Virgin Media’s latest quarterly figures show that take-up of TiVo continues to increase, with 56 per cent of Virgin’s TV customers now taking the premium smart TV service.
Almost 2.1 million (2,099,216) of Virgin’s 3,748,600 TV customers now take Virgin Media TiVo, which lets you record up to three programmes at once, access catch-up content from BBC iPlayer, ITV Player, 4oD and Demand 5 as well as Netflix and YouTube on-demand apps.
Despite the growth in TiVo Virgin’s overall TV figures are down slightly from three months ago, with 1,000 customers no longer taking Virgin TV in any shape or form.
Virgin Media is putting this down to the discontinuation of the free Virgin TV package, an entry-level service which gave you access to 40 channels.
This echoes Virgin Media’s growth in the broadband market, where more customers are taking higher-end 60Mbps services than before, but numbers of the legacy ADSL-based National Broadband service continue to fall.
Numbers of paying TV customers continue to increase; a trend we spotted a year ago when free TV customers began migrating to pay TV in the thousands. Households are also watching 20 minutes more TV per day than a year ago, something which chief executive officer Tom Mockridge puts down to Virgin Media TiVo’s improved search and recommendations.
Mockridge said: “The number of paying TV customers we serve continues to grow. TiVo offers an unmatched user experience with intelligent search and recommendations helping viewers discover great entertainment, resulting in our customers watching more TV than before. And, unlike all other connected TV set-top boxes, it does not slow down the household’s broadband when in use.”
TiVo boxes come with their own 10Mbps modem, which is uses to deliver catch-up content from services like BBC iPlayer, Netflix and YouTube. Because of this, on-demand viewing is less dependent on what everyone else is doing with the broadband around the home.
Virgin Media remains the UK’s second biggest pay TV provider and third biggest digital TV platform overall.
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