which having been updating some Adwords campaigns was Google Chrome. Big mistake!
I first had to disable one of my old devices. On Virgin Anytime you can only have two devices registered at a time, and you can only make one change a month to these two devices. I decided it made sense to disable my Ipad, as there seemed no point having an Ipad and a Surface Pro 3 running Virgin Anytime as they were a similar device. This left me with my Mac, which I will come back to in a minute.
I should mention that the night in question was a big game of football which I was looking forward to watching with my son. We have Virgin Anytime in his bedroom but we usually stay downstairs to be together as a family and keep it running alongside the main TV.
I selected to change my Ipad to the Surface Pro 3 and it all seemed to go well, until I tried to watch the football. Then came the message ‘You have not registered this device’. When I went to try to do so again it told me that I had already made my one allowed change for the month so tough luck.
I went through the loop several times before giving up. I got the Mac into the lounge but it did what Virgin Anytime always does when running on the Mac, it kept freezing. Not just Kevin Bacon buffering, but freezing and crashing. We gave up!
A few days later when I had summoned up the energy I telephoned Virgin customer services, which sadly never makes me feel like I am lying alongside Richard Branson on Necker Island talking business, but instead makes me feel like I am being dragged towards the burning core of the earth, to go through the ordeal that I knew from experience would follow the start of my call.
To be fair, apart from holding for about 10 minutes all in all, the helpful chap did allow me to change another device once I explained my problem.
It was then that I luckily had Firefox open and so I went through the process on that browser and within minutes I was streaming live television to my Surface Pro 3 without any problem at all.
I went home that evening very proud of my achievements and knowing that there was another game of football to be watched. My son was genuinely impressed with my technical skills, that is until I got my Surface Pro 3, fired it up in seconds, opened my browser and tried to watch football, then…. Nothing!
I was just about to say something entirely inappropriate when I realised I had opened Google Chrome. I quickly opened Firefox, opened the Virgin Anytime page, logged in and hey presto, I was allowed to be father to my son again.
So if you want to watch Virgin Anytime on your Microsoft Surface Pro 3, please, please only try and do so from Firefox and you will be fine! It works brilliantly in Firefox, is very smooth, rarely pauses and due to the brilliant screen size of the Surface Pro 3 it makes the viewing experience much, much better.
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