AfterDawn: News

Virgin's VBox brings TV through phone lines

Virgin Media has introduced a new small box that it hopes will bring the company to areas that standard cable TV could not reach. The VBox delivers TV channels and radio stations through a phone line. The box uses the digital terrestrial television (DTT) standard and uses a DSL connection to stream content to subscribers.

Virgin hopes that distributing the box will open the door for more services in future like broadband Internet access. As some areas do not have routed cables, it is very beneficial for some consumers. Existing subscribers of the Talk Anytime phone bundle will be able to get a VBox. A box can be purchased on its own without being a Talk Anytime subscriber for a one-time fee of £40.



It is capable of offering over 40 free-to-air TV channels and 25 digital radio stations, provides an on-screen TV guide, interactive content, customer support, plug 'n' play installation and consumes only 1/15th of the energy of a standard 60W light bulb.

Source:
DailyTech

Written by: James Delahunty @ 2 Apr 2007 18:40

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• 7 comments

• simpsim1

  Interesting. Cable telly stops 7 miles short of my house. My only concern is that it uses the DSL signal. I think my broadband would be up the spout then.

  2.4.2007 22:51 #1

• webe123

  And here I thought they made some kind of breakthrough with regular phone lines! LOL!
  
  DSL is broadband and it is not available in all areas. So their chances of selling a lot of this service is diminished by the fact that broadband is not everywhere...at least not yet.

  3.4.2007 06:48 #2

• simpsim1

  Not to mention that if you live so far away from the exchange, that 8mb bandwidth is gonna be knocked down to about 1mb or so. I know that because it's a problem I'm suffering right now. Try running a DTT signal on 1 mb and see how many times it freezes.

  3.4.2007 10:49 #3

• ZippyDSM

  the local phone/cable co op just upgraded to digital TV/DSL thru the phone line if I can get 100KBS I will be happy with it its supposed to be 256/65 but ti has to be better than huges net at 120/10 with a 400MB fap ><
  
  I'll take 200 down and 70 a month V 140 a month >>
  
  I am in the US :P

  3.4.2007 14:11 #4

• janrocks

  I suppose they need more funding for their illegal attempts to hack through my firewall last month.. they seem to have given it up for the time being..only stopped since I had a break from p2p transfers. And reported them to offcom with my firewall logs detailing the attacks.. Must have been costing them a fortune employing somebody to fail 3 or 4 times a day... mwahahahaha..
  
  They can stick their tv too. No sky channels.
  

  
  
  irc.OFTC.net #debian-women .. Stuff Vista.. Stuff Micro$oft!!
  The revolution has happened.. Now we just need to TELL people!

  3.4.2007 14:42 #5

• BUDDD

  I dont think the UK broadband network could cope with the bandwidth consumption . Its bad enough at the moment let alone when more and more subscribers take up the system.
  
  The other thing is the fact that just about all the ISP's who offer so called "Unlimited" broadband would be cutting everyone off because they've used more than the "Fair use policy allows"
  
  Unlimmited ... my arse..

  5.4.2007 08:35 #6

• drakshug

  My ISP do TV over the net via dsl. From what I've heard it can lag and you can forget surfing at the same time. I never bothered getting it as I've sat.
  http://www.gala.lt/kanalai/pagrindinis_rinkinys
  and if you are not almost right next to the exchange the quality is pretty poor. It isn't competing with cable very well.

  6.4.2007 00:53 #7