General : Virgin TV (2026)

[RichardCoulter]

Originally Posted by Paul

The most likely item to fail in them is the disk, which is not hard to replace.

Indeed, but when a Virgin HDD dies they replace it with a whole new box. Maybe it's to save time. I wonder if they are discarded now or repaired? If the latter then, in theory, it should be a very long time until Virgin or Sky completely run out.

If streaming could be recorded that would appease a lot of people reluctant to changing, but only BT/EE boxes allow this. I suspect it's because they want people to have to use VOD for the ad revenue.

[gunner45]

Originally Posted by RichardCoulter

Indeed, but when a Virgin HDD dies they replace it with a whole new box. Maybe it's to save time. I wonder if they are discarded now or repaired? If the latter then, in theory, it should be a very long time until Virgin or Sky completely run out.

The usual practice is for boxes returned by customers to go to central warehousing hubs managed by logistics partners where any refurbishment is done at the box level, e.g. software corruption is corrected with a firmware reflash, but not at the component level like hard drives as repair costs will far exceed the purchase cost of the unit. Rejected boxes are palletised in bulk and sent to approved authorised treatment facilities (AATFs) for recycling under strict UK waste regulations.