Virgin Media Preparing New Horizon Software for UK v6 TV Box

Sources indicate that cable TV and broadband ISP Virgin Media UK (Liberty Global) may have begun initial customer product testing of a new Horizon software platform for their v6 set-top-box, which if all goes according to plan might replace their existing TiVo based platform during the second half of 2020.

The Virgin TV V6 Box (pictured – top) launched back in 2016 (here) and was actually based off Liberty Global’s Horizon 4.0 platform except, unlike liberty’s other EU deployments, the UK launch shipped with TiVo based software instead of the horizon one (Virgin Media UK has had a long-standing relationship with TiVo).

Both the Horizon 4 RDK and TiVo software platforms have broadly similar features, although we note that cloud orientated control and recording is much more heavily implemented in Horizon. Likewise Ofcom’s required changes to Electronic Programme Guides (EPGs), such as accessibility improvements (e.g. text-to-speech, zoom, high contrast display, highlighting and filtering etc.), must also be introduced to horizon before launch (most are already present via TiVo).

Otherwise we rather suspect that the shift to Horizon may be more about cost savings and efficiency than bringing new features to consumers. The Horizon development team – who are located in Liberty Global’s office in the Netherlands – would enable Virgin Media to drop their TiVo license and bring everything in-house. One other possible benefit from this is that it would speed-up the roll-out of future software updates and features.

We did ask the operator if they could give us an official update and clarify what benefits the move to Horizon might bring for consumers, although they said there was nothing to share with the public yet and promised to keep us updated.

In the meantime we believe that the new Horizon platform is currently only being tested by a limited number of staff and customers. The main launch currently seems likely to occur sometime in 2020 (possibly by or around the second half of next year) and we’ll be watching out for news of a wider customer trial in the future.