And that was before the Collections service bundle promotions were offered, which kicked off with the current quarter. Virgin Media really seems to be the ideal TiVo would hope all of their MSO deals could be.

Here’s the new ad:

They also put out a shorter version of the previously released ‘Jellyfish’ ad, so I may as well share that while I’m at it:

I’d love to see this integrated into the US units. As in the UK, keep the back-dated guide data going back a week or so. While we don’t have the dedicated catch up services like they have in the UK, we do have Netflix, Hulu Plus, Amazon Instant Video, and MSO On Demand services where supported. So the guide could link directly to the available service(s).

We’re very happy to announce that BBC Red Button is now available to Virgin Media TiVo customers. The features available include video news, full length text articles from the BBC News website and coverage of F1 season that is always up to date and available whenever you want to watch. Later this year the BBC Sport Red button services will be extended to cover other major events e.g. Euro 2012, Wimbledon and Olympics.

If you’re watching any BBC channel, just press the red button on your TiVo remote. Then arrow up or down to choose iPlayer or the News or Sports app, then select OK. Or you can select the BBC News or Sports app from the ‘Apps & Games’ section of your TiVo menu.

The new service is being rolled out to everyone over the next 24 hours, so don’t worry if you can’t see it yet.

Thanks
Mark Wilkin
Help & Support Forum Manager

Actually they started deploying it a week ago, on April 11th, I’m just a little behind on my reporting.

Via The Virgin Media TiVo Blog

Virgin Media is offering three different Collections featuring TiVo:

Essential Collection:

• 500GB TiVo
• TV: M+ 75 channels including six HD
• 30Mbps broadband
• 3000 hours of TV on demand
• NO additional HD box included
• Talk Weekends unlimited phone calls (Unlimited weekend calls to landlines starting 01, 02 03, plus 0870 numbers and Virgin Mobile phones.)
• £25 per month

Premiere Collection:

• 500GB TiVo
• TV: XL 175 channels including 23 HD
• 60Mbps broadband
• 7000 hours of TV on demand
• Free additional V HD box included for another room
• Talk Weekends unlimited phone calls (Unlimited weekend calls to landlines starting 01, 02 03, plus 0870 numbers and Virgin Mobile phones.)
• Included Extras: 3 months of Spotify, access to ESPN/ESPN HD
• £45 per month

VIP Collection:

• 1TB TiVo
• TV: XL 175 channels including 36 HD (counting 13 HD channels for Sky Premiums) as well as Sky Sports 1-4, Sky Sports F1 and Sky Movies
• 100Mbps broadband (increasing to 120Mbps soon)
• 7000 hours of TV on demand
• Free additional V HD box included for another room
• Talk Anytime unlimited phone calls (unlimited evening and weekend calls. Cheaper mobile and international calls)
• Included Extras: 3 months of Spotify, access to ESPN/ESPN HD, Sky Sports & Movies collection, HD fee for Sky Premiums, Talk Plan extras (Mobile/ International/08)
• £90 per month

Of course, there is fine print:

All prices are when taken with a Virgin Home Phone line at £13.90 per month, e-billing and with payment via Direct Debit. All Virgin Home Phone services include unlimited calls to UK voice landlines, 0870 numbers and Virgin Mobiles during inclusive talk periods. All Virgin Broadband services come complete with SuperHub dual-band wireless ‘n’ router and a free security suite featuring Parental Controls for the lifetime of a customer’s broadband subscription. All Virgin TV services come with access to Catch Up TV (featuring BBC iPlayer, ITV Net Player, 4OD, Demand Five and Sky Anytime on Virgin Media), Virgin TV on Demand, and basic HD at no extra cost (£7 fee payable for Sky Premiums in HD). Installation fee of £49.95 applies. Standard contract terms 12m for new or existing customers. 6m Half Price offer only available to new customers taking a Collection on an 18m contract. Subject to change.

To promote these new Collections Virgin Media is creating new ads featuring VM CEO, and Bond-villain-in-waiting, Richard Branson and star of stage and screen David Tennant. David is best known as the Tenth Doctor, the 10th regeneration of the titular character in the BBC’s Doctor Who. That actually caused a bit of a spat in the UK between the BBC and Virgin Media. See, the BBC has some strict rules about any of their properties, such as Doctor Who, being used in marketing from any outside vendors. And the first ad created for Virgin Media featuring David Tennant had a time travel joke and a direct reference to David’s star turn in Doctor Who. That video was posted, then yanked, re-posted in an edited form, and has now apparently been yanked from Virgin’s YouTube Channels again. However, the Internet being the Internet, there are numerous copies of the original version of the video posted by other users – such as this one:

Two additional ads have since been released:

There is also a behind the scenes ‘making of’ video:

There is a video embedding in the Virgin Media Collections page, but for some reason they’ve decided to region restrict it so it isn’t playing for me here in the US. I don’t get that, it is a promotional video for their own products, why lock it down? But, of course, it has been ripped and uploaded to YouTube multiple times:

Now, I’ve seen some reports that he said they will bring Netflix and/or Lovefilm to their TiVo platform, but that’s not quite what he actually said. This is:

DTVE: Do you think platforms like TiVo are the best defense for cable against the so-called OTT players like Netflix?

Neil Berkett: We embrace over-the-top quite frankly. We’re somewhat unique in the the way in which our revenue is structured. So we will bring the likes of a Netflix or a Lovefilm onto our TiVo platform.

Note “the likes of”. That leaves wiggle room for them to use Netflix or Lovefilm, or some other, similar service entirely. Now, I think Netflix and Lovefilm are the best potential services for Virgin, but I wouldn’t treat this like an official announcement of any actual plans. Still, it is encouraging. Watch the video for more:

Neil Berkett: Virgin Media will bring OTT players like Netflix to TiVo from Digital TV Europe on Vimeo.

From Digital TV Europe via The Virgin Media TiVo Blog.

Joshua covers a lot of interesting territory, with the primary focus being on TiVo’s app support. TiVo is focused on providing a consistent app environment across their platforms, be it retail or provider units. Today the focus on on the Adobe Air/Flash environment which is used on the retail and MSO Premiere units in the US, and the Virgin Media and ONO boxes in Europe. There is still support for the Java environment used on earlier platforms, as in HME, and TiVo is looking at other environments.

For developers seeking to get their app onto TiVo they work directly with TiVo for the retail market, but need to work with the providers for their TiVo units. TiVo can help facilitate those conversations for developers seeking to get their apps on multiple platforms, but it is up to the individual operators to approve an app for their customers.

He also talked a bit about working with different size operators, from giants like Comcast and Charter with millions of users, down to small MSOs with 150,000 subscribers. Definitely worth watching, IMHO. Now if we could just have the SDK released and actually start seeing more apps!

Via Broadband TV News

Being a Yank I’m not very familiar with Red Button myself, but from what I’ve seen I’m a bit jealous, we don’t really have services like it in the US. Basically it is the future of interactive television that we’ve been promised for years, but we never seen to get. Red Button services can provide interactive features on television, such as calling up scores and stats during sporting events. Or more advanced features such as alternate camera angles or feeds of an event.

Red Button services first became available to subscribers of Sky Sports and Sky Sports HD on Friday. The next roll out will be for subscribers of the Sky Sports F1 channel, which is coming soon to Virgin Media. And Red Button services for the BBC are planned for an April roll out.

The Virgin Media TiVo Blog provided a link to a post from Virgin’s Help & Support Forum detailing their offerings:

Great news! The wait is nearly over for our TiVo customers who’ve been waiting for Premier League Red Button coverage.

What are we launching?

Starting with Background Events so that our Sky Sports customers on TiVo can follow over-running, clashing and extra live Sports that won’t fit on Sky Sports 1-4. And then shortly followed by Football First for extended highlights of every Premier League match played on the day.

When are we launching?

MBE (Multiple Background Events) will launch on March 2nd and Football First on March 3rd. After that we’ll be launching Formula 1, Tennis will be coming later in the summer and both Champions League and Heineken Cup will be there for the start of the next season.

Please note: events are subject to change without notice

What channels will Sky Sports interactive be available on?

The interactive Red Button application will be available, for TiVo customers on the following Sky Sports Channels.

Sky Sports 1 511 & Sky Sports 1HD 517
Sky Sports 2 512 & Sky Sports 2 HD 518
Sky Sports 3 513
Sky Sports 4 514
Sky Sports F1 (when it launches)

I don’t subscribe to Sky Sports, how can I do this to take advantage of the Red Button services that will be available on selected events?

All you need to do is arrange an upgrade to Sky Sports, the Red Button service (available on selected events only) will be available at no extra charge.

When will BBC red button interactive services launch?

More good news! We’ve been working with the BBC to launch Red Button services on TiVo and we’re hoping to start the roll out in April. This service will launch a menu over BBC channels.

We’ll be communicating further interactive service launches as and when they happen – so watch this space!

Mark Wilkin
Help & Support Forum Manager

I know the lack of Red Button support has been a major, perhaps the major, gripe about Virgin’s TiVo offering in the UK. It may be hard to understand for those of us who have never had access to the service, but Red Button users are very passionate about it. So the introduction of Red Button services to TiVo should go a long way towards making those users happy, especially as Virgin expands support to additional content sources and channels.

Now, if we could only get a system like this in the states. I mean widespread, not just limited trials.

No official word on Spotify coming to US TiVos, yet, but it seems likely. Now that the work has been done to create a UK app it can be leveraged to create a US version. And back in July TiVo probed the user base for interest in Spotify in the US. It seems like it would be a no-brainer to bring it to the US as well. It would be Premiere units only, of course.

Via The Virgin Media TiVo Blog.

I’ve posted about software available for US units before, here and here, and on TiVo’s blog, and these apps work with the VM TiVo; but now there is a 3rd party remote control app for Windows .Net specifically for the VM TiVo: VM TiVo Net Remote. It is much more feature-rich than the Python-based TiVoRemote that’s been out for US machines for a while.

I can confirm that it does work with US units, I connected to the Premiere Elite I have for review and it worked as expected. Except for the TV guide, nothing displayed when I selected ‘Show TV Guide’. The window expanded, but it was blank. This is probably hard coded for the UK devices. There is also a default channel list, but that’s stored as a text file that you can edit to match your lineup.

What’s really nice is that anything you type while in the remote window is sent to the TiVo. It makes text entry a breeze. There are also shortcut keys to navigate with:
Following Shortcut keys provide the following functions
CTRL+H - Home
CTRL+T - TV
CTRL+G - TV Guide
CTRL+P - Play
CTRL+S - Stop
CTRL+M - My Shows
CTRL+V - Pause
CTRL+R - Record
CTRL+L - Last Channel
CTRL+I - Info
CTRL+U - Thumbs Up
CTRL+D - Thumbs Down
CTRL+F - Skip
CTRL+B - Skip Back
CTRL+X - Slow
CTRL+LEFT - Rewind
CTRL+RIGHT - Fast Forward
ARROW KEYS - Left/Right/Up/Down
ENTER - OK
DELETE - Clear
+ - Channel Up
- - Channel Down
1 to 9 - Send corresponding Number
A to Z - Send corresponding Key when in a text search (Search TV, YouTube search etc.)

You can click on the image of the TiVo remote in the app to send commands as well, very much like using a Slingbox. The image of the remote is the UK version, but it is close enough that US users shouldn’t have any trouble.

Perhaps some US-based developer could contact the creator, Andy Wheeler, and work with him to create a localized version for the US. What’d really be nice is to see some of the features from the Android TiVo Commander app brought to other platforms. But that’s not to denigrate the work Andy has done. This is a brand new app – version 0.3 was just released on Sunday – and he’s been improving it quickly. He has a thread at TiVoCommunity.com for feedback.

Via the Virgin Media High Definition & TiVo Services blog.

• DirecTV will finally release the new THR22 DirecTiVo in “early December”.
• Charter will be launching retail “very soon”.
• Comcast OnDemand support is in field trials now.

I think the DirecTiVo news is the most anticipated, so in TiVo’s own words:

Additionally, DirecTV has informed us that they intend to initiate the launch of the TiVo-DIRECTV product in select markets in December with a nationwide rollout to follow early next year.

Still, don’t set your expectations too high. We know the new DirecTiVo is based on the old HR22 DVR and it will lack a number of features found in the current DirecTV DVRs. DirecTV really doesn’t seem to want to release it, but they’re obligated to do so. They’re clearly focused on their in-house units with their five-tuner DVR, new HD UI, and whole-home support.

In other news, TiVo has had their first increase in total subscriptions in four years – adding 117,000 subscribers compared to a 33,000 loss last quarter. This is mainly thanks to Virgin Media’s runaway success, but also growth from RCN & Suddenlink. With ONO, Grande Communications, and Charter coming online, and the new DirecTiVo finally shipping, the MSO subscribers will become even more significant going forward. And TiVo indicated further MSO deals are pending, with TiVo having responded to several Request for Proposals.

Conversely, the retail side continues to slide. They added 30,000 new subscribers, but lost 60,000 old ones – for a 30k net loss. MSOs actually added 147,000 – the lower 117,000 net add is due to this loss. The good news is the new subscribers are worth more to TiVo as the higher monthly fees increase revenue per customer. If & when Comcast launches VOD support on TiVo and provides some marketing and free installations, as promised, it may help the retail numbers. But it seems clear the MSO side of the house is going to be the real growth engine.

Oh, there was one other interesting point. Rogers mentioned that most of TiVo’s development now serves both MSO & retail. They’re building a common code base for all platforms, MSO and retail, to better leverage their R&D spending. In the past the two sides operated pretty much independently. Remember the soft-TiVo product for Comcast & Cox was a completely new Java code base. While retail boxes remained on the conventional development path. Now MSO & retail units will be running common, if not identical, software and hardware will also be shared.

We’re already seeing that with the TiVo Premiere Q for MSOs and TiVo Premiere Elite for retail. It is basically the same box with a different hard drive capacity. And the 14.x software used by MSOs, such as RCN, and the retail units is from a common base. This means that any feature TiVo develops can be released to retail and offered to their MSO partners simultaneously – contractual issues permitting of course. (See Netflix being unavailable on MSO units.) It is also makes things more efficient, you don’t need two development teams both implementing the same thing on different platforms. Even the software for Virgin Media and ONO, which runs on third party hardware, appears to be from the common code base.

One thing I was hoping to hear, but didn’t, was news on the TiVo Preview coming to retail. I really want this and it is annoying that it is available to MSOs but not retail. It is the perfect companion to the TiVo Premiere Elite.

Overall though, I thought it was a pretty good quarter.

The Virgin Media High Definition & TiVo Services blog (they really need a catchier name, or at least a shorter one…) has a capture of the paper copy of the notice as sent to customers and it contains another bit of news. The Spotify app will be hitting VM TiVo’s on 11/29 under Apps & Games. No word yet on Spotify coming to US TiVos, though TiVo was asking about interest back in July. They also have a summary of review comments posted about the early test release that started last month.

The Virgin Media TiVo Blog mentions a couple of other changes in this release. In the past when you paused VOD content the pause would timeout in 3 minutes. This has been extended to 10 minutes, which is a much more reasonable time. And the tick marks, which have traditionally been set every 15 minutes in a program (used for ‘skip to tick’ and the like) now occur every five minutes. So you have a much finer control over when you jump, though it will take three times as many jumps to get to a given point I suppose.

A video of the update was posted by a user a couple of weeks ago:

Video pick up via The Virgin Media TiVo Blog.

Allow us to present Stuff’s First Theorem, a formula tells us that as TV gets ever more overrun by idiots making fools of themselves to amuse cretins, you need a really good PVR to cut through the rubbish. Virgin’s TiVo is that PVR: it learns from your viewing habits, suggesting and recording shows it thinks you’ll like. And most of the time it gets it right. With super-smart search features, three tuners and 1TB of space for recordings, the only barrier between you and a perfect night’s viewing will be your own good taste.

Via Stuff.tv

Strong TiVo growth in the quarter; 162,900 TiVo customers at quarter-end
- 127,200 net adds, around one third of which are new to Virgin Media
- 222,000 TiVo customers as at 26th October

Note that the quarter ended September 30th with 162,900 TiVo customers and they now have 222,000. That means they’ve added 59,100 TiVo customers in just the past 26 days! I can see why they feel the need to add Samsung as a second hardware supplier. And if one third of those customers are new to Virgin Media, TiVo is clearly a major sales driver for them. I can certainly understand why they’ve been so bullish on TiVo since the launch if it is driving those kind of numbers. Even among existing subscribers TiVo is an upsell, so that’s good for business.

This reinforces what I’ve said before, TiVo’s future is going to hinge on MSO deals with retail being a secondary, niche market. We’re already seeing that with the TiVo Premiere Elite, which was clearly designed primarily to address the needs of cable MSOs (as the TiVo Premiere Q) with digital-cable only tuners and MoCA, with the same hardware brought to retail as a premium niche product. And the forthcoming TiVo Preview streaming unit, which as of yet still has no known retail plans but will be coming to MSOs. There is just more volume in MSO deals. With Virgin Media’s apparent runaway success marketing TiVo in the UK I wouldn’t be surprised to see more MSOs signing on with TiVo in the coming months.

But what I find most interesting is his statement that all of Virgin Media’s cable customers would have TiVo within the next four to five years. That’d be big, if not huge, news for TiVo. As of July roughly 50,000 Virgin Media customers had TiVo, a number surely much larger today, but their total customer base is roughly 3.8 million. A number I’m sure Virgin Media will do their best to grow, of course. That would be a significant boost to TiVo’s global customer base, all of their other deals aside. That will also likely mean Virgin Media will have a significant influence on the evolution of TiVo as a product. While I’m sure there will be features unique to the UK, such as the ‘Red Button’, I expect a lot of other features implemented for Virgin will feed into the general product feature base.

Sounds good to me.

Via Cable.co.uk

This week we have begun a limited pilot of our next TiVo software release. This new software includes many new improvements as well as key developments that will enable the launch of future products. We’ll be rolling it out to everyone well before Christmas. Here’s a sneak peek of what you can expect:

Spotify Support: We’ll support Spotify’s high quality streaming format, which will enable the Spotify Premium App on the TiVo platform.

Red Button: This update adds extra functionality necessary to support Red Button services developed by our channel partners, such as BBC, ITV, and Sky Sports

TiVo App support: We’ve enabled the connection of your TiVo box to iOS devices through your wireless router to use our fantastic TiVo app, which allows you to control the TiVo box, browse, search and manage recordings all from your iPad, iPhone or iPod Touch.

A new look for YouTube: We’ll support Google’s completely revamped YouTube app, which allows for a more relaxed viewing and browsing experience, and supports HD video!

Full BBC iPlayer integration: We’ve changed the way Catch-up TV through BBC iPlayer works. Every BBC iPlayer programme will now be available through Search & Browse, including much more HD content, and you’ll never use up a tuner for BBC iPlayer viewing.

Express Series Links: Create a Series Link with default settings at the click of a button.

Multi-tap text entry: Use the number keys on your remote like a mobile phone for text entry for typing into search.

Automatic Padding: We’ve had tremendous feedback from customers about clipped recordings, so we’ve installed a default level of padding for all recordings.

Improved Parental Controls: We’ve made some changes with PIN entry requirements to suit every household. In the new update, PIN challenges on pre-watershed playback of programmes in My Shows become optional. We’ve also added the ability to require PIN to access any application.

Skippable Music Playlists: Playlists on Music on Demand will be skippable by track

Live Pay-per-view Events: Live pay-per-view events become bookable with your remote control.

HD Upscaling: As promised on this forum, we’ve addressed the issue with our picture quality and this new update features better standard definition picture quality with improved upscaling.

Connection reliability: HDMI and SCART compatibility improved.

Info and Stop button functionality improved: You’ll be able to use the ‘info’ button in the TV programme guide and the mini guide, while the Stop button now works as you would expect.

Video Preview for every channel: Every channel will keep playing in the TV Guide window, including all the Sky channels.

There are plenty more updates already in the pipeline and, as ever, we will use your feedback to continue to improve our TiVo service.

We’ll be keeping you up to date on this forum.

Thanks,
Simon Hunt
Product Director (TV)
Virgin Media

While most of these sound great, and I’d be happy to see them come to the US, The Virgin Media TiVo Blog says the padding is what we feared it would be. Hard padding with one minute before and four after, with no way to control those default values. So UK users will need to set them on every Series Link or individual record. I think that’s a disaster waiting to happen. Soft padding! It isn’t a new idea!

Via The Virgin Media TiVo Blog.

Via Broadcast Engineering.

If you order additional units at the same time they remain at the £49.95/£99.95 activation pricing. There is a £3 per month TiVo charge on each account, and additional boxes add £6.50 a month on most service plans.

Virgin is further pushing TiVo by removing online availability of the previous generation V+ HD box. The older DVR is no longer available from Virgin Media’s website.

Via The Virgin Media TiVo Blog.

Virgin’s videos are slick and very well produced. They’re short and to the point. They use a known star (well, known in the UK). And I think they do a good job of explaining the features. TiVo’s videos in the US tend to be more tongue-in-cheek and cute. Sometimes they work, sometimes they fall flat, but I don’t think they’re as effective at conveying the advantages to owning as TiVo. I’d love to see TiVo run an ad campaign similar to these.

The first post listed:

Fixes:

• Improved 1080i up scaling so improving the picture quality.
• HDMI connection reliability fixed
• Info button now provides programme information in guide and mini guide
• SCART aspect ratio corrected

And the second post listed:

Functionality:

• Express Series Link – You can set your series links in a flash
• Padding – Automatic padding around the start and finish of new recordings and series links (doesn’t change existing series links)
• Multi-tap text entry – You can now search using the number buttons on your remote, just like texting on your mobile phone
• More flexible parental control – If you don’t want to be asked for your PIN when you’re playing a recording from My Shows, you can now switch it off!
• Skippable playlists – Full skipping functionality for Music On Demand playlists will be available
• Live Events – Great news! You can now buy a live event on your TiVo box
• BBC iPlayer – Full integration of all the content from the BBC iPlayer is now available in the TV Guide, the Catch Up & On Demand menus and in TiVo Search and Browse
• PIN access on Apps – You can now control access to Apps and Games
• YouTube app – The YouTube app has been given a whole new look with more videos than ever and now supports HD quality video
• TiVo Buddy App – Just after we launch the new code you’ll be able to download this great new tool from the Apple App Store. If you connect your wireless router to the TiVo box with a cable you’ll be able to control many features from your iPad, iPhone or iPod Touch. Watch this space for more info!

These sound interesting, and I wonder if we’ll see some of these come to the US in the expected fall software update. Maybe around the time the TiVo Premiere Elite lands?

The Express Series Link sounds interesting, I wonder how it works. Multi-tap text entry is something people have been asking for in the US for ages now, pretty much since the TiVo launched. We now have the TiVo Slide remote, but that’s still an add-on sold separately. I could see TiVo not releasing this feature in the US as it could cut into sales of the Slide, but personally I love my Slide and multi-tap is no comparison. Which does beg the question – why not add support for the TiVo Slide to the UK units? Something Virgin doesn’t want for some reason?

The YouTube app being new sounds interesting. The YouTube app on the US units is getting very long in the tooth, and it seems that some of the features have stopped working correctly as YouTube has changed their site and interface. So we could really do with a new app as well. The TiVo Buddy App sounds like it is just the Virgin Media version of the TiVo iPad App, announced a couple of weeks ago.

But most interesting to me is the default padding. This feature was confirmed by a forum team member on the official Virgin Media support forums:

Automatic padding? will be available later this year. It defaults at 1 min before and 4 mins after for all recordings, which seems to be the best way to avoid recordings cutting off early. You will still be able to change this on individual recordings.

Based on the subsequent discussion it sounds like what they’re doing is defaulting the padding to 1 minute before and 4 minutes after, instead of 0 as it is today. I really hope that’s wrong, because that sounds like it would SUCK! The only way I’d find that acceptable is if it is soft padding, something that’s been requested for years in the US. The idea with soft padding is that you could set padding that is used only if there is no conflict with another recording. Basically “Record an extra X minutes, unless doing so will cause you to be unable to record something else.” So you won’t have any problems with back-to-back recordings, or having to play games with clipping, priority order, etc. If they’ve just set the defaults for the normal hard padding across the board, so you have to make a special effort to not have padding, that sounds like the cure being worse than the disease. And that seems to be the gist of the reaction on the forums too.

I think the way to do it right is to:

• Allow users to set global default padding values for start and end.
• Make these default values soft padding.
• Allow hard padding settings on individual recordings, SPs, etc. which will override the global soft padding.

If I could use soft padding and record just an extra minute or two on the end of all of my recordings, except when the tuner is needed for another show, I would use it in a heart beat. But I’d absolutely hate having default hard padding I had to fight with every time I setup a recording to avoid worrying about artificial conflicts due to padding collisions.

This is a case where I really hope the discussions are incorrect and the actual implementation is not what everyone thinks it is. If it turns out to be soft padding I’ll be thrilled and hope it comes to the US. If it is default hard padding as believed I’ll feel sorry for UK users and hope fervently it never happens here.

But that one issue aside, this sounds like a good update for UK TiVo users and I hope we see at least some of these features in the US as well.

Just not default hard padding.

Via The Virgin Media TiVo Blog.

Oh, right. So Virgin Media had a bit of a problem with their TiVo service. It seems that TiVo subscribers who tried to watch the pay-per-view WBC welterweight title fight between Floyd Mayweather Jr and Victor Ortiz – couldn’t. Virgin Media is investigating the issue to make sure it doesn’t happen again.

OK, in all fairness, stuff happens, to put it politely. I’m sure they tested the PPV system before deploying TiVo in the wild, but this isn’t the first time something that worked well in the lab or beta didn’t work in wide deployment. The big wide world is a tricky place and you can’t anticipate every possible condition. Or maybe someone just flipped the wrong bit. Who knows. I’ve certainly had issues with Charter doing things like randomly disabling my tuning adapter.

Virgin is reimbursing customers who were unable to watch the PPV event, of course.

Via Cable.

The deal with Samsung is additive, they’re a second source for Virgin as they ramp up their TiVo deployments and acquire more boxes. As Everth Flores, Cisco’s Director & GM, Service Provider Video EMEA, blogged:

The facts: Per a long-standing agreement, we manufacture and supply TiVo-based digital set-top boxes to Virgin, as well as to Ono in Spain. To date, we’ve been the sole supplier of those devices — with the certain understanding that Virgin, like any sensibly minded operator, would at some point introduce a second source.

Earlier this week, and echoing an arrangement publicly disclosed earlier this year, that second source supplier was named as Samsung Electronics, which announced an apparent commitment for TiVo-based digital set-tops.

No one was ejected, no one was axed, no contracts expired. As un-sexy as it may sound, this was quite simply a second source supply decision, wholly anticipated by everyone involved.

He also added a short and sweet message to Cisco’s competition:“Bring it.”

I just wanted to set the record straight.

Via Vision2Mobile.

Pocket-lint managed to obtain the following image of the new box. You can see it doesn’t differ greatly from the current Cisco hardware, pictured above.

Via Pocket-lint.

CORRECTION: Virgin Media is not dropping Cisco after all, just adding Samsung as a second source. See my followup post.

From the press release the app sounds like a clone of the US app with a few tweaks to reflect the unique aspects of Virgin Media’s service. The images below are from the release.