Customers affected by the failure were unable to watch the original screening of the fight and were initially told to await news on possible refunds and “watch the repeat in the mean time.”
In a later post on the company’s support forums, Stephen Featham, Director of Technical Operations at the cable company said affected customers would receive refunds “automatically” and promised an investigation “is underway to find out what went wrong and make sure it doesn’t happen again.”
Some users were able to get around the TiVo’s failure by watching the fight on their previous generation V+ HD boxes.
As with other basic features including red button and programme reminders, the Virgin Media TiVo does not currently support ordering PPV events directly from the box. Instead customers must order from a web page.
Additional features and fixes for “known issues” including HDMI handshake failures are promised in a future software update.
The cableco is currently refusing to advise customers exactly when this will be deployed. Recent staff comments refer only to a deployment date of “before the end of the year”
The PPV incident follows a previous TiVo failure which prevented series links working.
The company recently promised to beef up quality checks on the TiVo’s EPG after complaints that errors were undermining series links and recordings.