Virgin Media’s long-standing relationship with TiVo appears to be in line for a bit of a change.

Speaking at this week’s Cable Congress event in Dublin, Tom Mockridge, Virgin Media’s CEO, reportedly dropped a hint that the operator has plans to transition over to the “Horizon” user interface used by parent company, Liberty Global, but stressed that TiVo’s technology will remain in the picture.

“It’s no secret that Liberty Global has its own Horizon UI at the moment and you can expect that we will transition to that on the V6 box and we’ll do that in co-operation with TiVo,” he said, according to Broadband TV News. “They are very understanding of our desire to do that and will help us do that.”

A Virgin Media official said the company had nothing to add beyond Mockridge’s comments about using the Horizon UI. “There’s no changes to announce at this time and all UK set-top boxes continue to use the TiVo platform today,” the official said in an email.

TiVo has also been asked for comment. Last fall, TiVo announced it had renewed and extended its products agreement with Liberty Global, which included a multi-year extension for the MSO’s use of TiVo’s intellectual property and patent portfolio that covers all Liberty global subsidiaries, including Virgin Media, which has been using TiVo’s software and interface for its recently launched V6 box.

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Virgin Media reported last month that more than 1 million subs, or 27% of its U.K. video base, have taken the Arris-made V6 box (pictured) since its launch in December 2016, and that V6 subs have “meaningfully higher” Net Promoter Scores.

Questions about the longer-term relationship between Virgin Media and TiVo also comes up as TiVo looks to explore alternatives that could lead to M&A or taking the company private.

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Eyeing a future that delivers widespread gigabit speeds, Liberty Global plans to kick off field trials of DOCSIS 3.1 in “late 2017,” the cable giant noted in its Q4 results.

The company is also looking to expand the deployment of its cloud-powered, 4K-capable video platform, and a new WiFi Connect Box.

Those plans come into focus a few months after Virgin Media, the U.K.-based MSO owned by Liberty Global, introduced a TiVo-powered set-top called the V6 that supports 4K and High Dynamic Range video, and a bigger shift toward a new, cloud-based  “EOS” platform that’s poised to become Liberty Global’s video workhorse.

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Liberty Global said it added 946,000 revenue-generating units in Europe last year, up 24%. The operator ended the year with more than 1.4 million new “gigabit-ready homes,” including nearly 500,000 at Virgin Media.

In Q4, Liberty Global also completed the rollout of its Horizon TV platform across its European operations, following launches in Australia and “Horizon-Lite” in Romania.

Liberty Global will use its updated video platforms to spur growth in that category. The MSO lost 24,400 video subs in Europe during Q4 2016, narrowed from a loss of 59,100 in the year-ago period, and shed 276,900 video subs for all of 2016, versus a loss of 400,300 in 2015.

The MSO also gained 230,600 data subs in Europe, alongside the addition of 117,500 voice subs in the period.

The company’s LiLAC Group, which contains its Latin American and Caribbean operations, shed 6,200 video subs in Q4, added 14,500 data customers, and lost 8,500 video subs.

Extending a bridge to the world of social media, Liberty Global has struck a partnership that will enable it to integrate elements from Twitter with the MSO's next-gen Horizon TV service.

That integration, the MSO said, aims to improve content discovery and “deliver customers a deeper, richer and more immersive viewing experience.” The partnership includes the launch of a new TV app for Horizon customers, Watch with Twitter, and a new feature for the Horizon Go mobile app that lets customers tweet TV recommendations.

Liberty Global said Horizon TV customers in some markets can now choose to follow live Tweets relevant to the programs they are watching overlaid onto the TV screen. The new Watch with Twitter app is launching this week on Horizon boxes in Germany for Unitymedia customers, and will become available in Ireland for Virgin Media subs (Virgin’s U.K. systems currently use a TiVo-powred platform, not Horizon TV), and in the Netherlands for Ziggo customers during the next two months.

Liberty Global added a record 1.5 milion Horizon TV subs in 2015, and has that platform deployed to about 40% of its digital TV base.

The Liberty Global integration is not the first time Twitter has connected with a major MVPD. Comcast, for example, uses Twitter data for a “Trending” guide that’s available on its X1 platform.

“Through this partnership, Horizon customers can not only find out which shows are trending on Twitter but also follow on-screen live Tweets as they watch their favourite TV programs, delivering an even better viewing experience,” said Liberty Global chief product officer Doron Hacmon, in a statement. “We’re constantly looking at new ways of making Horizon even better and more relevant for customers and look forward to further developing our partnership with Twitter to deliver new cutting-edge social TV features on the platform.”

“TV fans, influencers and the stars themselves are on Twitter talking about live TV shows as they unfold,” added Jana Messerschmidt, VP, global business development and platform, at Twitter. “Through our partnership with Liberty Global we are bringing the most relevant conversations into their TV service and surfacing what programs are trending, helping guide viewers to the shows that are most discussed at that moment.”

Liberty Global CEO Mike Fries used the company’s  third quarter earnings call to take the wraps off “Liberty 3.0,” a new initiative that aims to make the company more efficient and “super charge” its growth rate.

“This is a massive transformation program designed to streamline our operating model, accelerate our growth and drive even greater efficiency through the business,” Fries said. “It's ambitious, it's exciting, and it's 100% accretive to what's already a very strong growth business.”

But Fries emphasized that the program “is not just a cost-cutting exercise,” as it will tackle everything from revenue growth, customer engagement and churn.

Fries sees growth coming from a greater focus on mobile, building broadband market share and pursuing newbuild opportunities.

“At the same time, we are targeting a total cost efficiency program of about €1 billion from across the organization over the next few years, including obvious areas like procurement, supply chain and IT,” he said.

Fries also spent some time addressing the cord-cutting trend, which appears to be growing at a slower rate as MSOs show improved video subscriber performance, meaning that they are losing video subs at a reduced rate.

“In our world, connectivity to customer households is a golden ticket,” Fries said, but noted that Liberty Global’s next-gen TV platforms are now offered in eight countries across 42 million homes passed, which is more than 80% of its total footprint.

Fries also agreed with what Netflix CEO Reed Hastings said at this week’s New York Times DealBook conference-- that Netflix has “always been most scared of TV Everywhere as the fundamental threat,” if cable can get its act together on it.

“While Halloween was a week ago and I think Reed's got a good reason to be scared in our markets,” Fries said, pointing out that 1.8 million Liberty Global subs use its TVE services today and the Horizon Go app has been downloaded 1 million times since a rebranding in April. “I think Reed was right, so stay tuned.”

Fries is also confident that current DOCSIS technology and the new DOCSIS 3.1 platform will keep it well postioned against the broadband competition, even as some telcos, including BT, pursue G.fast, an emerging standard that will bring gigabit capacitlies to DSL.

He said there’s little to no fiber-to-the-home completion in most of Liberty Global’s consumer markets and that he doesn’t expect telcos to build out a bunch of it.

As for G.fast, Fries believes it will “take a large amount of money and capacity and time to develop.”

But neither G.fast or FTTP puts Liberty Global at a “disadvantage” because it’s got an economically attractive path to reach multi-gigabit capabilities

“A year ago, I would have said 80 to 100-meg…is our sweet spot. Today, it's 150 to 200-meg,” he said. “The sweet spot is growing every year and that's really a good problem to have.” 

Liberty Global used the IBC confab to show off Horizon Lite, a version of its next-gen video platform that’s made to run on older set-top boxes that don’t support IP connections.

According to Broadband TV News, Horizon Lite will be introduced in some of Liberty Global’s central and eastern Europe systems.  The approach should allow Liberty Global to rapidly expand the reach of its Horizon platform on older boxes even as it continues to deploy new, IP-capable gateways.

The image of the Horizon Lite demo shown above was supplied to Multichannel News by a person in attendance at IBC in Amsterdam.

On its Q2 call, Liberty Global said it added 62,000 new Horizon TV subs in the period, and that it had added almost 600,000 new subs to the platform over the prior 12 month period. It ended the quarter with nearly 4 million “next-gen TV setups,” a figure that factors in Liberty Global’s deployment of TiVo-powered devices.

The report also speculated that Horizon Lite will rely on cloud TV technology from ActiveVideo that can support advanced services and interfaces buy delivering them to boxes in an MPEG stream.  ActiveVideo declined to comment. Liberty Global has been asked to comment on the technical underpinnings of Horizon Lite and the MSO’s rollout plan.

But ActiveVideo and Liberty Global have some business history. UPC Hungary, a unit of Liberty Global, is using ActiveVideo to deliver YouTube to older set-top boxes. Liberty Puerto Rico is also using the vendor's tech for a Social Content Navigator that presents a slate of live TV channels based on their popularity using near real-time viewership data.

Support for Horizon Lite would represent a big win for ActiveVideo, which was acquired in May for $135 million through a joint venture of Arris and Charter Communications. Arris owns 65% of the J.V., though ActiveVideo is operating independently of the companies.  Charter is also relying on ActiveVideo for a new cloud-based Spectrum Guide that can run on the MSO’s entire set-top box footprint.

According to Broadband TV News, Liberty Global also showed off a new “Connect Box” that will be deployed by end of year by Ziggo, Telenet and Virgin Media.  More technical details on the device/gateway, which apparently includes a high-speed modem and integrated WiFi, will reportedly be announced in the next few weeks.  It’s not yet known if the new device will be made to support DOCSIS 3.1, the emerging multi-gigabit platform for HFC networks.

In August, Liberty Global said it was testing D3.1 in the lab, and was preparing for live trials in a subset of its markets in early 2016.

TransGaming said it has struck an expanded its relationship with Liberty Global that enables it to bring its GameTree TV offering to boxes that power Horizon, the MSO’s IP-capable, next-gen video platform.

With the deal, GameTree TV is now offered by Liberty Global in The Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland, Ireland, Poland and Hungary. Earlier this month, Liberty Global announced that Horizon had surpassed the 1 million subscriber mark.

"The addition of Liberty Global is a pivotal next step towards expanding GameTree TV's services to a larger international audience," said Dennis Ensing, COO & Interim CEO at TransGaming.

ActiveVideo Networks, one of Liberty Global’s technology partners, announced a deal late last year that will enable ActiveVideo to offer titles from TransGaming via its cloud-based platform to a wide range of set-tops, including those that are not IP-enabled. 

TransGaming also has partnerships with Dish Network and DirecTV, FREE, Air Tel and Reliance.

Liberty Global used its fourth quarter earnings call on Friday (Feb. 13) to provide an overview of its strategic priorities, including some additional detail on its rollout of WiFi, Horizon (its next-gen TV platform), and its anticipated deployment of DOCSIS 3.1.

On the WiFi side, Liberty Global, which already offers mobile service via MVNO deals, has deployed about 5 million WiFi hotspots so far, and expects to double that to 10 million by the end of 2015, company CEO Mike Fries noted during the call.

In addition to providing more wireless broadband access to Liberty Global customers, that coming expansion will  also benefit Comcast subs in the wake of a a WiFi roaming/peering deal announced by the cable ops last fall.

Fries also said Horizon, the MSO’s next-gen, IP-capable video platform, has surpassed the 1 million subscriber mark, adding that the Horizon Go App is currently offered in eight countries. That work complements Virgin Media’s use of a TiVo-powered platform in the U.K.

Via Horizon and TiVo, one in four of Liberty Global’s digital TV subs now have access to an “advanced TV platform, and that number is ramping up fast,” Fries said, adding that the average Horizon sub generates 20% more ARPU.

On the broadband front, Fries also reiterated that Liberty Global will be trialing DOCSIS 3.1, putting into play a new CableLabs-specified IP platform that is targeting multi-gigabit speeds – up to 10 Gbps down and at least 1 Gbps in the upstream.

Fries also downplayed BT’s work in the U.K. around G.fast, an emerging technology that brings 1-Gig capabilities to DSL networks with short loop lengths. “We don’t think there is any G.fast or any other copper-based technology that is going to put us at a material disadvantage on broadband speeds at all,” he said. 

That D3.1 rollout, Fries added, will be “relatively inexpensive [and a] largely variable cost exercise as it was with [DOCSIS] 2.0 to [DOCSIS] 3.0.”

In Europe, Liberty Global’s average broadband customer is getting 70 Mbps (down) and consuming 70 gigabytes per month, figures that are growing 40% to 50% per year, Fries said, noting that all of the MSO’s systems offer 150 Mbps to 250 Mbps products now, and that the operator has begun to sell 500-meg products in three countries.

At the end of 2014, Liberty Global had 24.5 million unique customers – 21.8 million video subs, 14 million broadband subs, and 12.1 million phone subs.

During the fourth quarter, Liberty Global lost 50,000 video subs, added a record 270,000 broadband customers ,and tacked on 192,000 phone customers.

Liberty Global posted a fourth quarter loss of $121 million (31 cents per share)  on revenues of $4.62 billion, up 72% versus the year-ago quarter, driven primarily by the inclusion of Virgin Media, which was acquired by Liberty Global last June.