The Virgin Media Television thread

irishfeen

iseegirls wrote: »

Virgin Sport will have 2 matches on Tuesday 6pm (second match pick, with VM1 showing a match at same time) and 8pm (second pick match with RTE having 1st pick), and 2 matches on Wednesday at 6pm and 8pm. Then there's Europa League games - at least 2 every Thursday.

They have every Nations Cup and Euro Qualifiers match apart from ROI ones. There are some pretty good fixtures in the Nations Cup. The first week they could show the following:
Thursday 6 September
Germany v France (19:45)

Friday 7 September
Italy v Poland (19:45)

Saturday 8 September
Switzerland v Iceland (17:00)
England v Spain (19:45)
Northern Ireland v Bosnia and Herzegovina (14:00)

Sunday 9 September
France v Netherlands (19:45)
Ukraine v Slovakia (14:00)
Denmark v Wales (17:00)

Monday 10 September
Portugal v Italy (19:45)

Tuesday 11 September
Spain v Croatia (19:45)

The station is 2 months away from broadcasting, yet most are giving out which I find quite ridiculous. When rights come up, then they will challenge for them. There's Eleven Sports who got Serie A and La Liga - could possibly merge with them on that for Irish rights. Then there's those 3pm PL kickoffs, that does not seem to have a particular home for yet on Irish TV.

Of course we are giving out the fcuking channel will cost us €20 a month... us giving out is not ridiculous it’s Virgin who are ridiculous.

bennyl10

iseegirls wrote: »

Virgin Sport will have 2 matches on Tuesday 6pm (second match pick, with VM1 showing a match at same time) and 8pm (second pick match with RTE having 1st pick), and 2 matches on Wednesday at 6pm and 8pm. Then there's Europa League games - at least 2 every Thursday.

They have every Nations Cup and Euro Qualifiers match apart from ROI ones. There are some pretty good fixtures in the Nations Cup. The first week they could show the following:
Thursday 6 September
Germany v France (19:45)

Friday 7 September
Italy v Poland (19:45)

Saturday 8 September
Switzerland v Iceland (17:00)
England v Spain (19:45)
Northern Ireland v Bosnia and Herzegovina (14:00)

Sunday 9 September
France v Netherlands (19:45)
Ukraine v Slovakia (14:00)
Denmark v Wales (17:00)

Monday 10 September
Portugal v Italy (19:45)

Tuesday 11 September
Spain v Croatia (19:45)

The station is 2 months away from broadcasting, yet most are giving out which I find quite ridiculous. When rights come up, then they will challenge for them. There's Eleven Sports who got Serie A and La Liga - could possibly merge with them on that for Irish rights. Then there's those 3pm PL kickoffs, that does not seem to have a particular home for yet on Irish TV.

It's 20euro for one channel, that you can't even get on your TV if you don't have virgin.

It's a rip off. Simply.
Eir give you 6 channels, with all the same stuff Europe football wise, and every provincial rugby game, with 5.30 prem games and Live UFC, for 3 quod dearer..

Virgin again showing they don't give a feck about customers.

icdg

Ten Pin wrote: »

VM fast becoming as well liked as RTE.

Is there anything stopping them doing the same (¼ FTA, ¾ Pay) with the rugby.

Given that 6N is on BBC ITV, that might look unlikely but after the current deal expires, who knows.

GAA are probably delighted to have another potential bidder for the next contract discussions.

Both for the reason you suggest, and also because I think the Government would quickly move to add the Six Nations to the FTA list, I don’t see they moving to do that anytime soon. Likewise their Heineken Cup deal is specifically for FTA coverage, with BT holding the pay-TV rights.

The next GAA deal is quite a bit away, it won’t start till May 2022.

ziggyman17

irishfeen wrote: »

Of course we are giving out the fcuking channel will cost us €20 a month... us giving out is not ridiculous it’s Virgin who are ridiculous.

Not for the few hundred thousand that all ready have Virgin tv.. typical Irishness.. always wanting everything for free..

Elmo

ziggyman17 wrote: »

Not for the few hundred thousand that all ready have Virgin tv.. typical Irishness.. always wanting everything for free..

Largely speaking we've always paid for TV, Virgin only exists for that historical reason.

How much is the basic Virgin TV Package?

irishfeen

ziggyman17 wrote: »

Not for the few hundred thousand that all ready have Virgin tv.. typical Irishness.. always wanting everything for free..

And what of those who cannot get Virgin TV?

Mickey Mike

Look ahead into the future, eventually there will be no free sports on terrestrial television (FTA)
Its going to be all about money and people will have to pay for any kind of sport, we already do by paying the licence fee. But its going to get a whole lot worse. I'm saying "No one should give a cent to any of these companies, just pay your TV licence and hope for the best.

icdg

It doesn’t necessarily need to be that way. Some sporting organisations recognise the value of FTA. The Heineken Cup is returning to terrestrial TV this season after a long absence. The Pro14, which is returning to pay TV this season, is keeping one game on TG4 each week in the regular season.

In the US, it’s totally different and all the major leagues have coverage on both FTA and pay (and pay sports in the US means a basic or second tier rather than premium - Of course, it’s horses for courses and Americans pay premium prices for the likes of HBO or Showtime, the European equivalents to which are basic cable.)

Tigerandahalf

Ya fta will always have plenty of sports. The danger for sports organisations selling rights is that streaming companies may not be willing to pay cash upfront on a contract basis. If the streaming companies get a big enough share of the market to dictate, they will look to only pay based on the amount of streams. That could shake up things pretty quickly.

ziggyman17

irishfeen wrote: »

And what of those who cannot get Virgin TV?

Well you are not missing out. You still get your weekly game on RTE. Tv3 got the opportunity to buy up the righs to European football and took it and now offer it to existing customers as part of their sub, hopefully they get more rights to football and othet sports, no one complained when Eir ( a phone company ) moved into the tv market, yet as soon as Virgin try to improve their sport output the rage and anger is mad.

irishfeen

ziggyman17 wrote: »

Well you are not missing out. You still get your weekly game on RTE. Tv3 got the opportunity to buy up the righs to European football and took it and now offer it to existing customers as part of their sub, hopefully they get more rights to football and othet sports, no one complained when Eir ( a phone company ) moved into the tv market, yet as soon as Virgin try to improve their sport output the rage and anger is mad.

Bullshîte, this is nothing more the pure greed..

dublinman1990

In all honesty; when that indo article suggests that people would have to pay access to all three services to get all of the relevant football matches, at a maximum people would realistically subscribe to two of the three out of Sky, Eir/BT & Virgin to get all the matches they would want. The indo article had also left out the inclusion of Eleven Sports which offers the La Liga & Serie A matches as well. For those people who like those games from Eleven Sports; if they live in Ireland they would have to subscribe to get all of those matches if they want to. If you're a real big football fan; subscribing to three out of the four sports broadcasters if you wanted to get sufficient access to all of the Pay TV football matches you wanted in Ireland.

There is one over riding factor in making these decisions though in that if you subscribe to any of these services at the moment apart from Eleven Sports; you are going to get cases where people would notice duplication of matches between some broadcasters.

If you were a Virgin customer, you could get all the matches from Sky Sports, Virgin Media Sport & possibly Eleven Sports to get all of the matches to make that scenario perfect from next season. You will avoid duplication of having the CL & EL coverage from Eir & BT Sport. I'm not sure of the situation about ITV4 on Virgin Media though regarding blackouts.

On the other hand; if you or an Sky or Eir Vision customer, All or most of the matches you will ever need would will on Sky Sports, Eir/BT and Eleven Sports. If you have the Eir broadband in your house; you will get access to all of the CL & EL matches along with the other sports coverage on their channels for free. You wouldn't need access from Virgin Media Sport at all if you already get access to all of the games from the CL & EL from Eir/BT & the Nations League & the Euro 2020 qualifiers from Sky. Sky broadcasts the Home Nations of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland live, plus every other qualifier apart from those on ITV and every England Nations League match live. ITV/Virgin Media will broadcast every England qualifier live here in Ireland via cable or satellite. ITV4 will show one other live match not featuring another Home Nation team each round.

If non Irish people want to get involved in paying for access to these matches; the scenario for them is a little more unpredictable in that we don't know how many foreign people living in Ireland if they are big football fans will actually subscribe to any of these services if you include Virgin in the mix. If any foreign person wants to subscribe to get the games; they would not like getting confused about having to pay for duplicate access to Virgin Media if they already get access to the matches on Sky & Eir/BT.

Thargor

Mickey Mike wrote: »

I hope all these Cable and Phone companies will fall on their backsides, what a greedy bunch they all are, and the people who pay for these services are worse again, everyone needs to cop on and be a bit more wise with there money.
Let the phone companies concentrate on bringing a top class phone and internet service and let the broadcasters concentrate on TV services.

TBH I think they will, we're not allowed talk about it here but the piracy options are just becoming unstoppable, a couple of years ago they were barely usable but these days theres nearly always a perfect SD option to be had, HD in a lot of cases. In another couple of years it will be perfect. Even a complete luddite like my father is using an Android tablet for the Grand Prix and Premier League these days.

Not long now before these showers of rip-off merchants start seeing their paying customer base collapse like the newspaper industry imo.

icdg

If pay TV companies cannot make money out of Sport they will stop showing Sport, end of. If people would like to go back to all Sport being on FTA, that’s fine. Let me remind people of what Sport coverage was like in those days - Ireland’s Six Nations matches were virtually the only rugby games screened live on Irish TV in their entirety. Club rugby got a 45 minutes highlights package and it was similar in the U.K. with Rugby Special the only coverage. One Football League game on TV each week. No live GAA on TV except all Ireland semis and final. It wasn’t a golden age at all. It was largely concentrated around Sports Stadium, Grandstand, and World of Sport on a Saturday and there was little on most other days of the week.

Tigerandahalf

Ya pay tv is definitely needed from the quality and coverage point of way.
I used illegal streams in the past as sky tv just was too expensive but the quality of them was terrible and the more popular they were the more they went down.

I now have eir broadband and I can stream the eir/bt channels for free. Granted the broadband price is €53 which is about €8 dearer than other packages, but I am happy to pay it.

I got Now tv for the summer for €20 p/m for 3 months which I thought was fair value for what I got.

I was talking to a lady recently who has what I presume is iptv and streams all the channels (illegally) for a small amount per month. She did say that it froze at least once a day so you can't be reliant on that.

I think most people would pay if it was a reasonable price.

I presume with eleven tv and virgin's app we will see a push towards further streaming.

It looks like the chromecast will be popular. A shame it is not integrated into more tvs.

lertsnim

ziggyman17 wrote: »

no one complained when Eir ( a phone company ) moved into the tv market, yet as soon as Virgin try to improve their sport output the rage and anger is mad.

At least Eir Sport was available on television across the whole country on satellite. Virgin are burning money considering their main rights aren't even exclusive. Expect a lovely big price increase next year to cover the costs.

Thargor

Tigerandahalf wrote: »

I used illegal streams in the past as sky tv just was too expensive but the quality of them was terrible and the more popular they were the more they went down.

Yeah my point is though if you plot the rate they're improving compared to what they were even 2 years ago it wont be long before everyone is using them, I dont see how they can stop it.

Tigerandahalf

Thargor wrote: »

Yeah my point is though if you plot the rate they're improving compared to what they were even 2 years ago it wont be long before everyone is using them, I dont see how they can stop it.

You can be guaranteed they will be stopped because if they're not there is no money to pay the sports stars. It was card sharing in the past, now it is iptv and it will be stopped too.

The bigger issue is finding a system where all these streaming apps can be accessed on a single easy to use platform.

mikeym

€20 for the Virgin Media Sports App.


No thanks.

irishfeen

mikeym wrote: »

€20 for the Virgin Media Sports App.


No thanks.

I think we are almost all in agreement with that

Over my dead body comes to mind...

Thargor

Tigerandahalf wrote: »

You can be guaranteed they will be stopped because if they're not there is no money to pay the sports stars. It was card sharing in the past, now it is iptv and it will be stopped too.

The bigger issue is finding a system where all these streaming apps can be accessed on a single easy to use platform.

The music and film and games industries have tried everything to stop it and nothing works, a lot easier to build protection into a game aswell compared to a stream, its not really possible to stop it.

dulpit

Thargor wrote: »

The music and film and games industries have tried everything to stop it and nothing works, a lot easier to build protection into a game aswell compared to a stream, its not really possible to stop it.

I disagree, the use of the likes of Spotify, Netflix, etc has grown massively. I don't know many who illegally deal with music any more. Movies/TV is still going on, but is reducing as the offerings get better.

Once a fair priced, sensible tool comes along, it'll stop the pirate streams.

icdg

We might get back to discussing TV3 & it’s sister channels at this stage. I appreciate it’s an interesting question and if someone wants to start a new thread on it they can (provided they do so without encouraging anyone to do anything illegal).

irishfeen

dulpit wrote: »

I disagree, the use of the likes of Spotify, Netflix, etc has grown massively. I don't know many who illegally deal with music any more. Movies/TV is still going on, but is reducing as the offerings get better.

Once a fair priced, sensible tool comes along, it'll stop the pirate streams.

Very much this if sky or any provider told me pay €40 a month extra for access to all sports channels (sky, BT, Eir, Virgin) then I’d have no problem whatsoever.. it’s the price gouging of having to get every single one separate at an awful price is ridiculous!

dulpit

I wonder how well the re-brand will go on this. I reckon even when it becomes VM1, people are still going to call it TV3. It's a bad name anyway, are we to talk about what's on Virgin 1? Or Virgin Media 1? Or VM1?

Seems a shame too to throw away the history of TV3 (as mixed as that might be)

Tigerandahalf

dulpit wrote: »

I wonder how well the re-brand will go on this. I reckon even when it becomes VM1, people are still going to call it TV3. It's a bad name anyway, are we to talk about what's on Virgin 1? Or Virgin Media 1? Or VM1?

Seems a shame too to throw away the history of TV3 (as mixed as that might be)

You have also the fact that VM1 will actually be on channel 3 to add to the confusion.

iseegirls

dulpit wrote: »

I wonder how well the re-brand will go on this. I reckon even when it becomes VM1, people are still going to call it TV3. It's a bad name anyway, are we to talk about what's on Virgin 1? Or Virgin Media 1? Or VM1?

Seems a shame too to throw away the history of TV3 (as mixed as that might be)

Still a lot of questions about it really. Will the same schedules continue into the re-brand? So will VM3 have the 10pm and 7pm news still. Can't see it continuing.

Xpose is an unknown. There is no Xpose as part of that 90second Virgin Media promo. There is Glenda, but that's part of Ireland's Got Mor Talent.

The VM1 8pm news and VM1 Tue Champions League 6pm coverage means some shifting of ITV soaps, and with IAC, BGT, The Voice Kids etc which has stripped weeks, that will mean 8pm news may be dropped. I think if the 8pm news is to succeed it needs to stay there 52 weeks a year, 5 days a week. Shift IAC etc to VM2.

The relaunch of a Thursday makes it odd to revamp a schedule halfway through the week. So I'm thinking we'll see little change.

political analyst

TV3/VM has a very lackadaisical approach towards informing viewers on the status of its programming, i.e. neither confirming nor denying the Irish Independent's report about the costumes and studio settings of Red Rock being sold off.

https://www.independent.ie/entertainment/television/tv-news/game-over-for-tv3s-red-rock-as-insiders-claim-props-being-sold-36084186.html

Elmo

iseegirls wrote: »

Still a lot of questions about it really. Will the same schedules continue into the re-brand? So will VM3 have the 10pm and 7pm news still. Can't see it continuing.

Xpose is an unknown. There is no Xpose as part of that 90second Virgin Media promo. There is Glenda, but that's part of Ireland's Got Mor Talent.

The VM1 8pm news and VM1 Tue Champions League 6pm coverage means some shifting of ITV soaps, and with IAC, BGT, The Voice Kids etc which has stripped weeks, that will mean 8pm news may be dropped. I think if the 8pm news is to succeed it needs to stay there 52 weeks a year, 5 days a week. Shift IAC etc to VM2.

The relaunch of a Thursday makes it odd to revamp a schedule halfway through the week. So I'm thinking we'll see little change.

Almost certain that 7pm BE3 News is moving to 8pm on Virgin Media one.

Are there now 4 Champions League games on Tuesday Night?

Red Rock is dead many of the cast are moving to other shows.

political analyst

Elmo wrote: »

Almost certain that 7pm BE3 News is moving to 8pm on Virgin Media one.

Are there now 4 Champions League games on Tuesday Night?

Red Rock is dead many of the cast are moving to other shows.

So TV3/VM is willing to move the second Thursday episode of Emmerdale to 8:30. I find it extraordinary, considering that, although UTV is long gone from cable TV in cities in the Republic (though it's still available on Smyths' cable in Cavan town), many viewers will still be able to watch the ITV Network via a satellite dish or, if they live on the Border or the East Coast, terrestrial overspill.