Virgin Media Stream TV - New Streaming box

On the Sky Stream box, you can skip ads when watching Sky content, on the C4/All4 player and on the RTE Player app. This feature is free for the first year, but then a charge arises after that.

I'm looking to switch away Sky Stream and move to Virgin's streaming box. Will I be able to skip ads on Sky content, C4/All4 content, RTE content when using the Virgin box?

Sounds great, Sky Stream has no recording at all, so it's probably an improvement there.

Technically they can re-activate your 360 box with hard drive but will they - not sure, and they will tell you that it's not possible. You could ask them for a copy off your phone call. They should have told you about new equpment. Maybe ask for a final written response from them and then go to Comreg.

Initial impressions of the Virgin streaming box is that it is definitely superior to the Sky Stream box, even though it's about half the size! Flicking between channels is instant on Virgin, whereas Sky takes a second or two for the new station to appear. Channel 4 content seems to be all available, using the 'native' Virgin player rather than using a 'special' C4 player as happens on Sky. This means that there are fewer inconsistencies with how ads are displayed, and how they can be skipped. Display of subtitles in much better on Virgin, whereas Sky frequently has subtitles overlapping each other, with the start/end of the previous long sentence left visible while the short next sentence appeared in the middle.

Integration with the TV just seems to work out of the box, so switching off the Virgin box switches off the TV. With Sky, this worked for one of my LG tvs, but didn't work for the LG tv with the soundbox. Netflix and Apple TV apps seem to work fine. There's no Disney+ or RTE Player app, but the RTE content is available within the native Virgin player.

You don't get access to the full Sky library on the Virgin box, so it's lucky that we finished the White Lotus last week. I might have to start recording some Sky stuff to the cloud to have it available as required. Or else take out a Now subscription.

I haven't seen any feature of the box where Sky is better than Virgin so far.

Yes, both are available. I kicked off a test recording on each of those channels, and it seemed to work fine.

Is there anyway to get the best of both worlds where you hold on to the 360 box so you can record all channels, but can also use the streaming box?

I have co axial cable into home and so have to run a 10 meter cable from TV to 360 box. I'd love to get rid of that cable and maybe have the streaming box show recordings from my 360 box as well as live tv...

@Delta2113 so let's say I have 2 TVs. 1 connected to the 360 box, 1 to a streaming box. My 360 box records a show on BBC1 but I want to watch that show on the TV with the streaming box, not the 360 box.

I was wondering if the streaming box can connect locally to my 360 box to pick up the BBC show I recorded.

It doesn't seem like it from what I am reading

So I finally got rid of Sky TV as they would not recognise my loyalty and kept price gouging. I already have broadband with Virgin so rang today to get the streaming box. €15 per month. A lot better than the Sky price. Only gripe is that you can't record RTE or BBC yet but I was assured that it was only a matter of time before you can.

My TV is 13 years old and only has one HDMI socket which is currently used by a Google Chromecast. Is it possible to get a splitter so I can have 2 cables plugged in at the same time?

Thanks. Can you record more than one program at a time like on Sky Q?

Yes, definitely more than one. All recording is done to the cloud, so it's not dependent on physical connections to or from your particular box.

Try this.

Yes that's them all. No Disney+ or RTE Player, DAZN, Spotify etc.

It's one thing I find annoying, getting the main players, RTE, VM, TG4, Netflix, YouTube, TuneIn, Spotify, on one source. I have a Walker, LG and Toshiba tv's plus a Now and Firestick and mone have all the apps. Obviously VM is in a similar situation, does Sky have a good selection of apps.

For the past two days I've been unable to connect certain devices to WiFi. I keep getting this message. Anyone know how to sort this?

The one downside of VM streaming over Sky Stream is that it's not so good for remembering where you are when watching a series.

So if I'm watching a series on Apple TV or Channel 4, then each time I go into that series from the playlist, it starts back at the start again S01, E01 and I have to find the right episode. For Apple TV, if I go into the Apple TV app, it remembers the right position.

Sky Stream was better for remembering where you are, regardless of which interface you use.

But VM stream is still much more stable than Sky.

I could be that the extra VM box(es) pushed you over some limit set your on Broadband hub for the number of connected devices. There shouldn't be any limit really.

Go digging on Broadband settings through the VM app or call their support team.