Just Sharing This V boxes to be withdrawn from service.

R

RichardCoulter

Member
My Satellite Setup
TV with built in Freeview/ Virgin Media TiVo V6 box
My Location
UK
Customers will shortly start to receive notification that V boxes will be withdrawn on 1/8/18. To continue to receive the TV service, they must upgrade by 31/7/18.

Wonder how many are still using a box older than the V box and what will happen to them?

It was always said that TiVo software could be dropped onto the V box, but they have clearly decided against this for some reason. I wonder if the V box cannot use MPEG 4 and they now want to convert the SD channels?

The free upgrade offer was obviously the carrot, so here comes the stick.

Edit: The extra Premier Sport channels are expected to join VM (in HD) this summer; there has been speculation that the SD versions of the Premier Sport channels will be switched off at the same time to help meet the extra costs of HD transmissions.

It could be that the delay was down to VM waiting for this before signing a carriage agreement and making arrangements to phase out the V boxes?? It is also for this reason that Premier Sports 2 SD is now not expected to start at all.

In order for the less wealthy channels to be able to afford to go HD, this seems to be becoming the strategy on the Astra satellites (not sure about any other satellites though).
 
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I've still got a Samsung VM cable box somewhere, no use round here given there's no cable, guess it's now officially EOL, if I ever find it I'll have to throw it out, or retrofit something inside it, or just use it as a doorstop, or a shed support, or whatever... :-rofl2
 
It might be the issue with covering the content protection from start to finish.
 
I guess it will stop cardsharing, but it will also allow VM to switch their SD channels to the much more efficient MPEG4.

Freeing up more space could be necessary to facilitate the UHD channels currently being tested off the EPG.
 
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I wonder how much switching the SD channels to MPEG4 will actually save them though.

Judging by digitalbitrate.com it seems a fair amount of the SD services are just taken from satellite (mainly 28.2°E - the same feeds as used by Sky and Freesat) and transmitted over cable without being re-encoded. Changing these to MPEG4 would mean they would need to add a re-encoding step to the process.

A lot of the HD multiplexes now seem to be half empty since they moved over from MPEG2 to MPEG4 which gives more space for them to play with if they reorganise some channels.
 
The conversion to MPEG4 is now well under way for their SD channels. The extra space created looks to be being reallocated to broadband.
 
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