The man who makes no mistakes does not usually make anything - Edward John Phelps
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Virgin Media launches no monthly fee HD service
UK CABLE TV OPERATOR Virgin Media has released a no subscription HD set-top-box (STB) built by Cisco and available in late March.
The company claims its V HD STB won't require any monthly fees but punters should take care. It costs a £49.99 payment plus £35.00 for an engineer to install it and customers need to subscribe or upgrade to the 'M+' TV tier or above in order to be eligible for the V HD Box. Still, that's incredibly competitive compared to Sky and BT's HD service.
Non-subscribers will get free-to-air BBC HD and Channel 4, while subscribers will have ESPN HD, National Geographic HD FX HD, MTV Networks HD and LIVING HD, if the world is really ready for Ghost Hunting with Yvette Fielding in HD. The service is also due to broadcast six other free-to-air HD channels later this year. These include &ITV, Eurosport, Discovery, SCI FI, E4 and Film4.
The re-badged Cisco STB is 3D-ready and includes HDMI, SCART, USB and Ethernet ports. It also has a power saving function built-in, which Virgin Media claims reduces stand-by usage by approximately 95 per cent.
Virgin Media's executive director of digital entertainment, Cindy Rose, said, "We want to make the best High Definition TV available to more people at affordable prices and without the additional monthly subscription fee. We think our superb range of TV content gives our customers a real choice and makes Virgin Media the best value TV offering available." µ
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As a Virgin Media subscriber who's coming to the end of my 12 months contract this month, I am tempted. Best I've had so far is a £7 discount a month for 6 months if I upgrade to the XL TV package (I already have XL broadband and XL phone but M TV). I hardly use my current TV box as it's an SD box. I do like the on-demand stuff such as iPlayer but having a HD TV I want to get some HD content but without having to pay £75 for a V+ box plus another fiver a month.
So maybe for an extra £5.50 a month I might go for it, I can't get Freeview HD until August and I ain't happy about paying over £150 for a Freeview HD box so this has come at the right time for me.
Rob
Slightly off the core topic, but I didn't know there was a HD MTV, man that's such a waste of technology, who wants to see their awful (music-free) programming in HD? people don't even want it in SD.
I hope you can childlock that with a code you punch in while blindfolded so you can't accidentally end up flipping past it a sec and be depressed.
Freesat is terrible. 2 HD channels which broadcast occasional content and the SD channels are lower resolution and multiplexed within an inch of thier lives, most of them LOWER quality than Terrestrial Freeview.
The implication of the Virgin announcment applies some pressure on Sky, as far as them charging £10 per month for HD content. Sky however have can fall back on the fact that they provide the largest choice of HD broadcast content in europe.
OK found it now. We have M (which is free), M+ (£5.50 per month), L, and XL. So it's gonna cost an extra £5.50 per month to upgrade where necessary and go M+, to take advantage of this box. If I am reading my Virgin Media hieroglyphics correctly.
From what I can work out from the amazingly clear Crystal Mark(TM) Virgin Media web site, M+ is actually the lowest TV package. So anyone with M+ will get this for free which will be anyone who has TV through Virgin? Unless people are stuck on the M TV package, but that is not listed any more, only M+, L and XL.
or... you could buy a freesat hd box for £80 and pay nothing more