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Customers of broadband ISP Virgin Media (O2) may like to know that the provider recently began the slow process of phasing-out their old TV 360 Mini boxes, which are usually deployed to support for multi-room systems. But the company is now increasingly working to replace these with their modern ‘Stream’ set-top-boxes (STB) instead.
The change, which was spotted by Cord Busters, appears to have started around November 2024 and marks somewhat of a shift from how the ‘Stream’ boxes were initially only being targeted at new customers. Similarly, until recently, the TV 360 platform wasn’t fully compatible with Stream at all, but that’s no longer the case.
In short, customers with a TV 360 box have, in recent weeks and months, started receiving Stream boxes with new multi-room orders instead of the TV 360 Mini boxes. The exception is if you already have TV 360 Mini boxes in your setup and wish to add more, then you will still get a TV 360 Mini instead of Stream. But a spokesperson for Virgin Media did say that this too will switch to Stream boxes “in the near future.”
Naturally this also means that Virgin Media’s Stream boxes are now able to properly sync with the main TV 360 box for features like video recordings and watch lists etc. Virgin Media also argues that the move to adopt Stream allows for more boxes per household (up to 6 per account), can be delivered via self-installation (TV 360 Mini’s required an engineer visit) and do not require new cabling as they work over your existing broadband link.
But there is a rather unusual aspect to all this. Virgin Media has confirmed that multi-room is still not available with Flex, which is the service that runs over their Stream Box. This means if you’re on their newer Flex service, rather than TV 360, then you’re limited to just one Stream box. This creates an awkward situation where customers on the older TV 360 platform now have access to more Stream boxes than those on the actual Stream/Flex platform itself.