Not everyone can get Virgin Media's cable services, but they are more widespread than you may think with around half the homes in the country covered by the service. Of those there's almost five million homes using its TV and broadband services, and around one million using one of Virgin Media's V+ PVR boxes.
Virgin Media started rolling out its next-generation TiVo-powered PVRs at the very end of last year, but only in limited numbers and only to subscribers of it top-end TV package. Last week, they were finally made available to all Virgin TV subscribers and new customers can get one from July.
You may have heard of the TiVo brand before, though it has been far more successful overseas than in our own Sky-dominated land. TiVo boxes did go on sale in the UK back in 2000, the first hard-disk based recorders to do so, but they were ahead of their time, didn't sell very well, and the Sky+ box finished them off. Now the company has entered a deal to provide the interface for Virgin Media's new TiVo box, and the results are good - with a few caveats.
BLACK BOX
The box itself is pretty tasteful, all black with a bunch of not too bright LED indicators along the front. There's a collection of useful buttons too, just in case you can’t find the remote. As usual, we wish that such boxes were as wide as standard Hi-Fi components and had flat tops, but it seems we’re on a losing battle with that one.
The TiVo box's all-black finish is quiet and understated
On the rear of the box are all the ports you should need. The HDMI output is the only way to get HD video out of the box, as with previous V+ HD boxes there’s no component option, not that many people will be bothered by that these days. The SCART output is likely to be ignored by most too, as it doesn’t support HD signals. For those with an AV receiver that doesn’t support HDMI inputs, there’s an optical S/PDIF to hook it up.
An Ethernet port looks likely to go unused, as the TiVo does all its communicating via its cable connection. There are also two USB ports, but again these currently can't be used for anything. Finally there’s the all-important smartcard slot, without which you won’t get very far - there's no Freesat equivalent for cable TV services.
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