February 17, 2017

Another review of the V6 - three stars from What Hi-Fi

What Hi-Fi magazine’s review of the V6 is less positive than most, and is particularly negative about the lack of content and pricing on Virgin’s new box. Here’s what they conclude:
The V6 is a frustrating beast. Hardware-wise it’s mostly good, and if it doesn’t quite beat Sky Q it’s a fairly close-run thing.
The interface could do with a further refresh and it seems a little prone to crashes, but it’s a notable improvement on the TiVo box. If you’re a current Virgin subscriber and intend to remain one, you should upgrade for the speed boost alone.
But it all falls down a bit when it comes to content. There are no Sky Atlantic-rivalling exclusives here, and you can’t even pay extra to get Sky’s best shows on your Virgin box.
What’s more, there’s no 4K content outside of Netflix or YouTube. If that changes, the V6 might well be a proper contender. Until then Sky Q still leads the way.
Although What Hi-Fi has always been a bit of a rabid Sky fanzine I think the comment on the lack of 4k content is not so wide of the mark. It would be great if VM made some announcements on this front. Read the full review at http://www.whathifi.com/virgin-media/tv-v6/review#kajPdy2efVXYv9fT.99 They award the V6 three stars out of five, but I’d suggest the actual review is actually a fairer, four star one.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Some forums suggest a deal for 4k footy with Sky might happen at the beginning of the next season.
Until some 4k content does appear VM are playing a risky strategy - v good box but might appear as laggards if new tv owners can't watch footy or non Netflix tv / movies in 4k.
Could they not negotiate a quicker 'pay as you go deal' - Sky would make good margins on say £5 4k movies or football matches shown on a V6 without probably losing customers to VM.
Or maybe Sky & BT just have deeper pockets and don't want any extra cash from VM subscribers

Richard said...

History shows VM having caution with content has been a good one.
3D content was late and only a few movies and it only satisified a few people. Can't remember sky's strategy.
HD content slowly rolled out but was also included in the cost...sky charged extra and still does.

So 4K content is lacking... but so what many people don't have 4K TVs? I'm unlikely to change my TVs in the near future as they are under 3 years old.

Magazine reviewers get to play with the latest tech and assume everyone has the latest and greatest tech to play with. They commented about HD and 3D content at the launch of supporting hardware and are doing the same. But does it matter to much for the masses? we may find there is no rush for 4K except for a minority of customers at this time and vm are just future proofing their customers.

Richard said...

@Nialli - think it is time to change the column on the right to be 4K content! Back to the origins of the blog to inform of HD content!

Dannysat said...

Tend to agree with Richard as the negative elements of the review is more about content issues and not the outstanding performance of the V6 box.

To be fair they do say existing customers should switch to the V6 from TiVo but to mark the box down because it doesn't have 4K content as yet is unfair.

As an aside the new beta IPlayer you can access through the box is a marker for the future. Keeping content available for longer and being able to watch shows that are currently live on air from the start is going to eat in to the PVR market when other providers follow suit and it will be in 4K.

Unknown said...

I think reviews based on this type of hardware should be written to the wider masses and not for just for tech heads. As Richard said above, not that many virgin media customers are tech savvy people looking for the best of the best in high resolution viewing.

I'd recommend anyone still using the originaal Tivo box to upgrade to the V6 regardless if they don't have a 4K TV as of yet. It still works really great on standard/FUll HD screens too and The performance alone would make for normal TV viewing that much better, let alone all the other features available like being able to record more programmes at one time and streaming to a phone or tablet device.

I do have a 4K TV and yes it would be nice to see the 4K content like the football for instance but personally I really don't mind waiting for that. It probably wouldn't be financially viable for Virgin Media to pay companies mega bucks for their 4K content now if only a small margin of customers were willing to pay for it as the majority of their customers don't have 4K TV's yet.

So my review blog would say don't worry about 4K yet, still get upgraded because being able to watch the TV without Remote and User interface lag, random reboots and a noisy hard drive makes a refreshing change. The 4K features are mainly to futureproof Virgin's hardware.

juicestop said...

Futureproof? I don't think so, and here's why. How many hours of 4k recording will the 1Tb V6 box hold? Not many. Let me look into my crystal ball - ah yes - Virgin will bring out a 2Tb V6 when 4k content is more mainstream, but at a cost. I would agree with 'futureproof' if the 1st generation V6 had at least a 2Tb drive inside. So for now I'm content with my TIVO box until 4k is mainstream and the 2Tb will be made available.

Unknown said...

Look at SkyQ Silver,Yeh its 2TB.
,if u got mini boxes,then thats Shared with the Mini boxes.
Thats when i prefure Sky+hd 2TB box.
Thats Not shared,thats 2TB per box.
Like Tivo V6,1TB per box,Not shred.
So,if u got 4 Tivo V6 boxes,thats 4TB.
1TB each.