General : Coming Soon to Virgin TV (2018)

[OLD BOY]

Originally Posted by denphone

Add to that that it was exclusive to just one platform and Bobs your uncle.

Yes, a Sky exclusive just to air repeats was never going to make much of an impact.

[SonicMaster]

Originally Posted by OLD BOY

I can sympathise with that view - it would indeed be interesting, and if there was an annoying bug, you would at least see it on the list and know that it had been picked up.
However, the downside for Virgin Media would be that the usual suspects would be claiming compensation for problems they may otherwise not have noticed, when a fix is delayed, people would be ringing up to vent their spleens and complain about the delay to the original timetable, etc. I think VM believe that it is better not to say anything and hope that most of these problems won't even be noticed.

---------- Post added at 14:37 ---------- Previous post was at 13:22 ----------

ITV Encore cease broadcasting on 1 May. So that's one channel less on Sky that we don't have.

Its programming will then be available via On Demand and I understand that this will also be available to VM viewers. Whether this will be a separate app or whether the additional programming will be added to 'ITV Collections' on demand, I am not sure.

For those who have been following The Americans on ITV Encore, a new series of this starts on ITV 4 on Wednesday 4 April at 10pm.

The most likely outcome is that Virgin Media will simply rename the 'ITV Collections' folder to 'ITV Encore' and pop any new content in, job done!

[RichardCoulter]

My free period of Sky Cinema ended, so I cancelled. I was offered six months at half price, which I turned down.

Just received a call to give me all the movie channels for something daft like £1.49 A month. They said it was because I was a good customer who had again been let down by frontline staff (who will be appropriately dealt with).

IMO there's not much to watch on there, but accepted their offer as even if I only watch one film a month it's worth it.

Seems that VM are desperate to get their movie subscriber stats up, i'm wondering if the deal with Sky to promote their premium channels includes a threshold that they are desperate to achieve

[Mad Max]

Originally Posted by RichardCoulter

My free period of Sky Cinema ended, so I cancelled. I was offered six months at half price, which I turned down.

Just received a call to give me all the movie channels for something daft like £1.49 A month. They said it was because I was a good customer who had again been let down by frontline staff (who will be appropriately dealt with).

IMO there's not much to watch on there, but accepted their offer as even if I only watch one film a month it's worth it.

Seems that VM are desperate to get their movie subscriber stats up, i'm wondering if the deal with Sky to promote their premium channels includes a threshold that they are desperate to achieve

Totally agree with that, the majority of movies are absolute dross!

[RichardCoulter]

Aye, there's black and white movies (including a silent one), stuff with subtitles that doesn't interest me and tons of dross similar to the afternoon films on Channel 5. Some of the films were being shown when I last had the movie channels in the analogue days!

Upon doing searches, some films are also being shown on basic pay channels like SYFY and even channels available for free like Sony Movies.

When I had it for free for a few months I made a point of checking out every movie shown.

There were two that I really enjoyed and about three that were ok. Anyone paying £21 a month for this would be foolish and would be better buying the odd PVP film.

In all seriousness, back in the nineties when I had satellite, there were only two movie channels and there was a lot more on there to watch.

Didn't Sky lose the rights to a major movie studio or did I dream that?

[ozsat]

There isn't really any different now as there was 20 years ago.

Then it took two clicks to find there were usually no good new films to watch at that moment - today it takes 30+ clicks for the same answer.

[muppetman11]

I'd sooner use PPV there are tons of deals out there if you search all services.

I regularly get deals from the likes of iTunes , Google Play Movies , Sky Store , Prime video etc things such as 99p rentals or movies that are cheaper to purchase than rent.

I would never sub to Sky Cinema now , it's simply not worth it for us.

[OLD BOY]

Originally Posted by Mad Max

Totally agree with that, the majority of movies are absolute dross!

If you casually glance through the schedules, I agree there doesn't seem to be much on most of the time. But if you record or bookmark everything each week that you want to see, together with the drama series that appeal, you end up with quite a list.

For this reason, I am sticking with Sky Cinema for the time being (albeit through Now TV to save costs and to get everything on demand in HD) but I would imagine that Sky will start to lose rights to the more up to date films to Netflix, Amazon and the like as existing contracts with film studios come to an end soon. At that point, my Sky Cinema subscription will be terminated.

---------- Post added at 10:29 ---------- Previous post was at 10:26 ----------

Originally Posted by muppetman11

I'd sooner use PPV there are tons of deals out there if you search all services.

I regularly get deals from the likes of iTunes , Google Play Movies , Sky Store , Prime video etc things such as 99p rentals or movies that are cheaper to purchase than rent.

I would never sub to Sky Cinema now , it's simply not worth it for us.

I think you make a good point. Unfortunately, my wife tends to question the cost of PPV material, even when you can demonstrate that it costs less than a subscription when you only watch films occasionally!

[nicknewark]

I was given a free months Sky Cinema Pass via Now TV last month, I didn't actually get round to watching one single movie. At one time I would have paid extra for the movies via Virgin. Not anymore.

---------- Post added at 10:41 ---------- Previous post was at 10:38 ----------

I agree with an earlier post, the movies channels were much better back in the day. Or was that just because for the first time we had a choice of two movies channels! and it was a huge step forward back in the early 90's .

[muppetman11]

OB looking at the interested parties after purchasing Sky I can't see them losing movies personally.

[denphone]

Originally Posted by muppetman11

OB looking at the interested parties after purchasing Sky I can't see them losing movies personally.

Not a chance IMO.

[OLD BOY]

4Music is becoming a general entertainment channel from May. Not sure why they are not also changing the name.

MTV made a similar move a few years ago, which was a very bad move in my book.

https://www.a516digital.com/2018/03/...mp-4music.html

[RichardCoulter]

Found a report from the Competition Commission that said that as at 2012 Sky had lost 50% of their film rights due to Netflix etc.

As a result, viewers had been falling from the previous 20 years and (as at 2012) only accounted for 1% of viewing hours.

Spoke to VM to explain this and asked for a credit instead of the movies offer, been given a £50 credit if I agreed to keep the movie channels!

They really appear desperate to avoid movie churn, I'd advise anyone paying for movies to ring up and cancel as they are likely to be given a very good deal to remain.

Ironically, I've also been given a free 6 months Sky Movie Now TV pass after buying a new Samsung tablet, which I'll give to a family member.

[jcm193]

Spoke to virgin retentions earlier I asked them if they had any offers to add movies and sports to our existing package of one v6 with TV XL, 350 broadband and free weekend calls anyway they quoted me £104 a month we currently pay £60 no way is sky sports and movies worth an extra £41 a month.

[RichardCoulter]

A quick look on the VM website says that the cheapest Sky Sports package is £38.75 a month, so it looks like they were offering you movies for £2.25 A month.

Movies are listed as being £21 A month (think it's £20 on Sky), but their is a standard offer of £10.50 for six months (£9.99 on Sky).

On the face of it it was a good offer, but I still don't think their offer was worth it overall. Wonder if you could ask for movies only for £2.25 or even less?

The official policy is that retentions cannot offer movies for less than £7 A month, but this seems to have been abandoned