Virgin 360 sucks

[ClarkKent77]

Virgin 360 is terrible. 

Picture quality isn't great. Even the UHD channel looks noticeably worse than it was before. 

When scrolling through the channels, I'm finding that some of the channels on the channel list (on the left-hand side) don't appear. As in, the channel is there (on the right-hand side) showing you what is on, but the name of the channel (on the left) isn't there. 

Also, when you go into categories, you can't choose "HD" like you could before. 

Fast-forwarding or rewinding is much more fiddly. The search option is worse. 

For me, this is a downgrade in every conceivable way. Is there any way to go back or get rid of 360? 

[japitts]

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@ClarkKent77 wrote:

Is there any way to go back or get rid of 360? 

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The short answer is no.

The longer answer is: New customers get TV360 as a matter of course. Existing customers can voluntarily convert from TiVo/V6 > TV360, but cannot revert. It's a one-way conversion.

[ClarkKent77]

About two weeks ago, I got a 65-inch Samsung QD OLED. UHD content looks great. 4K Blu-Rays looks really good. Netflix, Amazon Prime, Apple TV... all look good. 

However, "normal" TV (BBC One HD, STV HD etc) doesn't look as good as I was hoping. It's quite soft. Perfectly watchable, but when I watch a football match on BT's UHD Sports channel, then watch Match Of The Day on BBC One HD (or iPlayer) the quality difference is really noticeable. 

A Virgin engineer was round today. He put in new cables, gave us a new TV box and a new router. No chance. The HD channels are still... fine. 

So, I'm not sure if the TV doesn't have the best upscaling, or if the fact that it's a big screen makes HD content look worse, or if the "fault" lies with Virgin's output. I was looking forward to watching the World Cup on my new TV, but I'll be quite disappointed if every match has that soft, hazy look. Apparently ITV aren't doing any games in 4K, and the BBC haven't announced anything either. 

Does anyone else have a similar situation? 

[Natalie_L]

Hi ClarKent77, 

Thank you for reaching out to us here on the Community. 

I am sorry to hear you are unhappy with the picture quality when viewing a HD channel after UHD content. 

A TV that is 4K ready generally displays four times more pixels than a HD channel. With this being the case, there will be a noticeable difference when switching between the two. 

Can you please let us know if there is a very noticeable difference between SD and HD channels?

Thank you, 

[Rufus57]

Perhaps try the HDMI resolutions on your box settings? I have a Sony OLED and have my setting on automatic. I did try 4K but couldn't see a difference. On my set up HD channels look fine. Sharp not soft which I put down to my TV's upscaling abilities. Obviously the very best experience is a UHD film with Dolby Vision on Netflix, say, via my TV's native apps but normal SDR content via Virgin is still very good. Another thing you could try is watching BBC 1 HD, say, via your Samsung Plus TV tuner and see how it compares to the Virgin feed. If also soft, then you know the problem is your TV. You could also look at Rtings.com to check on the optimum settings for your TV model. 

[roy247]

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@ClarkKent77 wrote:

....

So, I'm not sure if the TV doesn't have the best upscaling, or if the fact that it's a big screen makes HD content look worse, or if the "fault" lies with Virgin's output. I was looking forward to watching the World Cup on my new TV, but I'll be quite disappointed if every match has that soft, hazy look. Apparently ITV aren't doing any games in 4K, and the BBC haven't announced anything either. 

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If you want to test if your TV upscales better than the 360 box set the resolution on the 360 to 1080, you will need to change it back to Automatic or 4K if you want to watch Sky UHD.