New BBC iPlayer for TiVo on its way

Marcus Parnwell, executive product manager for BBC iPlayer on TV, says on the BBC blog that they "...are working with YouView, Virgin Media and BT to bring new BBC iPlayer to these platforms. Whilst I cannot announce dates, we are targeting this year for these platforms. Similarly, other devices on our legacy version of BBC iPlayer will be migrated to the new version this year as well."
It's also been announced that iPlayer will launch on the Xbox One, but again no date was confirmed.

Sky Sports 5 HD launches

Seems to be a slight sound sync issue, but it's up and running in time for the new season on channels 516. All Sky Sports channels are free to all VM customers this coming Saturday: details here.
Sky Sports 5 is being promoted as "your home of European football" but it won't be for long: BT has the rights to the Champions League and Europa League too from the 2015/16 season and you have to wonder how Sky will spin out its smaller sports rights across five full time channels in the long run.

Now TV introduces a weekly Sky Sports pass

BSkyB's Now TV service, which first began introduced a £9.99 day pass for Sky Sports 18 months ago, has announced a Sky Sports weekly pass available from Thursday, August 14th. Now TV customers will be able to access Sky's seven sports channels for £10.99 a week. Be warned though that from 27 November this will rise to £14.99. The day pass will also be reduced to £6.99 for a limited promotional period.
Of course, they need to sort out the much-discussed service problems they have had with the internet-based service before anyone will pay anything methinks (the whole service went infamously pop during the final day of the last Premiership season due to "unforeseen" demand, ditto every live episode of Game of Thrones). The new pay-as-you-go Sky Sports may suit some folk - someone who is only interested in a particular tournament such as a Test match or golf tournament may find it cost effective- but the picture quality and reliability would need to improve dramatically before I put my money anywhere near it for live sports viewing.

The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug

The second film of Peter Jackson's Hobbit trilogy has arrived on Netflix UK this week, which is a welcome addition to the limited number of newer films on the service. As Sky has secured exclusive rights to so many of first-run films, it's good to see that Netflix still has some popular new releases up its sleeve. To the best of my knowledge Sky doesn't have the rights to any of the Hobbit films.

Virgin Media Q2 2014 Financial Results

Before Liberty Global bought Virgin Media the quarterly results used to make interesting reading. Sadly, under LG they're pretty much indecipherable and you need a degree in business speak to understand them Here's the latest Liberty Global press release. Here are a few of the highlights I understood:

• Revenue has increased 3% to £1.054 billion in Q2 and 2% to £2.098 billion in the year to date.
• Customer losses reduced in Q2 and year to date due to higher acquisitions and lower churn year on year.
• Strong take-up of new 50+ Mbps speeds, with an increase of 424,400 in Q2 
• 60% of TV subscribers in Q2 have TiVo compared with 44% at the end of Q2 2013

VM survey on iPlayer and Netflix TiVo performance

If you have issues with BBC iPlayer or Netflix on the TiVo you can let Virgin know via this survey on their community boards: http://community.virginmedia.com/t5/TiVo/BBC-iPlayer-BBC-Sports-App-Red-Button/td-p/2375611

Personally, I find the TiVo's iPlayer and Netflix picture quality worse than my Sony TV's own Apps, in fact iPlayer HD on the TiVo is pretty much unwatchable most evenings and I've stopped even trying it.