Spotify - online, on your mobile and on TiVo

Details from Virgin Media's web site:

• Get Spotify Premium free for six months with Virgin Media 30Mb broadband and above.
• Get Spotify Premium free for three months with Virgin Mobile.
• And you will soon be able to enjoy Spotify on your TV too, exclusively with Virgin Media: TiVo® Service. If you’re on Spotify Premium, press Home on your TiVo remote, go to Apps and Games and you’ll (soon) find Spotify. All your playlists and favourites will be there, and you can browse for and star music as normal. 

 

Netflix loses 800k US customers in Q3

Some folk see soon-to-launch-in-the-UK Netflix, LoveFilm and other Smart TV services as the future, and there's been a fair bit of press speculation that the traditional cable and satellite TV services' days are numbered as folk look to "cut the cord". But it ain't all rosey in the garden with these new services.
Hot on the heels of LoveFilm's parent Amazon seeing profits fall 73% in the last quarer comes the news that Netflix reported the loss of more than 800,000 subscribers, and admitted its launch in the UK and Ireland in early 2012 will push it to a global net loss.
Whilst revenues rose a healthy 49% year on year to $822m shares in Netflix, which had been trading at $300 in mid-2010, fell 27% in trading last week to $86.84.
Short term expansion pain or a flawed product? Personally, I think these services will struggle here until broadband speeds are faster across the whole country - no-one will be happy with a buffering or pixelated TV service and HD is now a must for those with the larger panels.

New TiVo upgrade in action - video

Posted on Cable Forum by MarkyUK - goodworkfella!

Q3 2011 results

From MediaGuardian:

Virgin Media has won back 6,300 cable customers in the three months to end of September, partly making up for losses of 36,000 over the summer after students disconnected for the holidays.
Financial results on Thursday showed that revenues grew 2.2% to £1bn year on year, marking a 3.3% rise for the first nine months of the year.
Overall cable customer numbers increased on the second quarter to 4.79 million. The number of telephone customers fell by 13,300 to 4.31 million, as use of mobile phones at home gradually replaces landline phone calls. Virgin says that customer 'churn' – the proportion of customers who quit – has increased, to 1.7%, although those leaving its network spend on average £38.30 a month, 20% less than the bulk of its customers.
The strategy of selling more to its existing customers led to a steady rise in ARPU (average revenue per user), up 3.2% so far this year, to £47.86 a month, which is Virgin's highest on record and compares with around £44.58 a month at rival BSkyB.
More customers are parting with extra cash for higher speed broadband and on its latest digital video recorder from TiVo, which is being promoted on television in an advertising campaign fronted by Hustle actor Marc Warren.
Chief executive Neil Berkett said: "Our results show that we're successfully serving what is a rapidly emerging market for better quality services. The demand for superior connectivity is accelerating as more people, regardless of their circumstances, recognise the best digital technology is worth paying more for."
Virgin had sold 222,000 TiVo subscriptions as of Wednesday, up from 36,000 at the end of June. The number of on-demand TV shows watched each month reached 80m, an increase of 10% on 2010, although that figure is likely to rise as TiVo adoption spreads.
The company said just over half of new customers are opting for high speed, 30 megabits per second (Mbps) broadband, with the number rising 178,000 to over half a million. The number of households taking 50Mbps or 100Mbps was 187,000, twice as many as a year ago.
Over 1 million customers – 26% of the cable base – are now taking over 20Mbps, the lowest tier of above basic speed. Operating income increased year on year from £102m to 128m, while the company made a loss before tax on continuing operations of £74m, compared with a profit of nearly 10m the year before. Virgin still has total debt of £5.7bn.
The company announced that it would use £250m of the £348m raised from the sale of its UKTV channels during the summer to expand its share buyback programme, which Goldman Sachs believes could see Virgin acquire 12% of its outstanding shares by the end of 2012. This takes to £1.25bn the total that will have been spend on buybacks since mid 2010. Goldman Sachs analysts said: "We believe these results validate management's efforts to grow customer lifetime value, with TiVo success creating helpful ARPU tailwinds for 2012."

And from the VM Press Release, this on their TV offering:

In the quarter we started to market and sell our new TiVo service to new customers and since July have been running our first TiVo TV advertising campaign. The strong early demand for this service has exceeded our high expectations and by the end of the quarter we had 162,900 TiVo customers, more than four times the number of customers with which we entered the quarter. We are seeing this demand for TiVo from both new and existing customers, with around one third of all TiVo subscribers being new to Virgin Media. Growth has continued strongly in October, and we had 222,000 TiVo customers as of 26th October.
Widespread consumer research supports trends we see within our customer base whereby people are increasingly using multiple devices simultaneously, such as watching TV while playing with a tablet device.
As we move to make TiVo the hub for all our customers’ entertainment needs, we are introducing a companion app later this year which will complement the TiVo television experience. This will replicate the graphical interface and functionality of the service while enabling customers to browse, search and control their TV through a tablet device.
Both our new and legacy TV services stand apart from other TV platforms in the UK with advantages which include access to an unparalleled library of on demand programming. After the quarter end we introduced even more content following an agreement with BSkyB. This will increase what is the largest on demand service available in the UK by over a third, as measured by both users and hours of content. We remain on track to meet our predictions of 1bn views for 2011. Around two-thirds of our TV base regularly used our ondemand TV service during the quarter, averaging 80m views each month, which is an increase of 10% from the same period in 2010.
We currently have around 3.8m TV customers, of which 1.8m or 49% are able to experience HD after a further 165,200 customers took an HD set-top box in the quarter. We recently announced the launch of five new HD channels from UKTV, taking the total number of HD channels available up to 36. In addition, the number of customers who subscribe to our Sky premium channels increased by 7% to 775,100, which represents 21% of all TV customers.
The number of paying TV customers increased by 28,800; however churn in the lowest free “M” tier, with 34,500 net disconnections, meant the total TV customer base fell by 5,700 in the quarter.
We are also about to launch our exclusive partnership with digital music service Spotify, which will make Virgin Media the only entertainment provider able to integrate the Spotify streaming music service into all of
its consumer offerings. As well as online and on mobile, we are working to build an exclusive TV app which will make a catalogue of over 13 million music tracks available to listen to through home cinema systems.

TiVo Update comments summary

A summary of the TiVo 15.2 Update reviews:

Spotify Support:
Not launched yet

Red Button:
BBC still launches iPlayer. ITV launches ITV Net Player (not sure if it did that before).

TiVo App support:
The TiVo ports are now open and going to port 80 on the TiVo box now gives a "Not Authorised" message - so clearly there's something there. But no app visible on the App Store yet.

A new look for YouTube:
Leanback app replaces the original. It's an interesting take on browsing videos, but I'm not sure it's that useful. The items in Apps, Search and My Shows all just take you to the leanback app.
The Youtube Videos link from the Programme Info page now takes you to the same app, but having done a search on the programme name

Full BBC iPlayer integration:
You can go straight to the iPlayer content from the Programme page, however it takes a ridiculous number of presses of OK to get there, you think you're going round in a loop at one point. This might not be true for all programmes, but was for my quick test just now.

Express Series Links:
Yep, this works. As long as you're happy with the padding settings then this is a nice contrast with what it takes to get to On Demadn content.

Multi-tap text entry:
This works in search. Doesn't work in apps (eg Youtube) though.

Automatic Padding:
This is there. 1 min before, 4 mins afterwards.

Improved Parental Controls:
There is Parental Controls settings menu in the Settings menu. One of the options is "Request a PIN to watch shows recorded after 21:00". Yes/No.
And it works!

HD Upscaling:
Don't know whether there is a difference here or not as quality varies so much between channels anyway.

Connection reliability:
Haven't seen any problems here.

Info and Stop button functionality improved:
Info works in a few more places. Stop now stops playback of a recording.

Video Preview for every channel:
Yes it does.

Additional things I've noticed:
- Green button in the guide allows you to jump to a particular day/time
- Sky Anytime Movies are included if you subscribe to the channels anyway. They are presented like the rest of the On Demand content as plain alphabetical lists of movie titles which are still very slow to page through.
- Reboots are down from the previous version (which was very unreliable for us).
- Performance is better on the recordings pages I think
- Transition between Menu/Guide/Search is not perfect, but not epilepsy inducing like before.

Movies in 3D on Virgin Media

Regular visitors to this blog will know my disdain for 3D, both in the cinema and on TV, but for those with money and eyeballs to burn, here's a selection of the pay per view 3D movies you can watch on Virgin Media currently. Prices vary but peak at £6.49 for 48 hours. Ouch.

• Cave of Forgotten Dreams
• Drive Angry
• Gnomeo & Juliet
• Green Lantern
• Hidden
• Justin Bieber: Never Say Never
• Steetdance
• Thor
• A Turtle's Tale
• Yogi Bear

The new TiVo update - more news

It's imminent and now Virgin Media has added to their (increasingly informative) community boards with one dedicated to posts from those testing the update 15.2.
You can find it at http://community.virginmedia.com/t5/TiVo-Update-Pilot-Forum/bd-p/tivo_update but please don't flood it with questions to those with the the new software as that's not what it's for. An interesting read though: looks like boxes are faster, PQ may have improved (no real consensus on that, but then not everyone had a problem to start with) but no-one has yet mentioned any changes with PIN code requirement. I'll keep an eye on it and report anything I see of interest.
Universal padding is working but not everyone's happy with the way it has been implemented, but I've noticed that there are only a few people posting there at the moment so it may not be a representative view.

Sky increase profit but customer numbers slow

The recession strikes? Sky's Q3 2011 results suggest even the most robust business can feel the pinch in hard economic times:

BSkyB managed to add 26,000 new pay-TV customers in the quarter, taking the total subscriber base to 10.2m, well down on the almost 100,000 added in the same quarter last year.

BSkyB added 103,000 customers to its HD service, which stands at 3.9m of its total subscriber base, while broadband numbers rose 150,000 to 3.5m.
Telephony customers rose 147,000 to 3.2m, while those taking their line rental through BSkyB rose 212,000 to 2.9m.
The total number of customers taking TV, broadband and a "talk" product grew by 5% to account for 28% of BSkyB's total customer base – a 29% year-on-year increase.
The company will also be pleased that average revenue per user – a key metric for analysts and an indicator of whether the company could be facing a slowdown in the economic climate – remained relatively stable at £535, up £25 on a year ago.

Virgin Media's numbers for the same quarter are published next week.

An update on the TiVo update

From Simon Hunt, Product Director:

This week we have begun a limited pilot of our next TiVo software release. This new software includes many new improvements as well as key developments that will enable the launch of future products. We’ll be rolling it out to everyone well before Christmas. Here’s a sneak peek of what you can expect:
 
Spotify Support: We’ll support Spotify’s high quality streaming format, which will enable the Spotify Premium App on the TiVo platform.
Red Button: This update adds extra functionality necessary to support Red Button services developed by our channel partners, such as BBC, ITV, and Sky Sports
TiVo App support: We've enabled the connection of your TiVo box to iOS devices through your wireless router to use our fantastic TiVo app, which allows you to control the TiVo box, browse, search and manage recordings all from your iPad, iPhone or iPod Touch.
A new look for YouTube: We’ll support Google’s completely revamped YouTube app, which allows for a more relaxed viewing and browsing experience, and supports HD video!
Full BBC iPlayer integration: We’ve changed the way Catch-up TV through BBC iPlayer works. Every BBC iPlayer programme will now be available through Search & Browse, including much more HD content, and you’ll never use up a tuner for BBC iPlayer viewing.
Express Series Links: Create a Series Link with default settings at the click of a button.
Multi-tap text entry: Use the number keys on your remote like a mobile phone for text entry for typing into search.
Automatic Padding: We’ve had tremendous feedback from customers about clipped recordings, so we’ve installed a default level of padding for all recordings.
Improved Parental Controls: We’ve made some changes with PIN entry requirements to suit every household. In the new update, PIN challenges on pre-watershed playback of programmes in My Shows become optional. We’ve also added the ability to require PIN to access any application.
Skippable Music Playlists: Playlists on Music on Demand will be skippable by track
Live Pay-per-view Events: Live pay-per-view events become bookable with your remote control.
HD Upscaling: As promised on this forum, we’ve addressed the issue with our picture quality and this new update features better standard definition picture quality with improved upscaling.
Connection reliability: HDMI and SCART compatibility improved.
Info and Stop button functionality improved: You’ll be able to use the ‘info’ button in the TV programme guide and the mini guide, while the Stop button now works as you would expect.
Video Preview for every channel: Every channel will keep playing in the TV Guide window, including all the Sky channels.

There are plenty more updates already in the pipeline and, as ever, we will use your feedback to continue to improve our TiVo service.
We’ll be keeping you up to date on this forum

Thanks,

Simon Hunt
Product Director (TV)
Virgin Media

Virgin Media installation - enough to make you despair - UPDATED

Just a few weeks ago a friend of mine decided to switch from Sky/BT to Virgin Media. Her main desire was for faster broadband for her family, but was interested in the TV too. She signed up for 50Mb broadband and M+ TV.
She lives in a listed building in SE London. She called me shortly after the installation and asked if I could help with the TV as it seemed to have been set up poorly. She was right: the clowns had plugged cables in seemingly at random and had left it all connected via SCART (despite there being HDMI cables available to connect it correctly). Worse, the broadband was fluctuating between 45mb and an unusable sub 1mb speed (according to speedtest.net). She had reported this several times since installation and had been told it would be fixed "in the next few days". Three weeks later and the broadband is still erratic and seen by my friend as worse than her old BT 8Mb.
But the worse thing is the cabling outside the house. See the pictures and judge for yourself: that neat black cable in the BT and Sky cabling, the white cable, looking suspiciously like one for internal rather than external use, is Virgin Media. Have you ever seen such a botched, rushed, ugly cabling job? The box is not secured, hanging on by sheer will power alone. One strong wind and the whole lot will come down. And remember that this is on an historic building over looking the Thames.
Makes me despair.
If anyone from Virgin Media reads this, please contact me and I can put you in touch with my friend to sort this out. She's ready to switch back to Sky/BT and I can't blame her. Come on VM, you're better than this...

UPDATE: Can't fault Virgin Media's response to this posting: I had an email from Virgin Media's Head of Customer Experience at 7am on Monday morning, quickly followed by another from the Head of Services and Installs and my friend has an appointment for Thursday to rectify everything. Thanks guys!