Virgin Media Community

[Claire1871]

Sky sports red button is not loading football matches again! The message says ‘ channel unavailable,

[nodrogd]

Make sure you are on channel 503 or 513. If these don’t work when pressing red try rebooting.

[Snazz16]

Sky red button is not working.  Why?

[RT_1]

"Channel Unavailable. Unable to tune to the channel. Please try again later."

So annoying when you pay the money for a service and it doesn't work when you need it.
Particularly annoying when your team are winning!
Thank goodness for local radio ... or not.

[nodrogd · Accepted solution]

https://community.virginmedia.com/t5/Virgin-Media-TiVo-service/Known-issue-Sky-Sports-Red-Button-Foo... 

[Timbo78]

The red button still doesn't work, full stop. It's not a commentary issue. it simply fails to show anything on Sky Sports. Is there any chance this will get fixed? It has been faulty since well before this thread was started, I first noticed it was failing to load back in early September!

[Kain_W]

Hi there Timbo78,

Thanks for your post and welcome back to the community.

Is this happening on all games you are trying to watch?

Also has the service never worked?

Let us know,

[Timbo78]

Sorry I didn't see this reply.

It used to work, it stopped working in the summer. I first noticed it when Sky shunted the end of a cricket match onto the red button and that failed to load. Since then I've tried numerous times to get it to load up and all I get is the "Channel Unavailable. Unable to tune to the channel. Please try again later." screen. I haven't tried it since making my post a few weeks ago so it's possible it has been fixed since, but I won't find out until the weekend, when Sky has some football only on the red button. The BT Sport red button works fine, the Sky one just stopped.

I should also add that if there's no event on the red button, the screen telling you there are no events on the service works perfectly. It's only when it has to load the actual channel content that it falls over. Or did for weeks up to the point where I made the previous post. It was not just the football though, the cricket wouldn't work either. I'll post again at the weekend, if it still fails to work.

[nodrogd]

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@Timbo78 wrote:

Sorry I didn't see this reply.

It used to work, it stopped working in the summer. I first noticed it when Sky shunted the end of a cricket match onto the red button and that failed to load. Since then I've tried numerous times to get it to load up and all I get is the "Channel Unavailable. Unable to tune to the channel. Please try again later." screen. I haven't tried it since making my post a few weeks ago so it's possible it has been fixed since, but I won't find out until the weekend, when Sky has some football only on the red button. The BT Sport red button works fine, the Sky one just stopped.

I should also add that if there's no event on the red button, the screen telling you there are no events on the service works perfectly. It's only when it has to load the actual channel content that it falls over. Or did for weeks up to the point where I made the previous post. It was not just the football though, the cricket wouldn't work either. I'll post again at the weekend, if it still fails to work.

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This has caused a lot of frustration. Several months ago Sky replaced their existing fully functional background app that runs behind the red button with an “improved” version that either partially worked or didn’t work at all.🙄

Both apps for Horizon & TiVO platforms are having to be recoded by Sky, then released to the boxes. The only way it can be fully tested is when additional streams are present & the app is activated.

[Chris_W1]

Hi Timbo78, thanks for the message and welcome back to the forums. 

I am sorry to hear that you have been having issues with the red button and that it is not functioning as usual. 

Can you let us know if you are still experiencing the issue on the next match?

Kind regards, Chris.