Virgin TV
Virgin TV is a digital pay cable television service in the United Kingdom, owned by Liberty Global and Telefónica after merging its UK businesses to form Virgin Media O2. Its origins date from NTL and Telewest, formerly two of the UK's largest cable operators, which merged on 6 March 2006. All NTL:Telewest services were rebranded as Virgin Media in February 2007. Since the acquisition of Smallworld Cable in 2014, Virgin is the sole national cable TV provider in Great Britain. about 51% of UK households have access to Virgin's network, which is independent from BT's Openreach network.
Virgin ranks as the UK's second-largest pay TV service, and the service is provided in conjunction with Virgin Media broadband and phone. As of Q3 2007, it had 3.6 million subscribers, compared to 8.2 million on its traditional rival Sky. As of 2009, Virgin's digital cable television currently uses the Nagravision 3 conditional access system. The service was fully digitalised in 2013.
Since November 2016, the service's flagship set top box is the TiVo-powered Virgin V6 Box, or the Virgin TV 360 which has an updated HORIZON interface, competing with Sky Q.
History
From 2008, Virgin Media functioned as a single company; however, it relied on its three existing infrastructures: the Langley-based NTL, Bromley-based NTL and Knowsley-based Telewest platforms. As part of the Next Generation Television network, the infrastructure was consolidated into a single super headend at Langley in 2010, with Knowsley serving as a backup.In May 2008, Virgin Media began their "long term" region-by-region analogue television service switch off project, beginning with Coventry and Glasgow. In areas where analogue transmission will be turned off but no digital replacement introduced customers will be offered Virgin's off-network services, with the company looking at developing a television-over-DSL service for areas outside its cable network. Analogue subscribers in areas where digital cable services are already available will be offered transfers to new packages. The firm signalled that it wants to use the capacity to provide faster broadband internet.
On 11 September 2009, Cisco Systems announced a deal to support Virgin Media's Internet Protocol TV distribution platform and upgrade its legacy digital TV infrastructure. Virgin Media deployed Cisco Digital Video Headend technology in all of its regional and central headends, across its national fibre optic network. The TV platform will be capable of delivering advanced services to more than 12.6 million UK homes. The infrastructure helped Virgin Media to reduce operating expenses, support the rollout of new conditional-access security services, and accelerate the introduction of new standard and high-definition services. A Virgin Media spokesman later clarified that the plan "isn't quite announcing the 'launch of IPTV services'. The agreement with Cisco is to help enhance our existing TV platform, which broadcasts content over DVB-C and then our VoD service runs on IP."
On 24 November 2009, Virgin Media entered into a strategic partnership with TiVo. Under the mutually exclusive agreement, TiVo developed a converged television and broadband interactive interface to power Virgin Media's next generation, high definition set-top boxes. The terms of the deal were not disclosed. TiVo became the exclusive provider of middleware and user interface software for Virgin Media's next generation set top boxes. Virgin Media became the exclusive distributor of TiVo services and technology in the United Kingdom.
Virgin Media will pay TiVo monthly fees, which commenced upon delivery of its first set-top box, which are guaranteed and increase over time. The agreement has a multi-year term with additional limited renewal rights granted to Virgin. The agreement created a mutually exclusive distribution arrangement under which TiVo will develop software for DVR set top box platforms and non-DVR set-top boxes that will be deployed in the future by Virgin in the United Kingdom. Virgin Media will promote the product and has exclusive rights to use the TiVo brand and technology in the United Kingdom. As part of the agreement, Virgin Media and TiVo entered into a mutual covenant not to assert with regards to each party's intellectual property. Investment bank Lazard Capital Markets estimated the hookup as a "$48 million deal" for TiVo. Virgin Media is to maintain its current Liberate middleware provided by SeaChange International through until at least January 2011.
In 2014, Virgin Media bought Smallworld Cable, a regional cable company. As a result, Virgin Media is now the only cable company in the UK apart from WightFibre which operates on the Isle of Wight.
Availability
Non-digital areas
The BT Group owned Milton Keynes franchise which was analogue-only was switched off in November 2013. BT's Openreach division selected Milton Keynes for a large scale fibre-to-the-premises trial. It remains to be seen what impact, if any, this will have on the viability of the Virgin Media leasing arrangement of the analogue HFC network there, which, uniquely, is believed to pass through BT infrastructure – not wholly VM's. The leasing arrangement dates back to 1999 and was mandated by the European Union in response to competition concerns surrounding BT's Cable TV interests in Milton Keynes and Westminster. Virgin Media completely withdrew its services in Westminster on 31 January 2012, after being unable to upgrade the network and deliver their digital services at a reasonable cost. The Milton Keynes cable network, which has a significant number of users due to technical satellite and aerial reception issues down to local geography, does not suffer the same 'conservation' area rules as the Borough of Westminster. Milton Keynes remained analogue-only until the end of 2013, at which point the network was shut down due to a contractual breakdown with BT, the owners of the network in Milton Keynes.During 2009 digital upgrade work began on the last Virgin Media owned analogue-only areas in Bolton, Slough and West London as well as parts of Leicester, Northern Ireland and Southampton, with most areas completed between 2010 and 2011. In these areas Virgin Media had only offered customers analogue cable television.
Non-cabled areas
For customers in non-cabled areas, Virgin Media offered a branded set-top box for the Freeview digital terrestrial television service, called "Free TV", until December 2009 when it was discontinued. The set-top box was free to any customer taking the Bundle One subscription package or for an addition fee to other customers, up to five additional set-top boxes were available per account.The next phase of this service was to be a combined IPTV and digital terrestrial television service similar to BT Vision and TalkTalk TV. Virgin Media signed an agreement with Cable & Wireless to become the unbundled local loop network provider, providing access to 4 million homes outside of the Virgin Media cable franchise network and would include linear pay broadcast channels and video on demand. This was originally scheduled to be released during 2008 but was delayed and scaled back as Virgin Media concentrated on improving its cable broadband proposition instead of focusing on competing with Sky in the premium television market. As of 2010, no further developments have been announced and the plans appear to have been abandoned.
Products and services
Virgin TV carries around 301 digital television and radio channels, including a mixture of subscription, premium subscription and pay-per-view channels.HD services and PVR
Telewest became the first UK broadcaster to offer HDTV, launching its service in December 2005; several months earlier than that of its chief competitor, Sky. An HD-enabled set-top box is required to view HDTV.Virgin TV branded its original high-definition Digital Video Recorder service as V+. The service uses a PVR set-top box, with three tuners and a 160 GB hard disk for up to 80 hours' recording. The presence of three tuners means that V+ can record two channels at the same time while viewers watch a third. This contrasts with most other PVR systems such as Sky+, which supports only two tuners. In December 2010 a 1 TB TiVo HD PVR from Cisco was released, with a 500 GB model released in May 2011. From late 2011, Samsung Electronics will join Cisco as a second supplier of TiVo STBs for Virgin Media.
Virgin also offer a Cisco V HD Box, for a fixed upgrade fee from their standard set-top box with no additional monthly subscription fee.
The V and V+ boxes are now obsolete and no longer supported. Newer TiVo-based boxes are the only supported devices for Virgin TV nowadays. The newest V6 box is very fast and multi-functional, however, it only supports a HDMI-equipped TV set and requires a valid Virgin Media broadband service connection to the box. If these conditions are not met, only the older TiVo box can be used which has an operational SCART connector and an internal communication modem which removes a need for a broadband connection.
HD channels
At the product launch of Telewest's TVDrive on 1 December 2005, the only HD channels available were BBC HD and ITV HD trial channels. ITV HD was removed from the network after the completion of the trial on 30 November 2006. On 1 December 2007, BBC HD was transformed into a full service.During 2009, Virgin launched FX HD, MTVNHD, National Geographic HD, Channel 4 HD, ESPN HD and Living HD. Living HD represented the first HD channel to be made exclusively available to Virgin TV.
In 2010, Media added E4 HD, Syfy HD, Discovery HD, Eurosport HD, ITV HD, STV HD, Channel 5 HD, Film4 HD, ten Sky Movies HD channels, Sky Sports HD1 and HD2, Sky1 HD, Comedy Central HD, UTV HD and BBC One HD. Both Film4 HD and UTV HD are exclusive to Virgin TV.
In 2011, Virgin Media added Sky Arts 1 HD and 2 HD, Eurosport 3D, Sky Movies Classics HD, Dave HD and Watch HD.
In 2012, Virgin Media added Eurosport 3D, Alibi HD, British Eurosport HD, the BBC's 24 Olympic HD channels and Channel 4's 3 Paralympic channels.
In 2013, Virgin Media added Cartoon Network HD, TCM HD, British Eurosport 2 HD, ITV2 HD, ITV3 HD, ITV4 HD, BBC Two HD, TLC HD, NHK World HD, Animal Planet HD, BBC Red Button HD, MTV HD, Nickelodeon HD, BT Sport 1 HD, BT Sport 2 HD and More4 HD.
Later in the 2010s, Virgin Media began removing standard definition feeds of channels it offers in high definition. The first SD removal was on 25 September 2018 when Gold's SD channel is removed from the platform. This was followed on 4 December by the removal of the stand definition feeds of BT Sport and a week later, BBC Two in SD was replaced on channel 102 by the high definition version although BBC Two continues to be available in SD as BBC Two England on channel 862.
2019 sees the ending of the broadcast of many more channels in standard definition, including BBC Four, BBC News, CBBC and CBeebies, Lifetime, History, H2 and Crime & Investigation, the Sky Cinema channels, Eurosport and Discovery.
On 27 May 2020, Sky Documentaries and Sky Nature launched on Virgin Media but the platform only provided the high definition versions of the channel although towards the end of the year, the SD versions also appeared so that the channels could be watched by lower tier customers who do not have access to Virgin media's high definition feeds of pay channels.