Liberty Global (UPC) to Buy Virgin Media (UK)

bk

Interesting news, Liberty Global, the owners of UPC are buying Virgin Media (the cable company in the UK, formerly NTL) for $23 Billion !!

This will make UPC the largest TV and Broadband companies in Europe and may end up having a very big impact on the Irish TV and BB market.

The new larger company expects to save money on IT and networking equipment purchases and expenses, by pooling it's resources across Europe. This means UPC Ireland will have access to gear and resources well beyond Eircom and at prices well below Eircom.

The new larger company will also likely be big enough to compete with Sky for Sports and Movie rights.

Virgin Media includes Virgin Mobile, a quad play service, I wonder might we see UPC do the same here?

I wonder will Virgin Media be rebranded to UPC or vice versa (Virgin Media is a very strong brand in the UK, likely would do well in Ireland too, not sure how it would go down in the rest of Europe).

Also Virgin Media use TiVo boxes in the UK. I wonder will they roll these out to the rest of Europe or scrap them for their own new Horizon box.

Certainly exciting times ahead!

advertsfox

At last those poxy UPC receivers (DVR is being too nice to them) will be gone!

to this

bk

advertsfox wrote: »

At last those poxy UPC receivers (DVR is being too nice to them) will be gone!

Not necessarily. UPC are rolling out a new, very advanced DVR called the Horizon box across UPC Europe. They are already been trialled in Ireland and are likely to launch here soon.

It is possible, that the Virgin Medis TiVo's will be replaced by these boxes. Maybe, we don't really know yet.

Anyway, the new Horizon boxes have gotten excellent reviews. They include 4 HD tuners, allowing you to record 4 channels at the same time!! Also a 500GB HDD, UPC On Demand, Youtube, facebook, can stream to a second "dumb" STB, stream to iPhone/iPad/Tablets/PC and controlled by those devices and can stream content from a PC. Pretty impressive set up:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=3-3Md4KmPXc

advertsfox

bk wrote: »

Not necessarily. UPC are rolling out a new, very advanced DVR called the Horizon box across UPC Europe. They are already been trialled in Ireland and are likely to launch here soon.

It is possible, that the Virgin Medis TiVo's will be replaced by these boxes. Maybe, we don't really know yet.

Anyway, the new Horizon boxes have gotten excellent reviews. They include 4 HD tuners, allowing you to record 4 channels at the same time!! Also a 500GB HDD, UPC On Demand, Youtube, facebook, can stream to a second "dumb" STB, stream to iPhone/iPad/Tablets/PC and controlled by those devices and can stream content from a PC. Pretty impressive set up:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=3-3Md4KmPXc

I did not know that, nice information I imagine that prospect is throwing the sh*ts up Sky.

Solair

Main advantage for UPC Ireland is that it won't be a small Sky content customer anymore.

UPC's already absolutely MASSIVE and gets all that technical expertise / equipment deals.
The same equipment is used all over Europe in their networks. It's pretty much totally standardised now.

It is already Europe's largest cable operator too AFAIK, this deal won't change that, it just makes it even bigger.

colm_mcm

I see virgin have the likes of blighty, watch, Eden etc, think these are uktv channels, things like discovery turbo too, hopefully these make it onto my UPC box

Solair

colm_mcm wrote: »

I see virgin have the likes of blighty, watch, Eden etc, think these are uktv channels, things like discovery turbo too, hopefully these make it onto my UPC box

Until 2011 Virgin Media owned a large % of those UKTV channels itself.
I'm not sure why it sold them off. Looks like it needed the cash.

They're saying "business as usual" with the Virgin name etc. However, I would doubt they'll continue to license it for too long.

Also, I wonder will Virgin's TiVo be replaced with UPC Horizon?
They've spent a LOT of R&D time and money on Horizon