Quote:
Originally Posted by vincerooney
i may go to sleep for the rest of the year then. hiberation. wake me up in january when we may launch channels...
|
The important thing to concentrate on is content, not channels. Watching broadcast channels will almost certainly decline with time and people will become used to choosing programmes from lists or from searches.
I am fascinated by the number of complaints made that there is not enough choice on VM. We have all the major channels and practically all the content we can expect. We are into dramas and manage to watch two hours worth per night (4 at weekends) and yet we have so much to watch that we can scarcely keep our recordings in check even with a 1TB box.
To demonstrate, here is a list of the drama series on our recordings that we currently still have to view:
Odyssey; Partners in Crime; The Trials of Jimmy Rose; The Last Ship; The Transporter; Defiance; The Strain; Necessary Roughness; Black Sails; Zoo; Crossing Lines; Dark Matter; Madam Secretary; The Scandalous Lady W; Life in Squares; Humans; Strike Back – The Legacy; The Interceptor; Wayward Pines; The Outcast; Sons of Liberty; The Syndicate; Black Work; Reckless; Ascension; Home Fires; Resurrection; The Blacklist; Stalker; 12 Monkeys; Critical; The Enfield Haunting; Safe House; The Mentalist; Poldark; Vera; Ordinary Lies; Code of a Killer; Banished; Crisis; Annihilation; Major Crimes; Wolf Hall; The Kindness of Strangers; Collision; Suspects; XIII; Homeland; The Missing; Legends; Tyrant; Chasing Shadows; Almost Human; Betrayal.
I am part way through some of these, but many of those shows I haven’t even started yet. Some were recorded mid way through last year. So this shows that if you are reasonably diligent in recording the programmes you want to see, and couple this with all the films, etc on demand, it is difficult to understand how you could possibly get through everything, even if you watch TV all day long and evenings too!
Of course, I am fortunate in being able to afford to pay for the XL pack and Sky Movies, but you would have to pay whichever platform you were on.
But it’s even better than I have set out here! Netflix is also on the Tivo. My list of TV series to watch on there are:
Narcos; Better Call Saul; Sense 8; Orphan Black; Identity Thief; Marco Polo; Spooks; The Bridge; Heartland; Borgia; Abduction; The Fixer; Continuum; The 4400; The Purge; Orange is the New Black; House of Cards; Lilyhammer; Bloodline; Damages.
This is not an exhaustive list of what I want to see on Netflix, but it’s as far as I’ve got in compiling my Netflix list.
So the next question is, what is missing? Well, the original Sky Atlantic programming, of course, and it appears that Sky will hold out as long as possible to keep this channel exclusively on their own platform. Given this, the only option available to VM viewers is to access these programmes through Now TV. The Roku streaming stick is the option I have chosen to access exclusive Sky programming on Sky Atlantic and ITV Encore.
My concern is that the scourge of exclusivity may spread to yet more platforms, and of course BT’s decision to do just this with their new AMC channel is a worrying development. Fears will be allayed if VM does gain access to this channel within the next few months, but there is still the fear that the likes of Amazon will continue to make exclusive TV series. Although I am fortunate in being able to access all available content I could wish for via Virgin, Netflix, Amazon Prime and Now TV, I hope I have demonstrated that there is plenty of good programming available simply through Virgin.
However, to continually hanker after more channels for the sake of it, without regard to the content they offer, is pretty pointless. Spike and Tru TV offer nothing new and the cost of including these channels on the Virgin platform will only get passed off to us by way of increased costs. Better to hope they add Amazon Prime and Now TV to our Tivo apps and we would have access to pretty well all we could want.
Join CF
You are here: 
