The Virgin Media Thread

The original TIVOs had a little infrared led on a stick that you stuck in front of your set top box, but it had an internal terrestrial analogue tuner too. The new Virgin boxes are integrated tuner and PVR, just like Sky+ or the current V+

There it is: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=04cmOsRBFrY&feature=related

I'd hate to have to sit through a 20 second animation every time I want to record to watch something back...

You don't. That animation only happens when the box is switched on after being repowered. (It's a handy indication that there's been a power cut!) Because the Tivo has to stay running in standby to be effective as a PVR (so that it can start and stop recordings at any time, and pause live tv at any time when connected to an external STB) - and you don't see that animation when you come in and out of standby, you only end up seeing it when you first switch the box on. Because the Tivo OS and UI is based on Linux and pretty robust (unlike crashy Sky boxes) - you don't need to re-set your box at all often - hence only seeing that animation after a power cut! The other great thing about them was that because they were Linux based it was quite easy to hack them to do additional things. (Install an ethernet card to get listings over broadband and not over the phone, Connect to PCs to copy recordings over the network etc.)

The animation was designed to segue smoothly into the live UI - however the animation ends with the Sky logo on it, which was removed from the UI, so you see the join these days!

The original Tivo UI is still a very good example of proper UI design - and few other PVRs come close to it. It's a pity that the PC version that Tivo produced with Nero was so awful (and has never made it to DVB territories)...

The downside of the original UK Series 1 Tivos is that they only had analogue tuners and analogue (albeit RGB capable) SD inputs - so the picture quality was never as good as a digital PVR, and they can't do HD. I retired mine a few years ago for this reason - and went with Sky+/Sky+HD and a Windows Media Center self-build.

I am sure Sky have used Linux for a while in their boxes.
http://www1.sky.com/opensourcesoftware/SkyHD/

Just because it's free/open source doesn't necessarily mean it's Linux. I've just tried downloading the source code they've released there, and note that the filename starts is darwin-spk-GPL - which suggests that it may be based on Darwin, the open source OS which Mac OS X is based on (which itself has some kind of heritage in the BSD OS). It's probably got some Linux-ish components, though.

What makes you think that?

Having watched that video, it's obviously better than the current V+ STBs, but it doesn't seem to have any more features than are available through the Sky+HD or their new Anytime+ service.

Well if they get the box right, with their true on demand / tv catch-up service, the amount of available storage on the box, the many 1000's of hours of content, and the additional features then they have a Sky beater.

But hey, let's not be fan boy about this.

Oh for pity's sake.

I *love* TiVo. I had it for nearly 10 years, but finally retired the old, single-channel, SD box earlier this year.

I'm stuck with the hideous monstrosity that is Sky+ (HD), because I can't get cable in my area. And even that isn't working properly at the moment, as the PSU is failing and it's losing channels. After six months. Hopeless.

Now cable officially gets TiVo. I want to cry.

I'd actually move house in order to get my TiVo again. It's so tempting.

The point about Tivo is that their UI is pretty much the best there is - with much better use of season pass, wishlists, episode metadata etc. (So it won't record repeats of shows you've already watched - unless you want it to, it will re-schedule for a repeat/+1 channel if there's a record clash etc.). It's more intuitive - and the Series 1 platform (can't speak about their newer ones) were incredibly robust and unlikely to crash.

Sky+ is pretty basic as a PVR goes - even Freeview+/Freesat+ do better things when it comes to clash resolution.

TV Guide navigation is also a lot better - and more intuitive IMHO. It also allows searches on far more than programme title - so you can have director, actor, title wishlists.

I had Tivo wishlists for my favourite world cinema directors, a wishlist for any show with 'Eurovision' in its title, and whenever I heard of a new US series I thought I might like to watch, I'd set a wishlist for that - and irrespective of the channel that showed it, it would be recorded.

Similarly, Tivo would work out what you liked and didn't like (you can thumbs up or thumbs down to rate shows as you watch) and it would look at the shows you liked, compare them with upcoming schedules and if you didn't have a recording set, it would record shows it thought you might like. Found some hidden gems that way.

Comparing Tivo with Sky+ is like comparing an iPhone with a Motorola Startac.

It is worth changing from SKY HD to Virgin HD although Virgin will have the Sky basic channels such as Sky News until November 2011

Speaking from a Virgin Media customer's point of view, and only basing my Sky knowledge on friends who are with Sky, I would say Virgin seem to be much better at customer service. I think I understand that with Sky you have to buy the box and if there is a problem they charge for call-outs and repairs? Virgin don't do this - it's free. Our V+ box was playing up a bit two months ago so I rang them and within 24 hours someone installed a replacement box for us free of charge.

V+ also lets you record two programmes and watch a third. Sky is only one programme I think. I've also known people to have trouble with Sky if it gets windy - cable obviously means that isn't a problem.

They're my thoughts but as I said I'm probably a bit biased and probably haven't got my facts straight.

I can't say for Sky, but we've had VM/NTL/CWC/Nynex in our house for 13 years and certainately the customer service has improved in the last few years, better than the days of CWC. Like chris we had two Pace 1000 STB's that eventually packed in during 2008 (within a couple of months of each other), we reported one on a Saturday afternoon, VM came and swapped the box on the Monday morning, again likewise with the second one, and in both cases we got nice new Samsung STB's, although I got the smaller newer V Box.