Virgin Media UK Adds Stream TV to Broadband Packages for Free
New customers taking out one of UK ISP Virgin Media’s (VMO2) 350Mbps, 500Mbps or 1Gbps broadband-only packages may be pleased to learn that the provider will now throw in one of their new TV streaming boxes – simply called ‘Stream‘ – for free (i.e. they’ve waived the usual £35 activation fee).
Stream itself is available on a 30-day rolling contract, although Virgin Media customers who add it can also enjoy discounted pricing on BT Sport, Sky Sports and Sky Cinema for the duration of their 18-month broadband contract (unless they cancel Stream). The announcement has clearly been timed to steal some of the thunder from Sky’s launch of the similar Sky Stream product.
The main caveat – at least for now – is that Virgin’s Stream is currently only available to customers on their own broadband network, while Sky stream can be taken by those on other broadband ISPs.
Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook and Linkedin.
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If it was available to anyone then I’d jump from Sky. Now that would send Sky a challenge.
Yes this is a clever move to dwarf Sky but also that would be the best they could do. I would have it if they did that
Do we know if you can get one of these added in to an existing tv and broadband bundle?
They offer multiple tv boxes but who wants to run coax around the house if other locations are not accessible.
Stream box seems like the perfect solution…
Need to be Broadband only to get stream. Anything else they make you take Tv package
@Aqx I have broadband + phone, stream is included in that too
When I was negotiating my renewal, I was offered the stream box for free but it never arrived.
I was told, I could use it as a Freeview box.
I have Sky and Prime so didn’t bother following up on it.
Virgin media are missing the point of their own stream service. I don’t have their network here & I reached out to them to ask if I could have it but it was a no. I’m going with sky.
Yeah it’s a massive error on Virgins part not opening this up for everyone. They literally could take customers from Sky with this product expecially in places where Virgin have no network.
Or is it a strategic decision aimed at retaining customers? when you look at what they charge for the equipment and the setup/activation etc along with the price of the packages which is quite cheap in comparison.
I keep thinking is this a technical limitation of using their own network I wonder… does seem strange.
Selling it on their own network they can prioritise the TV service for bandwidth to ensure quality. Selling offnet they can’t.
Might also be a commercial thing as they plan a pretty big network expansion and may want to keep the service to on-net only to improve take up of their network as they build.
Yeah no doubt it a factor. I have been trying to find out what the delay is for stream, or do they have a setup similar to multi cast. I haven’t been able to find a definitive answer on this.
It looks to be the same hardware as the TV 360 Mini box, so it needs a co-ax connection for the TV channels. The delay will be the same as any DVB C system. I doubt Virgin have an IP based multicast setup for their TV channels and I only think they’ll do that once they move over to XGS-PON
@Saaj its all IP. Not sure if its multicast or just re using the TV Go apps infrastructure. Long term I’d expect Virgin to setup multicast to reduce traffic on their network.
All linear TV content is sent from headends to hub sites via IP multicast on the core network.
@Roger_Gooner
Presumably you’ve just guessed that? It really isn’t multicast. With zero knowledge of the set-up, you could figure that out for yourself by watching it start up with a low bitrate profile and then the ABR ‘snaps’ into a higher quality a few seconds later. Multicast ABR is becoming a thing, but there are no commercial implementations I’m aware of.
@Jimmy Do give me some credit about my knowledge of the VM system, and unlike you I don’t have to guess as the information I gave about IP multicast came from Liberty Global’s chief architecture officer.
It looks to be an Ethernet connection In the power supply connected to the STB via the micro USB
Do you think Virgin are keeping it to their network only because they have some multicast / CDN on-net? They’d probably need to ramp up off-net peering and CDNs otherwise. Sky have already built out a multi-net CDN.
Just a guess.
Bit hard to guess the strategy, but I guess on-net it’s a technical overhead they have to consider when looking at network bandwidth towards the edges… off-net, it’s a third-party CDN overhead (with consequent costs).
If that is the case then it is more appealing to me as there will be no significant delay in live sports.
Do this/the Sky one have recording facilities, yes you can watch on My 5/4OD or whatever it is called these days, but you have adverts.
You cannot record streams on any Virgin Media boxes, being they Stream, 360, V6 or TiVo.
Sky’s Stream is different in that some content can be recorded on the cloud for up to 12 months for subsequent streaming. Note that when you go to a broadcaster’s dedicated app such as My5, BBC iPlayer or All 4 you can only view their content.
Can you record programmes on Virgin Stream?
No. It doesn’t have any storage.