Forum Discussion

Kiki2's avatar
Kiki2
Joining in
3 years ago

Virgin TV 360 Mini Boxes

I am considering moving from BT Broadband with an old style Sky+ box to Virgin Broadband and Virgin TV 360 with the Sports package. Connectivity of the Broadband router and main TV 360 box is fine as in my lounge. My house was wired with coaxial cables running to all rooms when built which I use now to push TV signals and Sky. 

Can I use this existing coaxial cabling to push to Virgin TV 360 Mini boxes or is it 'special' Virgin cabling needed?

  • Hi Kiki2 

    VM use their own coaxial cabling, which is specially shielded to avoid signal issues.

    They will place the cabling where you require.

  • newapollo's avatar
    newapollo
    Very Insightful Person

    Hi Kiki2 

    VM use their own coaxial cabling, which is specially shielded to avoid signal issues.

    They will place the cabling where you require.

    • Kiki2's avatar
      Kiki2
      Joining in

      Thanks Dave for the quick reply which wasnt quite what I wanted to hear but hey ho

      Do you know what outputs the TV 360 box has. I think it has HDMI to connect to a TV but how many HDMIs does it have and are there any other ways of outputting the TV + sounds signal?

       

       

      • newapollo's avatar
        newapollo
        Very Insightful Person

        Hi again Kiki2 

        The main 360 has a 1TB hard disk drive - the mini's don't have hard disk drives.

        Both the main 360 and the mini 360's have one HDMI 2.0 output, an optical audio outlet, one Ethernet port, and one 3.5mm jack

        They also have one usb port (this works as a charging point on some boxes but not on others) and a non working scart out.

        EDIT - Both boxes are able to display 4K content.

  • Did you use your own coax? Like you when I refurbished my house back in 2006 I put coax and ethernet in and my control centre in the loft. When I switched to sky it was easy as just disconnected the connections from the ariel and joined to the RF cable to sky. Then when I left sky I got the engineer to check the spec of the cable, and it was fine, so using my own cable to power 1 360 box and 2 mini. I do have a direct connection from the cabinet to my loft unbroken using RG11 cable, its very thick (very rare to have this) so my inbound signal is very strong and had to experiment with forward path attenuators. My own RG6 cable has obviously got its own resistance built in, negating the need for any FPA. But all in all internet and TV solid.

    • nodrogd's avatar
      nodrogd
      Very Insightful Person

      mda99das wrote:

      Did you use your own coax? Like you when I refurbished my house back in 2006 I put coax and ethernet in and my control centre in the loft. When I switched to sky it was easy as just disconnected the connections from the ariel and joined to the RF cable to sky. Then when I left sky I got the engineer to check the spec of the cable, and it was fine, so using my own cable to power 1 360 box and 2 mini. I do have a direct connection from the cabinet to my loft unbroken using RG11 cable, its very thick (very rare to have this) so my inbound signal is very strong and had to experiment with forward path attenuators. My own RG6 cable has obviously got its own resistance built in, negating the need for any FPA. But all in all internet and TV solid.


      If the coax you have installed is designed for Sky or Freeview the answer is no, it is not suitable for Virgin. These cables are not screened against the frequencies that conflict with Virgin's services. If these conflicting signals track back to the amplifier in the cabinet, the whole street ends up with SNR noise issues. Most of Virgin's SNR issues are caused by DIY cabling, & you might not know if you are causing issues until Virgin spends hours tracing the interference to its source. My advice is don't chance it. It could end up being very expensive.