Virgin Media to launch new 4K-ready set-top box

Virgin Media is planning to launch a new set-top box and will introduce new features to its TV user experience in the second half of this year, the company has announced.

A Virgin Media spokesman told Digital TV Europe that the box would be 4K-ready and would be based on the TiVo platform. He said that further details would be revealed in due course.

Ahead of the box’s introduction, Virgin Media will upgrade its existing box’s user interface for all TV customers with a “slicker and more picture-based” user interface, the spokesman said.

Liberty Global-owned Virgin media posted its strongest quarterly performance since 2010 in the three months to March, including the addition of 80,000 TiVo advanced TV customers, taking its TiVo base to three million, or 80% of its overall base.

The company added 55,000 new customers in the quarter, including 48,000 organic additions, compared to 5,000 for the same period last year. Virgin Media added 110,000 revenue-generating units in the quarter.

The UK cable operator added over 500,000 homes and businesses to its network as part of its Project Lightning investment in network expansion during the quarter, with 700,000 Lightning premises added to its customers base. The company has said that least 25% of homes built under the project will be connected to fibre-to-the-premises networks.

Virgin Media turned in revenue growth of 4% to £1.178 billion in the quarter. However, operating income slipped from £97 million to £89 million.