We've been waiting quite a while for Virgin's new TiVo HD service to come on stream, and today the man from Virgin finally arrived with a new set-top box to plug into my home AV system.
The system makes use of dedicated channels of bandwidth on Virgin's digital network and a built-in dedicated 10Mbps cable modem, ensuring users can surf the web and watch TV at the same time without interruption, and brings TV in standard definition, HD and 3D.
Installation took about an hour, with the software taking around 40 minutes to upload to the box once it was connected to our Virgin cable network. The engineer explained that we should leave the box on for now, as it can take up to two days for all the content to load itself. Well for starters it has a 1TB hard drive rather than the meagre GB on the old box, which was forever filling up quickly with the amount of HD programming we were recording.
Shouldn't be a problem on the new box, which can store around hours of HD content, or hours of standard-definition material. There's also a much slicker implementation of BBC iPlayer, and a limited number of apps for the likes of YouTube, eBay and Twitter so you can access your accounts via the TV once you've set them up online at www. More apps are promised in the future. Also on the menu is 3D, although at this point the amount of material is mainly limited to some short demo clips for customers with the XL subscription package.
But the biggest improvement is the inclusion of TiVo technology. The TV offers lots of extra features to make your life easier. You can also customise your channel guide just to include your favourites. The 'clear' button allows you to delete anything from a single show to a whole folder; and if you delete things by mistake, the 'undelete' feature enables you to rescue them. Your PIN is also needed to purchase on-demand content.
In a word, yes. Enjoying Virgin TV and want to share the love? Both of you will need to be on contracts of 12 months or more. The best bit? You can add sports just for a month at a time — perfect if you just want to see a particular sports tournament or match. Virgin Movies On Demand are pay-by-title.
Once rented, content is available for 48 hours. There are hundreds of films to choose from, many in HD. This website uses cookies to give you the best experience. By continuing, you agree to our cookies policy. About us Contact us Media centre. This is a very slick system but we just wished the BBC on-demand content could be accessed this way too rather than via a dedicated app or the red button.
While watching TV, the program guide gives us a lot more information than previously, including a program description and what channels the other two tuners are tuned into. It is also possible from here to go directly to either of these channels and rewind to the point when it tuned into that channel. While watching a show you can press the green Thumbs Up or red Thumbs Down buttons to let the system know this is the type of program you like or dislike. It is these actions which help TiVo to predict what you like and make suggestions about shows it thinks you may enjoy.
In the My Shows menu from the homepage also accessed via a dedicated remote button , you will find all the recordings organised into folders if there is more than two of one series and Series Links you have scheduled, but you will also find a folder entitled Suggestions. It is in here that TiVo places the shows it thinks you would enjoy based on your viewing habits and Thumbs Up or Down selections. For the most part, TiVo gets it spot on, recording shows and films in the same genre as those we would normally watch anyway.
Where the TiVo box significantly differs from any of the competition on offer, is in the Browse and Search options. From the homepage, choosing Browse and Search will let you find virtually any television show, film, actor, actress, director that is scheduled to appear in the coming weeks. It will allow you to check out when and where particular programs are on, record them and set up series links.
By setting up a Wishlist Search for Walken, your TiVo box will automatically keep an eye out for anything to do with the acting legend and record it for you. You can set up as many searches as you like based on actor, actress, director or just a keyword. The final option in this Browse section is access to YouTube. This means you can search the entire YouTube library whenever you want, using the dedicated 10Mbps modem in the TiVo box.
The interface is simple and the system works effectively, though with most of the content on the video sharing site not the best quality, on a larger screen it can seem very blurry indeed. The final section on the homepage menu is Apps and Games. In its current form, this section is not a killer feature, but it is the possibilities that Virgin Media could open up which make it such an exciting feature.
The iPlayer app has been developed specially for Virgin Media and contains up to three times the content available on the V boxes. Users can access it through this dedicated app or via the red button. The 1TB TiVo box is not cheap.
With 50, people pre-registering their interest in getting a TiVo box, there certainly seems a demand for the service out there. The box itself, while quicker than its predecessors, is still sluggish in places and some of the menu screens look pixelated.
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