Cable operator Virgin Media UK has today announced the launch of its new 6 Months Half Price summer promotion on selected triple (broadband, phone and TV) and dual-play (broadband and phone) bundle packages. All of the offers will include a FREE Installation.

Prices for VM's dual bundles typically start at just £13.50 per month (+£12.99 for a Virgin Phone Line), including a 10Mbps broadband service with "unlimited downloads" (Traffic Management) and a free wireless N router, 65 TV channels and "unlimited" weekend calls to UK landlines and Virgin mobiles.

It's important to note that an 18 month contract will apply to most of the deals (not standalone, which also has its own £5 off for 3 months promotion on a 12 month contract) and, effective from 1st August 2011, the price of a Virgin Phone Line will rise to £13.90 per month.

In addition Virgin Media has announced the introduction of its new TiVo 500GB (Video-on-Demand) set-top-box, which has only half the capacity of its existing 1TB (£199.95 activation fee) service but also costs less than half the price at £49.95. At the time of writing Virgin's website hadn't yet been updated to reflect all of these changes.