Virgin TV360

No unfortunately and episode 7 and 8 are on BBC2 this Saturday as is Casualty.

Sky Sports+ linear will replace Sky Sports Arena

It is launching on 8th August on

channels 407 HD / 456 SD at 6pm.

Ran into many of the issues with the new streaming boxes today when my brothers fiancees mother asked me to try and sort out her Virgin setup.

She had a 360 main box and 360 mirror box. Her contract was nearly up and she rang to see was there any deals they could offer her and they suggested fiber. Not being tech savvy she took the deal even though she didnt need faster broadband.

They set her up on a new account. Fiber installers came and ran the fiber in at the front door where the new router now needed to go. Stream box installers arrive and first thing he says is, “oh, this is a really long house!” (Fecker knew Wifi was going to an issue). Stream boxes don't connect while he is there but he tells her they eventually will and to just follow on-screen instructions.

Eventually the stream box in the room nearest router in the hall connects but shes got no TV channels. After a month trying to get through to them it turns out they never transferred her TV subs over to the new boxes. (Without TV for a month!) One of them is now working but she cant seem to record anything.

This is where I come in.

Never heard about the new streaming boxes but my intuition which turned out to be bang on the money was the recording was a copyright holder issue and that the difference compared to the old 360 boxes was local storage of recordings versus cloud storage cause straight away I knew these tiny things wouldn't be storing anything locally as Virgin would never spec these things with expensive SSD’s.

Guess which channels she used to record the most from on her old 360 boxes?? LOL.

So I swapped the working stream box from the front room with the kitchen one at the back of the house. Back of the house one now in the front room gives the same CS1028 unable to download software update despite being closer to the router which the other stram box did eventually successfully connect to.

So now I think maybe its not a Wifi issue but maybe connected to the subscription transfer issue from july to the new account. Maybe they didn't activate the second stream ‘mirror’ box for the new account. Couldn't get through on the phone while I was there.

However, something that still points to WIFI is the working stream box I moved to the kitchen was glitching to black every few seconds until eventually I found a position on the TV side table where it seemed to stop. Thats when I left. Going to write her up a script of what we’ve tried, to tell the Virgin CS when she eventually gets through in my absence.

TBH given they never told her about losing the ability to record BBC and RTE, and she still has her old gear, she should ring and demand to keep her old gear on the fiber router or even revert back to coax. Whats the time limit on cancellations and reversion to old account etc?

Its not like her house is huge, its a 3 bed semi with kitchen/dinner extension on the back but its 6 or 7m from front door to back patio door. They’ve compromised wifi range/strength on these tiny boxes and antenna less routers purely for aesthetics.

She had a main and smaller mirror 360 box. Coax points in livingroom and kitchen. Main box and router connected to coax in livingroom, mirror box connected to coax in kitchen. Mirror box in kitchen had no problem connecting reliably via WIFI to main box in livingroom.

In other words, the older 360 boxes pull the channels over coax, content is recorded and stored locally on the main larger 360 box in the livingroom. The kitchen box pulled channels from coax too and only needed to communicate via wifi to the main livingroom box if you want to watch a recorded program stored on the main box.

Fiber upgrade meant fibre optic cable ran from manhole outside. They drilled in through side wall into hall just inside the front door. New Router has to go there. Old 360 boxes now replaced with tiny 3”x3”x0.5,” ‘streaming boxes that do not connect to the old Coax points. While the little boxes have ethernet connectivity, the woman doesn't have ethernet runs from the hall to the two rooms, so the little streaming boxes can only stream TV via WIFI from the hall router. For compactness and aesthetics neither the router nor little streaming boxes have external antenna and for bandwidth reasons maybe can only use the 5ghz band which doesnt penetrate walls as well as 2.4ghz. Both combined mean that the streaming box in the kitchen 6m away that almost has Line of Sight, still doesnt have a reliable wifi connection and was blacking out every couple of seconds.

Sounds like you upgraded to 1gbit speeds but not over fiber. Docsis 3 over coax supports 1gbit. Docsis 4 over coax supports even higher. I think Virgin brand as ‘Fiber powered’ any of their product offerings via FTTC (Fiber to the cabinet-Coax from cabinets to house) and FTTH (fiber to the home). In other words you are still commected via Coax to the nearest Virgin Cabinet that could be hundreds of meters away from your house and your line is only fiber from that cabinet back to Virgins network.

Havent done any research on it, but it sounds like Virgin might not be bothering to upgrade their Coax network to Docsis 4 and instead are now just using the wholesale fiber lines that are becoming more commonplace as Eir and Siro/ESB roll put fiber all over the place.

In my brothers fiancees mothers 20yo estate, someone ran fiber to manholes around the estate and there was existing ducting from those manholes to each house. Virgin are leasing that fiber wholesale from whomever laid it/owns it. Virgin contracted a network company to run fibre from that manhole through the ducting to her house and drilled in through the external side wall into the hall to install the Fibre termination box. So you are on FTTC and she was on FTTC like you but is now on FTTH.

Hers is a different router. Rectangular, grey IIRC and with a cloth finish around the edges.

Eurosport 4K (400), Eurosport 3 - 9 HD (415-421) removed today

MUTV has moved back to 415, it was on 422 when Eurosport 3 HD launched for the Olympics

Just fixed maybe in last half hour or so.

Yes noticed that earlier and it took them along time to fix that CNN issue.

TNT Sports Box Office - 862 this Saturday.

Was it definitely TNT coverage though? I know the logo changed on 360 boxes to a generic PPV one, but on the Sky platform, Sky Sports Box Office showed it, but for commercial premises it was shown on TNT Sports Box Office

https://www.sky.com/boxoffice

Might be wrong, but it looks like these are available without the Bigger/Loaded/UPC Max pack now.

162 Discovery Quest
164 Discovery Turbo
173 ID
174 QVC
205 CNN HD
209 HGTV
210 Discovery Science
211 Discovery History
212 Animal Planet
720 U&W

3 channels rebranded yesterday and have been updated (logo and title)

151 G.O.L.D. > U&Gold

171 Alibi > U&Alibi

523 G.O.L.D. +1 > U&Gold +1

Also, over the last week or so 115 Sky Witness HD's logo has been updated, although they didn't update 515 (+1). And 405/454 Sky Sports Golf HD/SD finally have the correct logos, they had been a Masters logo for years