Virgin Media will launch its own 4K set-top box this year

Kurn

Virgin Media will unveil a new 4K set-top box for TV customers later this year. In its first-quarter financial report, the company said that as part of enhancements to its UK TV offering, it is currently "preparing to launch new set-top box platform," which will feature Ultra HD broadcasts like Sky Q and BT's YouView-powered box.

Chances of Ireland getting this?

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2016/05/10/virgin-media-4k-set-top-box/

lgs 4

Kurn wrote: »

Chances of Ireland getting this?

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2016/05/10/virgin-media-4k-set-top-box/

you will get screwed for the privilege, invent in satellite dish pointed at 19e and 13e hotbird lots of free 4k content

Kurn

Yes... I am aware of alternative options for television...

mackersdublin

No mention of Ireland though, just mentions the UK TiVo box

The Cush

Not sure if they're all singing off the same hymn sheet

‘Eos’ common STB for Liberty

May 11, 2016

Liberty Global is to end the mix of its own Horizon and the TiVo provided STBs , as part of project ‘Eos’ part of Liberty 3.0 which CEO Mike Fries mow says will be known as ‘Liberty Go’.

The company aims to reduce costs across the board and a common technology platform is a target. Speaking alongside Liberty Global results, Fries described Eos as “a set-top we plan to roll out everywhere at some point, including in [the UK]”.

However, Virgin Media also announced plans for a new 4K STB that will be based on its existing TiVo platform. Liberty’s CTO Balan Nair said that this would be a “pretty high-powered box that will get a refreshed TiVo UI on it later this year” but added “our goal is to get Horizon across all of Europe.” He said that Eos would be the “engine for next generation video” for the company.

Virgin Media CEO Tom Mockridge, also on the call, said that the TiVo-based box would “give us a lot more functionality for our customers” and enable the operator to remain competitive with Sky and its’ latest iteration Sky Q.

Fries described Eos as a “name for our cloud-based set-top box” to be trialled later this year.

http://advanced-television.com/2016/05/11/eos-common-stb-for-liberty/

http://www.digitaltveurope.net/538292/liberty-global-to-create-single-advanced-set-top-for-all-europe/

bk

We probably won't get the TiVo 4k box. But I suspect there will be a new Horizon 4k box which we will get and that in time it will end up replacing TiVo in the UK too. I just can't see Liberty Global continuing to license TiVo when they already have their own in house designed box, it just duplicates costs.

Capt'n Midnight

I know someone who's still trying to get Virgin to replace the SCART box with a HDMI one :mad:

lgs 4

It's going to be long before 4k in on cable network ,4k takes up a lot bandwith 7 GB of bandwidth.

7upfree

Horizon Go is awful. You can't use most of the channels outside the VM network.

ted1

Kurn wrote: »

Chances of Ireland getting this?

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2016/05/10/virgin-media-4k-set-top-box/

Bet unlikely as we use horizon here and they use other hardware in britian

enfant terrible

Has BT Ultra HD not been on Virgin UK for ages?

mackersdublin

enfant terrible wrote: »

Has BT Ultra HD not been on Virgin UK for ages?

No, only available on BT TV

bk

lgs 4 wrote: »

It's going to be long before 4k in on cable network ,4k takes up a lot bandwith 7 GB of bandwidth.

Cable has a massive amount of bandwidth available, it can handle 4k just fine.

Having said that, I expect they will use IPTV to stream 4k video, similar to how Netflix, youtube and BT 4k work, rather then transmitting multiple channels simultaneously in the way HD currently works on cable.

ted1 wrote: »

Bet unlikely as we use horizon here and they use other hardware in britian

There is going to be a new 4k Horizon set top box, which is likely what we will get here.

Virgin UK will likely also transfer to this Horizon 4k box, but such an transition will likely take a few years, so in the meantime they are going to rush out a 4k TiVo box so that they don't fall too far behind Sky Q and BT TV 4k boxes.

Should be easy enough to do as TiVo already has 4k boxes in the US, so should be relatively straight forward to modify them for the UK.

Just my speculation on what is happening.

Capt'n Midnight

lgs 4 wrote: »

It's going to be long before 4k in on cable network ,4k takes up a lot bandwith 7 GB of bandwidth.

Lots of HD channels taking 22-30Mb here http://en.kingofsat.net/ultrahd.php
Easily stick a dozen of them on the bandwidth used by "360Mb" , and that's before you dial back the FEC or mux them together or the old trick of caching most popular stuff in the set top box.

Also don't hold your breath but cable has a lot of life in it yet.
http://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2014/07/virgin-media-uk-lab-testing-10gbps-docsis-3-1-broadband-upgrade.html

Cable operator Virgin Media has confirmed to ISPreview.co.uk that they’re currently lab testing the next generation DOCSIS 3.1 cable network standard, which could one day be used to deliver broadband download speeds of up to 10Gbps (Gigabits per second) and uploads of 1Gbps+ over their predominantly urban network.

bk

Yup, lots of people already watching 4k UHD HDR on Netflix and Youtube right here in Ireland today via Virgin Media cable.

Don't get me wrong, not saying that it isn't a pain for the network engineers and planners and that parts of the network need upgrading and that will cost money, but coax cable really does have a tremendous amount of potential bandwidth.