Virgin Media to bring TiVo back to the UK

Before Sky+ established itself as the UK’s number one digital video recorder it had a serious rival in a product called TiVo. It had much of the functionality of the Sky box – large hard drive, option of pausing live recordings etc – and was already very popular in the US.

Unluckily for TiVo Sky’s product caught UK users’ imagination and TiVo only lasted a few years in the UK. Well it now seems that TiVo is on its way back to the UK courtesy of Virgin Media.

Next year will see a co-branded Virgin Media TiVo box in the UK with TiVo delivering the middleware and the user interface.

Not a great deal has been offered by Virgin as to how the arrangement will work, however company CEO said “Our fibre-optic network combined with TiVo’s capabilities will allow us to offer consumers the most significantly advanced and compelling TV service available in the UK.”

In the US TiVo boasts a few features that aren’t available in the UK on any DVR, such as the ability to search for shows by actors and the option of accessing music services like Rhapsody though a TV set. It’ll be interesting to see how many of them make it to the UK box.