Happy 2016

Nothing like A Touch Of Evil to kick off the new year! This and details of a handful of other new arrivals to Netflix this month can be found at Vodzilla

Sky Broadband Porn Filters 'on by default' for new customers

Sky will block "adult content" by default for all new customers, the company has announced.

Sky said the move would result in "much greater use of home filters", but customers could still opt-out if they wanted to.

35% of existing Sky Broadband households have the porn filters on already, compared to 12% of Virgin, 14% of TalkTalk and 6% of BT. 

The broadcast giant said it will now email all existing customers, asking them if they would like the filter to be switched on.

If the email is ignored, Sky’s policy is to turn on the filter automatically, as it did following a similar email sent in January, when all customers who joined prior to November 2013 were contacted.

Not so super Superhubs

I recently took a call from Virgin offering a 'free broadband assessment' at my home. I said yes as I was a little disappointed with the reliability of the wifi around our house. The engineer was great; he identified the problem (my Superhub 1 was broadcasting on a congested channel in the area) and fixed it by configuring a Superhub 2 to use a less populated channel on 2.4Ghz and also activating the 5Ghz signal too. Instantly I was seeing speeds, during daytime at least, of 150mbps on all devices.
Sadly though, the wifi on the Superhub 2 proved unreliable, and a glance through various forums suggested that it's a very common and known problem with the Superhub 2 that the signals can drop for no reason. The solution is to either ask Virgin for the newer Superhub 2ac if you have devices that can take advantage of 802.11ac (ie from the last 18 months or so) or to add a 3rd party router.
I've now added the Apple Time Capsule, which centralises backups for my whole house (we're exclusively Apple) and the wi-fi has been super reliable and blisteringly fast across the board.
I post this as it may prove useful to others struggling with Virgin's wifi, but also to ask a question: why do Virgin undermine the promise of their class leading broadband by dishing out sub-standard hardware? Surely that's self defeating, and good routers are cheap as chips these days.

Netflix to tweak compression algorithms in 2016

Am I the only one who is a little sceptical about compression advances? Despite Netflixes assurances that their tweaking of the bitrate won't be perceptible I'm more of the opinion that these changes can diminish the quality of picture and sound for the sake of economy.

Large patches of color, like the kind found in children's cartoons, don't actually need a very high bitrate to look really good. What Netflix will do in 2016 and beyond is create specific recipes on a per show basis that will enable some shows with less visual data to use lower bitrates but still come through at 1080p quality. That means going back through its entire backlog of shows and creating new rules for every individual show.
In an example provided by Netflix, the company said that in order to get a crystal-clear 1080p stream in the past might require a bitrate of 5800 kbps. Using the new algorithm, Netflix can achieve the same quality with around a 4640 kbps file, effectively reducing the overall bandwidth needed by 20%. 

[more details on TechRadar]

Virgin Media London outage

I'm not sure how widespread this is (Virgin won't tell me) but in SE London we have had no broadband or TV services now for over 24 hours and still no definite fix time. 

My 'compensation' for the loss of a day's work (and pay)? £4.13. 

Also yesterday morning VM customers in the area received notification of the price rises in February. Nice one, marketing dept. 

Does anyone else in London have issues?

Interesting comment on EE TV

A comment from 'Griff' on the blog about the next price rises makes interesting reading. As it's an older post he's referring to I'm repeating it here:

"I've been loyal to VM for 15 years (NTL onward) despite moving house. Word for word I agree, finally with some comfort that I'm not alone and there better things - with the main poster of this thread. I agree so much that I thought I'd written the post myself and in a moment of advancing seniority forgotten that I'd written it myself! I even pay the same. So with a TiVo box that regularly has 3 red lights lit, with an advancing broadband speed heading over 200mb, with a router that just about services 4 people, Hive, Sonos, Apple TV, power lines, FIFA 16 and CofC on every available 'ageing device', even a xmas tree that turns itself on at sunset - with an 'ecosystem' that now prepares itself for the ever growing IoT, I felt prepared with VM to battle it out with whatever comes next. 
"Until yesterday. 
"On a shopping break, I headed into EE to discover that with EE TV, I can record 4 shows in HD. I can walk from 1 room to the kitchen, to have Michael Buerk on the BBC news follow me. I can upgrade to Sky Sports for only the months that I'll actually use it. And record sky sports / movies from Now TV. They'll even as a deal get supersize my already too much 10gb phone data allowance to 20gb so I can move my wife onto a shared data plan. Take all these savings (less the admittedly extra phone incentive) and I'm £1000 a year better off. Time to spend £500 each on 2 new smart TVs that offer even more capability to stream room to room and I'm quickly talking myself into moving away from a company that is rewarding loyalty with additional costs for no additional benefit. 
"Why shouldn't I move from VM to EE? I've got 2 reasons : both of which I already have an answer for : they can only offer 80gb speed not 150 or more that's coming. But do I really need this anyway? And so far there isn't a second EE TV box available but there is one in the pipeline. And if I can stream to a second smart tv anyway from the 1tb EE TV box there is no need for a second box anyway"

Netflix highlights for December

Worth having Netflix for this future classic alone...
Full details of new Christmas arrivals on Netflix can be found on VODzilla.

Exclusive content on Virgin Media? Apparently so

Press Release:

The Evil Dead franchise is being resurrected, and it’s landing exclusively on Virgin Media next week. That means only you can watch Bruce Campbell’s bulldozer chin and chainsaw hand make a comeback, and we are very excited.
Whether you’re already a fan of this cult favourite, are partial to hilarious horror comedies or simply on the lookout for a new show to get stuck into, you won’t want to miss this Virgin exclusive. And what’s more, you’ll have supreme bragging rights among your mates as Ash Vs Evil Dead isn’t available to watch anywhere else in the UK!
The only place you’re going to be able to watch this awesome new horror comedy series is exclusively with Virgin Media in TV On Demand. The first five episodes are arriving on 1 December and will be available to watch on TV Anywhere from 9 December, with further episodes released weekly. And why not go the whole hog and watch the entire film series, too? We’ve got The Evil Dead (Cert 18), Evil Dead II (Cert 15), Army Of Darkness (Cert 15) and even the 2013 reboot Evil Dead (Cert 18), for your eyes only all on Virgin Movies!

Virgin price rise poll confirms level of discontent

The poll I've run on this blog over the last ten days illustrates the level of unhappiness in Virgin Media's customer base with the news of yet another price rise in early 2016.

Only a quarter of the 349 respondents think they will stick with their current package, considering it good value. Half of those who voted will be looking to downsize the package at the first contractual opportunity, whilst the remaining quarter will leave Virgin Media for good.

That should make extremely worrying reading for Virgin management. Sure, the poll's 349 voters may not be an accurate representation of the overall customer base, but if anything we are the people who care about and use the service the most and we probably pay the biggest monthly subs as a result.

I've been a Virgin/NTL customer for almost 15 years, but the TV service is no longer good value and our TiVo boxes seem to get slower every time I turn them on. I have a mandatory phone line I never use and over 200 channels I never watch, and broadband that is way faster than my family's needs, served by a flakey "super" hub which needs rebooting daily. My bill is currently £124 a month.

I will be seriously considering my options when my contract is up in February. Now TV, coupled with our Smart TV's Netflix, Amazon and YouTube, will cut our monthly bill by more than half and give me all the TV programming we need.

And they're putting prices up? Again?

Not happy.

Considering BT YouView? Like your sport? Maybe think again

BT YouView may not be as attractive an option for sports fans as previously thought, and sometimes it feels like the sole role of Ofcom is to maintain Sky's dominance of the UK market.
Ofcom has just announced its decision to remove the regulation requiring Sky to offer Sky Sports on a wholesale basis. Sky Sports on BT YouView is the only supply arrangement for Sky Sports under Ofcom's wholesale must-offer regulation (Virgin Media's carriage of Sky Sports is different and unaffected by this ruling). Ofcom says that it

"expects all providers to engage willingly, constructively and in a timely manner to ensure sports continues to be made widely available to viewers. Ofcom continues to monitor the pay TV market closely. Should evidence emerge of practices which we consider to be prejudicial to fair and effective competition, we will quickly reassess the need for regulation."

In other words Ofcom is expecting Sky to play fair (stop sniggering at the back of the class, Murdoch Jnr) and give BT it's Sports channels at a commercially sensible price. That's the same BT Sky has been at loggerheads with for the last few years over sports rights. It doesn't take a genius to see that all the power is now in Sky's hands, who can fall into a convenient commercial dispute with BT that would remove Sky Sports from the BT service whilst everyone waits for Ofcom to "quickly reassess the need for regulation". Ofcom has never done anything "quickly", and those months, possibly years, could kill BT as an option for sports fans stone dead.
Oh, and don't expect the Government to intervene: it's too busy dismantling the BBC and Channel 4 for Rupert to pay attention to this one.