New HD box (non PVR)

[indie1982]

Originally Posted by kgollop

It costs £10 per month to replace the 2nd STB with a V+ when you're a VIP customer. The potential of no extra monthly fee would be the main benefit for me! A 2nd V+ would be great otherwise...

£10 a month, is that a special surcharge for VIP customers? I'm not VIP and have just replaced my extra V box with another V+ for £49 and nothing other than the £5 a month I was already paying for the extra box.

[Begize]

Originally Posted by TheDon

A pvr less HD box could ofc be VM offering remote PVR capabilities.

There really is little purpose in offering a STB without PVR capabilities these days as it's only marginally more expensive than a non-PVR box, so maybe they have other things in mind.

Now that's interesting.

I would love to be able to watch cable upstairs as I used to have my old Samsung box setup with the RF out split to feed second TV in the bedroom.

Now I'm on V+ and use HDMI, I've got a choice of wireless scart senders from the second port (with no menus) or invest in some HDMI splitting / sending technology which ideally means running 2 extra CAT 5 cables to get the best picture.

If Virgin could use this new box as a kind of extender, so I could use V+ functionality upstairs, that would be good. I'm fairly sure that in the States, the SA box V+ is based on offers this to remote "dumb" boxes in the same house.

[Ignitionnet]

The box is also IPTV ready with a software upgrade and supports DOCSIS 2 upstreams, both of which are very desirable to VM.

[pedg]

Originally Posted by Begize

If Virgin could use this new box as a kind of extender, so I could use V+ functionality upstairs, that would be good. I'm fairly sure that in the States, the SA box V+ is based on offers this to remote "dumb" boxes in the same house.

Ditto on that. Currently have two V+ boxes and it would be a lot more convenient if could have one V+ box that does all the recording and an extra box that could access those recordings.

[TheDon]

Originally Posted by pedg

Ditto on that. Currently have two V+ boxes and it would be a lot more convenient if could have one V+ box that does all the recording and an extra box that could access those recordings.

Or two boxes that can both do recordings and access each others recordings

The capabilities of the cable platform for things like this are almost endless, I'm just hoping that with the next gen platform VM have finally seen what they have, and have the capability to get things like this rolled out.

If VM used the cable platform to it's fullest then Sky would not get a look in, especially of HD variants and red button services are added to the rate card.

[Tarrasque]

pictures

[BenMcr]

OMG it's tiny! Though where is the HDMI socket on the back?

[TheDon]

Originally Posted by BenMcr

OMG it's tiny! Though where is the HDMI socket on the back?

You see the bit that says HDMI with the HDMI cable plugged in underneath it? That'd be the HDMI socket

[BenMcr]

Oops thought that was the power lead but I can see there are two leads there now

[TheDon]

Interestingly, the power lead looks like it's for an external power brick, the text on the socket says 5v DC 15W, which definitely supports that.

[zantarous]

Any idea if it does MPEG4, lets hope VM are thinking long term n this?

[Tarrasque]

sorry i should have taken the pictures before i connected it

it does have a small external PSU

nice to see the photos already cross posted to loads of other boards

[TheDon]

Are there any other model numbers on the box? As I'm really struggling to find anything in Cisco's product range that this could be based on.

[Tarrasque]

the instruction leaflet (which says 'draft' on it) calls it a 4585DVB and that's what's marked on the box itself and all the packaging.

[BenMcr]

Maybe it isn't based on anything that already exists? The Samsung V+ doesn't seem to be based on anything else either so they could both be custom boxes?