Virgin Media reveals new ‘TV 360’ streaming box to take on Sky Q

(Virgin Media)

Virgin Media has revealed a new "TV 360" platform, aimed at taking on competitors such as Sky Q.

The new streaming box and platform is intended to allow people to watch shows from both traditional TV and streaming, wherever they are.

As such, it includes not just the traditional TV boxes that can be placed in different rooms around the house, but also an app for phones and tablets.

Those TV boxes have a range of new features including voice search and profiles so that various people in a household can get access to different watchlists and recommendations.

Virgin’s offering looks set to rival Sky Q, a similar offering that was first released in 2016. Virgin suggested that features such as the fact that every room can watch content in 4K – which is only available on the main box as part of Sky’s offering – mark it out from its competitor.

The Virgin TV 360 service does however include profiles for people who are watching, allowing them to have different histories, which Sky’s set-top box does not offer. Profiles will sync across different set-top boxes and there is a “shared” setting when more than one person is watching.

Like Sky Q, Virgin’s new TV platform is based substantially around voice search, which allows users to ask the remote for actors, genres, specific films or TV shows or catchphrases. Both services build the microphones into the remote itself, rather than integrating with other external voice assistants like Google’s or Amazon’s Alexa.

And as with Sky Q, the TV 360 service allows for people to watch through various different set-top boxes, or through its app. Virgin’s box can record six programmes while watching a seventh, the company said.

The box replaces the “V6” box that Virgin released in 2016 and was built on technology made by TiVo, though the company promised to keep supporting that box even as it is phased out. The new box instead uses the “Horizon” system, built by Liberty Global.

The new box requires users to have Virgin Broadband. New customers will get it as standard, and existing customers who either already have or upgrade to its “Ultimate Oomph” bundle – which costs £79.99 per month and includes landline and mobile services – will get the box by the end of the year.

It will roll out to everyone else next year, Virgin said during its launch.