HBO struggles weaken Sky Atlantic

Sky Atlantic is, according to some, the great content differentiator between the TV packages from Sky and Virgin Media. Virgin customers have never had the channel and those hungry for HBO and Showcase content have to either invest in Sky’s 720p NowTV Entertainment package (and, in doing so, may wonder why they fork out so much for Virgin TV each month) or dip into the murky depths of dodgy downloads. With NowTV the clamour for Atlantic on VM has died down; I have it but jump in and out of the service depending on what’s showing on Atlantic. This month I’m in for Game of Thrones, having just watched Vinyl. But the only other show scheduled for this year I’m interested in is the final season of The Leftovers. And after that? HBO, and therefore Sky Atlantic, is looking pretty bare.
I’m not the only one thinking this. Here’s a report from The Guardian that makes a similar observation, and industry watcher Hollywood Reporter has raised the alarm too: Game of Thrones apart, HBO is on the ropes. The new content kings in town are Netflix and Amazon Prime Video, whilst US cable network AMC has a more impressive track record of late (Breaking Bad, Better Call Saul, The Walking Dead series and the forthcoming Preacher) and that’s now tied to BT in the UK (some Sky customers get just the SD version and no OnDemand).
I don’t doubt that Sky will flash more cash and buy up more content if HBO continues to fail to deliver popular series, but it’s not the channel it was and, Game of Thrones apart, it’s looking less of a gaping hole on my TiVo’s EPG.
What does everyone else think?

Netflix price rise in May poll

Quick VMHD poll to my right, specifically for current Netflix customers.
Personally, given that we got two years’ advance warning this was going to happen I’m staying with the service. It will be interesting though to see if Amazon Prime will follow suit (it’s £79 a year, which is £6.58 a month but comes a lot of other Amazon benefits).

Netflix price rise in May

Prices for Virgin Media's Netflix customers on the original £5.99 deal will be rising as Netflix ends its legacy pricing for long-term subscribers. New pricing takes affect in May.
Currently, Netflix offers three package tiers in the UK for new customers: Basic, Standard, and Premium:

• Basic, at £5.99 per month, allows users to log in on only one screen at a time, and only offers standard definition picture quality. 
• Standard, at £7.49 per month, gets you HD content (up to 1080p), and access on two screens at once. 
• Premium, at £8.99 a month, includes the  4K quality and allows up to four screens to be logged in simultaneously.

Netflix says that VM customers currently enjoying the £5.99 legacy pricing will be rising to the current £7.49 that a new member would pay for Standard – a £1.50 increase. The increase follows a similar move in the US, where long-term customers currently paying $7.99 for the Standard package will be facing a two dollar increase, taking it to $9.99 per month. For Americans, it's the second Netflix price increase since new pricing models and the introduction of the Basic plan were announced in May 2014, which bumped the $7.99 package to $8.99 at the time. But then the American Netflix catalogue is far more extensive than the UK's, although it's recently lost a sizeable chunk of its Hollywood films.
Netflix will suggest that if you want to pay what you currently pay you still can, but you'll only get SD on a single screen.

Considering 4k? Don't bother with the "smaller" screens

New TiVo rumours

More rumours about the new TiVo on Cable Forum:

A Virgin manager I spoke with today confirmed TiVo 2.0 is launching in end of July, they will be available via QuickStart for £9.99 with no upfront fee, these boxes are rumoured to come with wifi and 4K. There will be two size options and redesigned user interface. Not forgetting a new revamped tv anywhere where recorded content can come on the move. A rumoured option to turn off SD channels where there is a HD variant and apps on test launch super fast

Nothing yet from Virgin yet of course - I would have thought they would want to get some announcement out there soonish as Sky's Q is being heavily marketed.

One thing that is for certain is that Sky Sports and Movies HD are no longer be available on the SA 8300 V+ HD boxes from today.

Sky takes F1 to 4K

Sky has announced that from the start of the 2017 F1 season every race will be shown in 4K exclusively on the new Sky Q service.
Sky will launch its 4K content service this summer.

F1 to become a Sky Sports exclusive from 2019

Sky has bought up exclusive rights to show Formula One racing from 2019 and, for the first time almost all F1 Grand Prix will only be available to Sky Sports subscribers. The current Channel 4 programmes showing ten races a year will be no more after the 2018 season.
The new Sky deal, which runs until 2024, will see Sky broadcast only the British Grand Prix on a free-to-air Sky channel available on services such as Virgin or YouView. There will also be at least two other races on the new Sky Sports Mix channel, which will only be available to Sky subscribers even if they do not take any of its sports channels.
Expect yet another painful Sky Sports price hike as we near 2019. It’s all getting very, very expensive and you have to ask yourself how the Sky/BT sports fisticuffs is in anyway benefiting customers. Nice one, OFCOM.

An end of 'mandatory landlines' - but don't expected prices to fall

The BBC has reported that customers signing up for broadband packages could be exempted from the rental charge on their landline if they don’t use it, under proposals to be discussed by the culture minister, Ed Vaizey. He wants householders to only pay for the services they use, describing the current system as an “analogue billing system in a digital world”. Apparently one in five home owners do not make fixed-line calls, but pay for landline connections.
Virgin Media’s complex ‘bundles’ (remember when they told us they were simplifying charges?) all include a mandatory landline for £17.99/m in the small print even though many of us don’t actually use it or need it. Which is deceptive advertising at best. The cheapest VM bundle is The Big Easy which averages out at £13.58/m in the 12 months of the contract, which is actually less than the mandated small print landline cost. VM does offer ‘50mbps broadband only’ and that’s £30.25/m, a nominal saving of £1.32 but that means no TV (or phone). I wouldn’t expect any serious discounts if Vaizey’s plan comes to anything, but at least things will be more transparent - you need a calculator and understanding of small print to work this out.
The advertising watchdog, ASA, and Ofcom are to introduce new rules about how such packages are marketed from May, following research that found there was widespread confusion about prices.
You don’t say...

Sky customers get Sky Sports Mix

Sky is to launch a new TV channel, Sky Sports Mix, that will make live games including Premier League matches available to non-sports satellite subscribers for the first time. “We are giving millions more people access to great moments from some of the world’s biggest sporting events at no extra cost,” said Sky Sports MD Barney Francis.
Sky said the new channel will offer a “select number” of live Premier League and Football League matches, as well as regular live football from competitions including Spain’s La Liga, the US’s MLS and the Fifa 2018 World Cup qualifiers.
I think it’s highly unlikely Virgin Media customers will see this although it may make an appearance on the Now TV platform. As to how many Premiership games will be on the new channel, I’d suggest that it will be fewer than BT Sport offer and none of the major title deciding games.

Virgin Media closes Cloud, Webspace and SmartCall services

Call me cynical, but it looks like Virgin Media continues it’s plan to charge customers a lot more for a lot less in 2016 with the following announcement:

As more of our customers are choosing to use alternative apps and services, we’ve decided to stop offering Virgin Media Cloud, Webspace and SmartCall from 28th April. If you’ve used Virgin Media Cloud, Webspace and SmartCall in the past, you should receive a letter in the post but here’s what’s happening when. 

Webspace Webspace closes on 28th April, but there’s something even better in store for you. We’ve teamed up with GoDaddy® – a world-leader in Domain Names, Websites and Web Hosting – to bring you 12 months’ free hosting services, plus a free website builder, domain name and professional email. That’s a tidy saving of £59.88 over the year, with extras including: A free domain name (.co.uk or .uk, saving you £4) A free email account connected to your domain name A clever website builder that makes it easy to upload text and images (bye-bye, HTML!) 1GB of storage (that’s more room and flexibility than Webspace) 150GB bandwidth (so if your site goes viral, it’ll stay online) To get started you’ll need to enter your unique code (which you’ll receive in your letter) atvirginmedia.com/webspace (terms and conditions apply). Remember – you’ll need to save the content from your website before 28th April to avoid losing anything.
Virgin Media Cloud It’s reassuring to have somewhere safe for all your digital valuables. So before we close Virgin Media Cloud on 28th April, we recommend downloading your family photos, videos and documents to a local device to make sure you don’t lose anything. This might take a few steps if you’ve got a lot of stuff. You won’t be able to upload anything to Virgin Media Cloud after this date. If you’d like to back up your stuff again, why not try Dropbox? With 2GB of storage, Dropbox lets you back up all the stuff you currently have on Virgin Media Cloud, and even share big files. Better still, it works on all your devices – seamlessly syncing your files between them. Plus, you’ll bag an extra 3GB of storage if you link the Dropbox app to your phone camera. And when you recommend Dropbox to your nearest and dearest, you’ll get a bonus 500MB for each referral. For help downloading your stuff and setting up your Dropbox account, visit virginmedia.com/cloud (terms and conditions apply). And don’t worry – if you’re currently paying for extra storage, we won’t charge you a penny in March and April.
SmartCall We’re planning to close SmartCall on 28th April when the contract with our technology partner ends. But don’t forget all those minutes you’ll still enjoy with your Virgin Media home phone – including unlimited landline calls and free calls to Virgin Mobile phones, 0870 numbers and our Directory Enquiries service. For more details about SmartCall closing, head to virginmedia.com/smartcall.

The closure of SmartCall, which was great if you were making calls from abroad, is a major disappointment. The other two I’ve never used but pointing out alternative services such as DropBox and a sweetened deal with GoDaddy is probably a reasonable compromise, even if it does put the emphasis on the customer to do the heavy lifting.