We've got Virginmedia and we have unlimited downloads day or night. We've never had any problems. We were with NTL originally, then when Virgin took them over we changed to Virgin. Many, many, many years ago we had Tiscali when it was a new young company but now it's grown and been taken over, I wouldn't recommend it.
If you can get it broadband is much better than dial-up. If you can get Virgin on cable, that's what I'd go for. My daughter has that, but unfortunately, my part of the same town doesn't have cable, so we're connected via the telephone line.
Lizzie