Virgin Media 360 - early reports not encouraging

I'm always a little nervous when Virgin embark upon something as fundamental as upgrading their boxes but the cautious rollout of the new 360 platform appears to be asking customers to take a blind leap of faith and test an entirely new system in the run up to Christmas seems commercially suicidal if you ask me.

Take this feedback from WhatHifi forums:

As one of the unfortunate early users of the Virgin 360 TV box I'd strongly recommend people avoid it. The hardware of the box itself is a mild improvement, more energy efficient, faster start-up, but the remote is a poor replacement for the old V6 one, far fewer dedicated buttons, it didn't even have a stop button, which means you are much more reliant on navigating on-screen. The software however is the real travesty. It has Minimal Viable Product and Public Beta written all over it. Compared to the mature Tivo-style interface of the V6, the new UI has much less functionality, and appalling navigation. If I could revert to the old V6 I would. This box is is so bad I'm considering moving my TV to Sky, even with the higher cost of breaking the bundle.

That was posted about a month ago, but when I ventured onto VM's own Community pages it was just as bad if not worse, with the most frequent questions being asked along the line of 'can I go back to my V6 software'? Have a look at these posts https://community.virginmedia.com/t5/Virgin-TV-360/bd-p/Virgin_TV_360

Having worked in IT for over 30 years I know full well of the pitfalls of trying to put new software on older hardware in a live environment, but the general public has less understanding and shouldn't be used a beta testers and certainly shouldn't be paying for the privilege. I'll be interested to hear if any of this blog's readers have undertaken the 360 upgrade and what their experience has been and will happily post comments here good or bad, but me? I won't be pushing my way to the front of the upgrade queue just yet...

Virgin Media 'adding Disney Plus'?

Same box, new remote. The 360 is on its way

Future's TechRadar is a website with a strong, professional reputation and is a more reliable news source for Virgin Media stories than many, so when they say 'Disney Plus is coming to VM' very soon it's worth your attention.

In a post about the glacial roll out of Virgin TV 360 and the Horizon platform there's some news on us finally getting Disney Plus: 

One of the most exciting tidbits we managed to get from Virgin Media, though, was the arrival of Disney Plus. The Disney streaming app launched in the UK back in March, and has been noticeably missing from Virgin Media boxes so far.

Virgin Media isn't the only outlier, though – while Disney Plus is available on most home game consoles, Nvidia and Apple TV streaming boxes, Fire TV and Roku streaming sticks, and Samsung / Sony TVs, you still won't find it on Panasonic TVs.

A representative for Virgin Media told us in a briefing that “As of next year I'm very confident we will have [Disney Plus] on the platform”.

Hmmm. I won't be holding my breath but I'd hazard a guess we're looking at March when Sky's first year with the service is up? 

For those still using TiVo the Virgin TV 360 is apparently available now for new Virgin Media customers (and those upgrading to the Ultimate Oomph bundle)  though it may take until early 2021 for us existing customers to be eligible for the new box. I can wait - it's had a mixed reception during its pilot stage, appears to be less stable than the V6/TiVo and is missing features and apps still.

We are also promised that Alexa integration, while not present at the 360 launch, may well be in the pipeline for 2021 – which would mean you will be able to connect your 360 box to Alexa smart speakers.