They are only available temporarily. In January they go back to being pay channels. Maybe think of it as a free sample, designed to lead to you wanting more.

Think of the XL pack as the HD channels and BT Sport pack.

My apologies. I missed that part. Thanks.

It was a totally weird and irrelevant thing to say.

It just doesn't really make any sense.

I wasn't really in the right frame of mind when I posted it....

No new tests, but more moving to 256 QAM.

Don't think we'll see anything testing now until next year.

I've seen information that this is precisely what the XL pack will eventually be marketed as.

Consideration is also being given to allowing non XL customers the choice of receiving the HD variants (where they exist) of the channels within their package.

The current cost being mooted is £5 per month.

That'd probably be me with a downgrade then if this comes to pass.

What's the significance in that?

But don't VM currently advertise both HD and bt as being 'free' with xl pack? If they remarked as xl being the HD/sport channel then they will need to add a lot of HD to justify that eg all sports channels,all movie channels and other sky channels..

In a nutshell, it means that more space is created. This means better quality of existing channels or extra space to launch additional services.

Media Boy has heard a rumour that History HD, Sky Sports News HD and Sky News HD will be launching early in the new year.

Why would they need to do that? There is relatively few non-premium channels that Virgin don't have in HD anymore. It wouldn't be a "Sport Channel" pack it would be the "BT Sports" pack so they won't be throwing in all the sports and movies.

Basically, one frequency can hold so much bandwidth. 38 meg give or take at 64qam plays 52 meg at 256qam.

So instead of a frequency having 10 SD channels it can have 13, or 2 HD channels it could hold 3.

Asian Channel Xclusive

I have been told that History HD, Sky Sports News HD and Sky News HD may all launch in 'Early 2014'.

If you was reading the same forum i was also it's been mentioned Lovefilm may join vms od lineup early 2014 too.

Not really no XL TV on it's own is £31p/m which is the same as skys entertainment+ package. In a way it balances itself out Sky have Sky Atlantic in their ent+ pack (i know it's in all packs) and vm don't have Sky Atlantic instead they have BT Sport included in the XLTV pack.
It'll be interesting to see what happens.

Press red added to channel 5 and 5hd

Great news but as post 1193 mentioned the very same rumour some three days earlier, xclusive is a bit optimistic

I think Asian Channel was joking?

Asian Channel always posts the words Xclusive, however never responds when people point out it's not, nor responds when he is wrong to apologise. Still waiting on CNN US HD...

We are still waiting on many of Meeja Boy's "exclusives" as well.

I'm not sure the magic of pulling channel names and random dates out the air gives anyone a right to the word "exclusive" other than in a tabloid newspaper sense.

Media Boy, Asian Channels - not worth the effort listening to. I would rather hear stuff and announcements out of Virgin's horses mouth.

But the only things I have seen him exclusively reveal was News 18, which he said was not confirmed, so if you can find other exclusives then please do share...


Yeah but that will never happen. Virgin never pre announce channel launches and sometimes don't even mention them till a month after they launch...