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Virgin Media O2 UK Delivers Free HD TV Upgrade for Customers

Tuesday, Jan 24th, 2023 (11:51 am) - Score 3,312
virgin_tv_360

Customers of broadband ISP Virgin Media (VMO2), specifically those who take their pay TV service, may like to know that the operator will be giving them a High Definition (HD) video quality boost on a range of popular channels (e.g. Sky Comedy HD etc.), and all “at no extra cost.”

This upgrade, which will be added automatically, covers the addition of National Geographic HD, Sky Comedy HD and Sky Arts HD, among others, to the regular line-up of channels. As part of this upgrade, VMO2 has also made improvements to enhance the viewing experience, making it easier for customers to find the new HD channels.

But take note that some channel listings (numbers) will change as a result of this upgrade. Otherwise, Virgin Media’s TV and broadband bundles currently start at £29.99 per month for an 18-month contract with no set up fee.

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A breakdown of what customers get:

Package Name
HD channels added
Mix 14 HD channels including Sky Basics and National Geographic
Player & Mixit 7 HD channels including ITVBe and Film4

David Bouchier, Chief TV and Entertainment Officer at VMO2, said:

“Providing our customers with fantastic value and ensuring they have a smooth user experience is our top priority. That’s why, where there’s a HD option available, we’re giving it to our customers as standard so they can enjoy some the UK’s popular TV channels in fantastic high definition, at no extra cost.”

Customers with a Virgin TV 360 box may need to reset their series link once the standard definition channel has been removed and the HD version has been added if they have any TV shows being recorded in SD. However, customers with STREAM from Virgin Media won’t receive the channel upgrade, albeit only because HD is already standard on STREAM.

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Mark-Jackson
By Mark Jackson
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 .
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Comments
17 Responses

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  1. Avatar photo B1n says:

    Mad that in the age of 4K TV’s, that even the lesser 1080p still isn’t considered the standard for broadcasters yet and it’s something they try to monitise on. Leaving VM was one of the best financial decisions I’ve made in years.

    1. Avatar photo BeeTee says:

      Not sure what you mean here? They’ve simply removed duplicate SD channels, and (in some cases) moved the HD channels to the SD spots. They haven’t monetised anything, as they’re not charging any extra. And it’s down to the broadcasters what services and quality to offer, not VMO2. However, don’t disagree that TV is increasingly expensive, whichever way you slice it (Virgin, Sky or via OTT services / apps). Freeview is of course free, but the quality is abysmal and there seems to be no rush to upgrade the service to HD. This may well only change if / when they bring out a ‘Freeview Stream’ service. I can’t see the main DTT network being upgraded within the next couple of years. And, of course, there’s the FAST channels, mostly dedicated to one show per channel (e.g. most of the channels on Pluto TV). I understand also that Virgin are looking to add some Pluto TV channels to the main guide in a new section. Not sure when though. I just wish they’d tidy up what they have first – it’s not logical at all.

  2. Avatar photo MilesT says:

    Smart TVs and streaming sticks like Roku, Chromecast deliver most things in HD by default (no extra cost), although 4K is sometimes extra cost (and needs a strong broadband connection).

    I seem to recall NowTV charges extra for HD (and may charge for 4K or not offer it).

  3. Avatar photo AzzA says:

    “At no extra cost” until March / April when its cited as one of the reasons for the annual price increase.

  4. Avatar photo Jim Gygiogrovicz says:

    Most of my favourite channels are broadcast at a resolution of 544×576 which looks terrible on my 85″ 4K tv. However my neighbours across the street say the picture looks great from where they’re sitting.

  5. Avatar photo ACDeag says:

    Problem with Freeview is limited transmission capacity, an HD channel needs to transmit 4 times as much data as an SD one, so unless more bandwidth is made available they are stuck.

    1. Avatar photo MilesT says:

      Several years of retunes, channel juggling, and removal of +1 services has been done to create necessary bandwidth within the reduced spectrum allocated to TV.

      I think there is one final change, deferred pending older receivers aging out to migrate all the channels to the latest standard to squeeze out more HD channel slots and fit in a few remaining channels that aren’t transitioning to HD.

      FreeSat doesn’t have the same bandwidth restrictions but a few channels won’t pay for the FreeSat capacity so are absent from the lineup.

    2. Avatar photo yeehaa says:

      Another issue is that most of the Freeview transmitters use the older DVB-T transmission standard, rather than DVB-T2 (2nd generation) which supports HD transmissions. Only transmitter PSB3 uses DVB-T2. COM7 and COM8 did support DVB-T2, but have been decommissioned at the Government decided to reallocate the 700MHz spectrum for mobile services, hence why BBC News HD, QVC HD and 4 Seven HD are no longer broadcast on Freeview.

      As full fibre and 4G/5G become more common place during this decade, perhaps they’ll be an opportunity to free up capacity by removing +1 timeshift channels as On Demand will largely replace the need for them (with the exception of programming with rights issues not being available for OD as is the case already).

      Ideally it would be better to upgrade all the other transmitters to DVB-T2, but I’m not sure if that’s likely to happen before 2030. Hopefully we’ll see at least 1 transmitter upgraded to DVB-T2 before then.

  6. Avatar photo Vm cant fizzle out soon enough says:

    I don’t know if vrmin media are still doing it but they used to force bundle in their tv package otherwise you had to pay extra for just internet and phone. So this no extra cost sd to hd channels thing is just nonsense. Providing customers with value… ntl days maybe but vm? Absolutely not purely a game of how much they can extort out of you. Am i happy more competition is here? Sooner the better.

  7. Avatar photo Ad47uk says:

    HD should be as standard these days, I am pretty sure Sky still charge for HD. I know netflix charge extra for HD, but it does also include 2 screens, saying that I do think that HD should be standard even with one screen.
    It is not as if HD is a new thing, it has been around for a fair few years now and should be as normal as SD used to be.

    1. Avatar photo Jazzy says:

      I had HD for free with Sky for years until last years contract upgrade when they offered it for £5 extra. I thought you got it free with Sky+HD and Sky Q so I refused as it’s mainly BBC ITV that I watch and they’re HD anyway

    2. Avatar photo Ad47uk says:

      @Jazzy, I have never paid extra for HD, but then when I had sky many years ago HD was not a thing, I kept it for 12 months and then told them to stick it, too many repeats. They tried to sell me a Sky+ box, so I asked them, why do I need a machine to record repeats?
      I pay for the second tier on Netflix, so I suppose I do pay extra for GHD in that way. but I pay for the second screen more than anything else.

      I don’t watch normal TV these day, no TV licence and have not done so for nearly 5 years

  8. Avatar photo anonymous says:

    Old Rupie and his boys started that lark of charging for better picture quality such as HD, just like they charged a fortune for the sports you used to get for free on Analogue TV at the time.

    Its carried on under Comcast now with NOW TV – standard version is up to 720 p but its an incorrectly encoded picture from interlaced to progressive at 25 fps still losing the temporal motion.

    If you pay for their HD version on Now, you get the Dolby Digital 5.1 and 1920×1080 but deinterlaced properly to 50 frames (send field) but no native 24p for movies as effectively they use the ones on Sky Cinema channels that are already speeded up for conversion to PAL 25 frames interlaced.

    Sky latched onto “multi-screen” charges early in the day. With tech today, they could have extra boxes and just allow say 3 per household with no extra charge, but it’s a way to make money and was a monopoly till the streamers started. Some of the streamers had a different approach and allow a few devices per subscription instead.

  9. Avatar photo Ash says:

    Have to say virgin in the past 6months have given me an extra bit of speed on the broadband (125mb) and now 14 extra channels in HD.

    They’ve recently allowed me to renew recently at the same £34 a month for 18months. Im well chuffed

  10. Avatar photo El Guapo says:

    Cable/Sat TV days are numbered. Thousands of channels, nothing good on em. All I have to say on the matter is, do you think it’s worth it? If you do then crack on I say. We don’t think it’s good value to watch broadcast TV watching what they decide when they decide or having to wait for it and record it. Sadly the alternative now seems to be dozens of different subscription services. I wish there was a service that allowed all the content I want under one roof but the streaming services all want the entire pie to themselves rather than a piece of it. Sadly the cost of living now has driven us to drop prime, but we still have a full year of Disney left at least (Tesco vouchers can get you a much better deal on it, and O2).

    I would like to see another TV revolution. One where I can chose any content from any network for a fair price per month. But I think i’ve got more chance of seeing pigs fly at this point.

  11. Avatar photo wise ol fool says:

    vmo2 are putting prices up by 10% this year so giving you 7 hd channels arent exactly free. and remember they are forcing you to go voip so if the internet goes down so does your phone line. i am on 1gig broadband but on weekends it drops to 300 to 600 mb download speed . the engineers says thats because every one else is using the net for gaming and streaming so basically they say its not there problem they oversell the internet it my fault for paying too much for an inferior service

  12. Avatar photo anonymous says:

    13.4% (RPI) is the figure VM using tis year….

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