Eurosport HD makes its way to Virgin Media

by Parm Mann on 3 February 2010, 10:10

Tags: Virgin (NASDAQ:VMED)

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Virgin Media has today announced that Eurosport HD will be made available to its 3.7 million subscribers in April.

The HD sports channel - a simulcast of Eurosport - will become Virgin Media's eighth high-definition channel and will showcase major sporting events including the Tour de France and French Open tennis.

In order to receive Virgin Media's HD line up, customers are required to subscribe to the XL TV package - currently charged at £21.50 per month and offering some 165 channels, the following of which broadcast in high-definition: BBC HD, 4HD, ESPN HD, Nat Geo HD, MTVNHD, FX HD, Living HD and the upcoming Eurosport HD.

Virgin Media claims the arrival of Eurosport HD - a channel which has been available via rival broadcaster Sky since mid-2008 - will signal the launch of "several" new HD channels on Virgin Media "in the coming months".

Cindy Rose, executive director of digital entertainment at Virgin Media said: "We're really excited about the spring launch of Eurosport HD and the wider roll-out of several new HD channels for our customers in the coming months. With HD ready TVs now common in UK homes, the combination of HD channels as well as our pioneering TV on Demand service gives Virgin TV customers a huge range of HD programming with the unique flexibility to enjoy HD content whenever they want, at the touch of a button. With all the regular channels you’d expect, and a service ready for 3DTV too, Virgin TV is without doubt the most compelling TV offer on the market."

HEXUS Forums :: 6 Comments

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Posted by MonkeyL - Wed 03 Feb 2010 11:40
Not a subscriber myself but have a few mates who use Virgin HD. All are not very happy about the quality (which is terrible). When I show them my BBC HD via freesat they can't believe how good it is compared to theirs.

Says it all really.
Posted by shaithis - Wed 03 Feb 2010 12:14
I believe the cable bandwidth is seriously limited and was saturated a while ago……I can only imagine that other channels have had to suffer PQ and/or SQ to shoehorn another channel in….
Posted by cjs150 - Thu 04 Feb 2010 10:10
I have virgin HD and it is good…but no Sky Movies HD or Sky sports HD is a real downer.

The quality is very good on the HD channels
Posted by scasiello - Thu 04 Feb 2010 23:09
MonkeyL
Not a subscriber myself but have a few mates who use Virgin HD. All are not very happy about the quality (which is terrible). When I show them my BBC HD via freesat they can't believe how good it is compared to theirs.

Says it all really.

I've had HD via cable (then Telewest now Virgin) since 2007 and upgraded my TV to a Panasonic Plasma with built-in Freesat in 2009, the BBC HD picture quality on cable has always been excellent, and since getting the new TV I've been able to compare BBC HD on both platforms, the picture quality on cable always exceeds that of Freesat (is sharper & more detailed). Also bitrate of BBC HD on cable has not been reduced as it has recently on Freesat/SKY.

I can only assume that your mates TV is inferior to yours or they have it setup incorrectly.

shaithis
I believe the cable bandwidth is seriously limited and was saturated a while ago……I can only imagine that other channels have had to suffer PQ and/or SQ to shoehorn another channel in….

Cable bandwidth is somewhat limited, but Virgin are in the process of ceasing analogue broadcasts (started in 2009), this is what is enabling the promised additional HD channels and the future increase of Broadband speeds to upto 200mbps.
Posted by Rave - Fri 05 Feb 2010 03:20
Sounds good. Eurosport back in the day used to be mint, with non-stop skiing, ski-jumping, and tractor pulling, which is frankly the greatest sport evar. But when Eurosport GB became the main offering it was crap, bloody football all the time etc.

My wife still watches the tennis on Eurosport, and tennis in HD is cool, because apart from anything else you can pretty much pre-empt line calls:).

TBH what pisses me off most is that we don't have the ITV HD simulcast on Virgin, despite Virgin TV owning about 20% of ITV. WTF is going on there? The V+ box is a really great piece of kit, it really will record two HD streams while allowing you to watch a third, and the picture quality is fine. I originally bought my 42" LCD to watch the 2008 Olympics in HD, and I'm glad I did, because I enjoyed it very much. But as it stands, it looks as if I'll need a Freesat HD box to watch half the England matches in HD, despite bunging Virgin about £60 quid a month all-in.

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