March 06, 2013

Netflix? LoveFilm? Coming soon?

According to Bloomberg:
Virgin Media plans to make Web services like Netflix a more integral part of its offering rather than fighting them. “Our approach is to get every content asset you possibly can on the platform,” CEO Neil Berkett said at the Cable Congress in London. “We’ve got a far greater chance as an industry by embracing over-the-top services."
Liberty Global CEO Mike Fries said yesterday at the conference that he expected Virgin Media to continue to use the TiVo set-top box in the coming years, though was unsure what would happen beyond that. Liberty Global has been introducing the competing Horizon box in Europe, starting in the Netherlands.

5 comments:

Unknown said...

They've been saying this for years now. It will never happen. Even if Virgin were to somehow wake up and smell the modern world, they'd soon find out what a woefully underpowered and antiquated system the tivo is. Even an Xbox 360, which is positively prehistoric in technology terms, will run Netflix and the rest infinitely better than a tivo ever could.

Soon we'll have the PS4 and the next Xbox, both of which will have a plethora of streaming services and app stores to get even more content, and running on modern hardware with slick UIs. There's simply no way Virgin will ever be able to compete with that.

metallicorphan said...

yeah,even the Wii has Netflix..i used Netflix and Lovefilm on the 360 and thought the service was decent enough

I need to re-subscribe to Netflix though before the new episodes of Arrested Development appear :)

Jon said...

Lets not be churlish, this is good news! At least it should mean good pairing relationships with those guys and with other OTT providers. But, to be honest, using the TiVo for this will be increasingly irrelevant as people use consoles and Smart TVs.

Instead of investing in TiVo apps on what is a pretty underpowered box they should be investing in a new TiVo home server (4-5 tuner) with Smart TV, mobile device and console apps that let you watch all TV channels and all recordings, as well as OTT content, anywhere

Jon said...

Also try House of Cards. Possibly the best TV drama I've seen this season!

Jon said...

...note TiVo already have a discless box that will provide access to such a "server" for those without Smart TVs or consoles around the house