DVR or Free VR?
Friday, May 25th, 2007Virgin mimic Sky’s DVR subscription-fee slashing
Virgin Media are planning to either reduce or wholly drop the monthly charge for privilege of using the V+ DVR service. The V+ feature allows you to pause and rewind broadcasts, record two programmes to the receiver whilst watching a third, and is currently available for an additional monthly fee of either £10 or £15, depending on which Size TV package you sign up to.
This follows an announcement from Sky, that from July, the Sky+ service, which also allows you to pause/rewind/record live TV would be free to all customers who had a monthly satellite TV subscription, and has been cited as another example of the ongoing one-upmanship between the two pay-TV competitors. However, interactive DVR features have been inclusive on the other digital TV platforms for a while now.
The somewhat confusingly named V-Box, the Philips-manufactured DVR that comes with BT Vision, boasts the same functionality, allowing for up to 80 hours of content to be stored on its internal hard drive, and after the initial connection and installation charges have been made, there are no monthly fees for the service, and it’s the same story in the Top-Up TV corner; the recordable functions of the Top-Up TV Anytime box comes as part of the package, the cost of which is included in the standard £9.99 a month subscription.
The rewind and record TV technology that was introduced into the market via Sky+ way back in 2001 has become more commonplace with Freeview boxes such as the Sagem 62160SL-T, which offers similar functionality at no additional monthly cost.
May 23rd, 2007 at 8:28 am
Loved the opening line of this article, more like this please. Cheers me up in the mornings!
June 28th, 2007 at 2:25 pm
I’d be happy if I could find a tv card that will work with cable.
(When I say work, I want the tv card to be able to switch channels)
June 29th, 2007 at 10:05 am
Thanks for the comment! One should never punderestimate the power of play-on words.