Virgin Media TV customers can now access the BBC Red Button and BBC national services in high definition.
With just days of the 2022 Winter Olympics to go, cable TV users can now access the last events of Beijing 2022 in HD on BBC Red Button. This morning, BBC Red Button HD replaced the existing SD service on channel 991.
At the same time, national versions of BBC One HD and BBC Two HD can now be accessed by Virgin Media customers, across the UK. They can be found on channels 961-965, replacing the SD feeds. This means, for example, a viewer in London can now access BBC One Scotland in HD.
The addition of BBC Red Button HD is somewhat of a coup for Virgin Media. Satellite and terrestrial viewers only have the standard definition version of the channel. The red button feed can however be accessed in HD quality through the BBC iPlayer.
It’s the latest upgrade to BBC services on Virgin Media’s TV network. Last month, the company added a fully regionalised version of BBC One HD in England.
Reconfiguration issues for viewers
Some of the reconfigurations in the background have not gone unnoticed by viewers. In January, changes to the way BBC One is broadcast resulted in Virgin 360 users temporarily losing access to the services. This occurred when the old Service IDs (SID) were deactivated. Last week, Virgin 360 users in England outside of London reported briefly losing access to their regional BBC One HD. This also coincided with a change in service ID.
Series links set up on the old BBC One SD regional network, BBC Four and now the national versions of BBC One and BBC Two have also needed resetting on 360 boxes. Virgin V6 boxes have broadly automatically updated, without any user intervention.