The Virgin Media Television thread

Great idea, something like the BBC button options which bring up IPlayer for Catchup, or the ITVX project, which may offer something similar. It may be in development.

Currently its fairly clunky with BBC, waiting for iplayer to load and run, then you're off the main epg and can't switch rapidly. How fast they could get a stream app running depends on the TV OS I guess. Ironically, Samsung, of the unfriendly satellite/terrestrial EPG, (you'd swear it was Star wars, earth v space), and no VMplayer, have their own free stream channels, and it's integrated directly into the epg, right after the terrestrial channels. I've not tried sorting to see if I could move some into the middle of the Saorview channels, and there's no settings option where you can enter a channel stream .m3u file format or similar for custom streams, but this would be a brilliant platform for VM hd streams, except its proprietary to Samsung.

My ageing Linux box can/could do this, in the EPG file lists you could edit a channel to point to a stream source IP along with the channel metadata, rather than tuner data, and the channels would sit in the EPG like off air channels, instant-ish access, until the dodgy iptv source vanished, or changed ip, which was too frequent to be bothered eventually. It's been a long time since you could access the stream sources of players like RTE or then TV3 outside of their apps, time was you could with a few lines of html.

I've said before here that VMplayer is likely to be a semi subscription app in the future, with the terrestrial channels free in HD as the carrot for other paid content. Then you could have prompts on the terrestrial channels to take you to More or Sport extra, catchup or just live HD, with hopefully a rapid epg, or integration into the terrestrial epg using the hbbtv technology. Don't hold your breath.

Just a final point. How economical is it to provide potentially 300,000+ point to point HD streams free over the WAN, (modern shared IPV6 and multicasting not withstanding to spread it out), as compared to the cost of a single 6mbs average stream on a broadcast platform. How much does it cost to run these servers to 100,000s of simultaneous clients, let alone time shifted ones? I tried several times during the world cup to switch from a prompt on my BBC HD satellite to the iplayer 4K feed, I had iplayer working fine on android TV, but the traffic demand just overwhelmed it, it would play in 4k then freeze. All this tech wrecks my head eventually.

Not quite fully recovered, judging by their schedules. Live programmes like Tonight Show, 6 O'Clock Show not getting repeats in their regular slots. Loose Women remaining on VM2 at 12:30, but no repeat on VM1 at 3pm. No repeats of Ant & Dec's SNT on Sunday, no repeats of Love Island after midnight either.

All sport games shown on VM More are all pre-hack days - so there is no reshowing of games from the 2nd legs of the Europa League, and the weekend's 6 Nations games. They're still ok showing the 1st leg games though of Europa League, and the daily showing of Liverpool's 1984 final with Roma. Europa League highlights, Formula E highlights, Champions League Mag/Weekly also not shown on the channel.

Podcast/turned TV show - The Group Chat remains off air too.

According to VM2 epg for this evening, it seems Liverpool are replaying all this seasons champions league matches, starting with AC Milan.

Maybe they'll overturn last weeks unfavourable 2-5 trashing by Real, in VM's alternative reality at any rate. (Note my sat box epg channel icons are also living in the past, almost appropriate).

There's a Saorview app again? On what platform?

It was worth watching, unlike pathetic Spurs.

Tabloid TV.

I can't abide some of the the bottom shelf US/UK programming they show but I'm ok with anything they produce themselves, right back to the shoestring days of TV3. Kind of reminds me of life in the 80s, make do, chewing gum and string, etc. They won't be tempting Gary Lineker over any time soon, but their correspondent Zara King is the real deal, total pro.

They had reporter Paul Quinn on Ireland AM this morning report on the Gary Lineker story from Central Dublin - no not Central London - comical stuff.

In fairness to Virgin Media the Gary Lineker story has been high up the headlines on RTÉ News over the weekend as well. The Oscars was also a much bigger story then usual because there were so many Irish nominations. The Oscars were the second headline on the RTÉ News last night as well and Zara King probably would not have been sent out there in any other year.

I like VM news but I agree GL and Oscar stories not important. Generally shorter than RTE. Often I don't need my news coverage to be too long. I find Six-One is way too long. 30 mins enough just like 9pm news.

I had no issue with them reporting on Gary Lineker but having a reporter do a LIVE report from central Dublin was bizarre.

Enjoying the racing on VM1. Here's the runners and odds for the Late Late stakes.

Nice win today, it was also nice to see Scotland Vs Italy on RTE2 in HD of course, we had to settle for SD for the Ireland Vs England game on VM1, its beggers belief that this is happening in this day and age.