BT buys ESPN UK channels

From MediaGuardian:

BT has continued its expansion into sports broadcasting, acquiring ESPN'S UK and Ireland TV channels business in a deal understood to be worth just over £10m.
The telecoms company will continue to broadcast at least one ESPN-branded channel after the deal's expected completion date of 31 July, as part of its BT Sport package of services.
However, ESPN Classic, which is not part of the BT deal, is expected to cease transmission across Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

Still no official confirmation that VM will carry the BT channels, but the above news would suggest they'll replace the ESPN line up on cable, although whether they'll be offered for nowt to premier customers is still to be seen.

Sky Movies line up to change in March

Anyone hoping that the arrival on Sky Movies Disney meant an additional movie channel for their money will be disappointed with the following announcment:

Sky Movies Classics & Indies are being withdrawn as separate channels, with their content being merged and will be replaced by a newly badged channel called Sky Movies Select and Sky Movies Modern Greats will be re-badged as Sky Movies Greats.

So here's the new HD channel line up (from 28th March)
431 - Sky Premier
433 - Sky Showcase
434 - Sky Greats
435 - Sky Disney
436 - Sky Family
437 - Sky Action & Adventure
438 - Sky Comedy
439 - Sky Crime & Thriller
440 - Sky Drama & Romance
441 - Sky Sci-Fi & Horror
442 - Sky Select

(thanks to MediaBoy for correcting the previous version)

Sky Movies Disney HD

Here's the official confirmation from the VM changelog:

We're adding Sky Movies Disney and Sky Movies Disney HD to our Sky Movies Collection in time for the Easter holidays on 28th March 2013, at no additional change. [Typo - they mean "charge"]

Sky Movies will include great Disney family movies like Finding Nemo, Cars, A Bug’s Life and Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest, as well as classics such as Bambi. We'll have the full details on this closer to the date.

Great news for Disney Cinemagic viewers!

Fantastic news if you've enjoyed Disney Cinemagic, which closes on 28th March. If you subscribed to Disney Cinemagic as a standalone channel you can take advantage of our Sky Premium Collections – 3 Months Half Price Offer, with the Sky movies collection including Sky Movies Disney for just £9.75 per month for the first three months.

Sky Movies Disney HD confirmed

A contact at VM has confirmed that we'll have Sky Movies Disney added to the premium line up on launch at the end of March. Hurrah!

Updated: Sky Movies Disney on Virgin

New Disney films will soon have their UK TV premiere on new, dedicated channel Sky Movies Disney, as part of a new multi-year film output deal between BSkyB and the Hollywood studio.
Sky Movies Disney will launch on March 28th on satellite as a new addition to Sky's pay-TV film channels lineup, replacing Disney Cinemagic.
Update: Virgin Media has now confirmed that it will offer the new Sky Movies Disney channel from its launch as part of the Sky Movies offering. Over on Cable Forum it has been hinted that we will get both SD and HD versions, but there's no official confirmation of this yet.

Farewell BBC HD, hello BBC2 HD

The six-year-old BBC HD channel will end next month and be replaced by a high definition simulcast of BBC Two at 6am on March 26th. It will arrive on Virgin Media down amongst the dead men on channel 187. The channel will be a HD simulcast network of BBC Two.
BBC Two controller Janice Hadlow said: "BBC One HD has already proved to be highly valued by our audiences and I'm delighted that we're able to follow this with the launch of BBC Two in HD.
"The launch of BBC Two HD will allow us to showcase more of our programmes at their very best - helping to highlight our commitment to high quality, engaging and ambitious programmes on BBC Two."
Hopefully, they'll still find somewhere on the schedules to include some BBC3 and BBC4 content in HD, although that's been getting less and less on BBC HD of late. There have been rumours of BBC News going HD, but nothing confirmed from the BBC that I've seen.

Sky Movies and Sports SD offer

http://store.virginmedia.com/bundles/specials/skycollections.html?buspart=DMail_17

"Take the Sky Sports and Sky Movies Collection and you’ll wonder how you ever lived without it. It’s jam-packed full of, well, everything! You’ll get 5 Sky Sports channels including Sky Sports F1, and 12 Sky Movies channels, including Sky Movies Premiere. You’ll be able to watch the latest blockbusters and get all the action, drama, comedy and excitement too whether it’s on the pitch or at the pictures.
Just £16.37 a month for 3 months
And then £32.75 a month after that
Order online today or call us on 0800 952 2228"

Don't know about HD - I guess that's still an extra tenner a month. I have to say that I don't find the picture quality on the Sky Premium HD channels to be consistently good and the SD versions are pretty muddy and awful on my TVs.

New HD channel launched on Virgin Media

No fanfare, but British Eurosport 2 HD has appeared this morning as channel 526.

Why I've quit Spotify

Virgin Media's original Spotify deal was a no-brainer: free Premium access for six months (or for some of us a full year) and almost unlimited access to the world's CD collection. Once my original free year expired I signed up for the ongoing Premium service at £9.99 a month, mainly so that I could continue to access it on my phone and iPad.
But now I've cancelled. Here's why.

1. There is STILL a problem with streaming Spotify over VM broadband during the evenings and over weekends, with the service quitting after a short period. It's too unreliable at home to listen to.
2. The sound quality, even at the Extreme setting, isn't a patch on iTunes or a 256k AAC rip from a CD.
3. The TiVo App isn't the best. And I don't want to play music through a TV sound system tuned for movies rather than music.
4. The iPhone App is, after the last update, even worse. There's a problem with nested folders that means any music you've neatly filed away by artist is either deleted or tucked away in a random folder within folder within folder bug - I lost over 30 playlists when this bug was introduced.
5. The iPhone App still doesn't have any cache clearing capability, which means the more you use Spotify, the more it fills up your device. The only way to release that space is to delete the App and start again. Not the worst workaround, but annoying. 
6. £9.99 in the UK but only $9.99 in the US. Yes, I know we have to pay VAT on downloads, but that doesn't strike me as particularly fair to UK customers.
7. Albums come and go at random. Several of my playlists now have tracks that are no longer playable. Grrrrrr.
8. Modern music is shite. 
9. I've got over 80gb of my favourite music in my iMatched-iTunes. And anything new I'm interested in I can give a listen to in the free Spotify.
10. Some times more means less. I prefer small bookshops' selections to the infinite shelves of Amazon. I prefer discovering new music from 6Music to hunting through the dross on Spotify. It was great to re-aquaint myself with some albums I don't own any more, but it also made me realise why I didn't buy them when I moved to digital.

So farewell for now, Premium Spotify. Maybe you will return at some point to my Direct Debits, but somehow I doubt it. Music's too important to me to be left to poorly written software and a service that's unreliable when I use it most. If I didn't have 30+ years of back catalogue already available to me digitally I would maybe reconsider, but I do. Time for some Beatles, methinks...

Virgin Media under new owners Liberty Global

It's going to take a while for the deal to be completed so don't expect any rapid changes under VM's new owners. “Virgin Media’s approach to the TV business is solid. It hasn’t been pursuing a premium content play and we think that’s right for Virgin Media,” said the Liberty Global President, whilst Chairman and Founder John Malone said “Relations with Sky are important to us. We have a long history of competitiveness with News Corp and we look forward to this.
“There’s no question that the UK is competitive but demand for services is strong. Everyone who does a good job will do well.”
Neil Berkett, who I personally think has done a great job at Virgin (despite ignoring my pleas for Sky Atlantic), will be stepping down when the takeover is complete.