Ed the Sofa Bear has been appearing in Virgin Media’s TV campaign.
Liberty Global has announced plans for a new 4K set-top box that for the medium term at least will feature elements of the present TiVo platform.
Eos is named after the Greek Goddess of the Dawn and follows Liberty’s Project Dawn.
Virgin Media CEO Tom Mockridge told an analyst call the company was committed to a UK rollout before the end of 2016. “I will just say we are committed in the second half of this year to deploy in the United Kingdom, we put some TiVo software on it, but that will give us a lot more functionality for our customers.”
“It’s a pretty high-powered box that will get a refreshed TiVo UI on it later this year. And then in the following years, our goal is to get Horizon across all of Europe,” added Liberty Global CTO Balan Nair. “And the EOS box is this new 4K box that’s going to be the engine for the next generation video for Liberty.
There has been speculation on the future of TiVo since Virgin Media was acquired by Liberty two years ago. This has heightened as Liberty has taken forward its Liberty Go rejuvenation plan that includes a centralisation of technical services.
Master service agreements are being put into place, cutting off what Fries described as the long tail of vendor specific solutions.
Mockridge is up against the recently launched Sky Q box, but said the cablenet had felt very few effects of the Fluid TV campaign. “So far we’ve seen very little impact from the Sky TV which is expensive corridor. And we’re very focused on improving – and EOS is going to be a big part of that.”
“EOS is a set-top we intend to roll out everywhere at some point, including in that market and it’s certainly – that we already have a TiVo interim plan or a medium range plan in the UK,” said Liberty Global President Mike Fries.
Fries had praise for the Replay TV concept that he said was as popular as the DVR in the markets where it’s been launched. “We are seeing 60% usage of Replay TV at home and on the mobile in the four markets where we’ve made it available. Look for us to expand that killer app to many more markets through the course of this year.”
