Dancing star gets her skates on for 2 millionth TiVo customer

• Jennifer Metcalfe stuns Manchester family with surprise visit

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A Manchester family were thrilled by their favourite television celebrity, Jennifer Metcalfe, in a surprise visit to their home arranged by Virgin Media. The Dancing on Ice star arrived to install Chris and Leigh Lynch’s new TV service as they were the company’s two millionth customer for Virgin Media TiVo.

Mother of two Leigh, and six year old daughter Sophie did a double-take when they opened their front door to find the glamorous star, who also plays Mercedes McQueen in their favourite soap,Hollyoaks, waiting for them with a one-off, specially created ‘iced’ TiVo set-top box.

Friends and neighbours gathered to celebrate with the family and also marvelled at the talents of skaters from Silver Blades Ice Rinks, Altrincham, who joined in with the surprise and entertained the entire street wearing the latest off-ice skates.

Leigh Lynch said: “I was having a quiet morning with Chris and our two girls, Sophie and Arielle, when there was a knock at the door. I couldn’t believe it when I saw Jennifer on our doorstep! We loveHollyoaks and were rooting for her in Dancing on Ice. We are huge fans of the show and always watch it together as a family, so to have our favourite contestant surprise us was incredible. It really has been an amazing day!

“As a family we watch lots of different programmes; the girls like cartoons and we enjoy everything from dramas to reality TV. We were struggling to watch everyone’s favourite shows so we got TiVo so we can record everything and watch channels on our tablet even when the girls are hogging the TV. But never did we think it would be Jennifer Metcalfe installing it for us!”

Jennifer Metcalfe, said: “I really enjoyed meeting the Lynch family, their faces when they opened the door was priceless! Their little girl was especially excited as she has just started ballet so loves watching ice skating. It was a great start to the weekend.”

Scott Kewley, director of digital entertainment at Virgin Media, said: “Reaching two million TiVo customers is a huge milestone for Virgin Media so we were so happy to celebrate the occasion with the Lynch family. TiVo brings your favourite TV right to you, so we thought we’d go even further for Chris and Leigh by surprising them with a visit from their favourite television celebrity. It was great seeing their reactions and we hope they had as much fun as we did planning the surprise. Now they’ve got Virgin Media TiVo, they need never miss anything Jennifer appears in ever again!”

Virgin Media TiVo is the UK’s fastest growing pay TV service, offering unrivalled features such as the ability to record three shows at the same time while watching something else already recorded and an intelligent search and recommendation feature as well as being able to pause and rewind live television. Virgin Media TiVo brings together hundreds of TV channels with thousands of hours of on demand entertainment ready to start at the press of a button, and the best of the web, seamlessly incorporating YouTube and Netflix.

Through a dedicated broadband connection built into each Virgin Media TiVo set-top box, viewers can experience all of this without impacting their home broadband connection, unlike every other connected TV service.

The skaters from Silver Blades, Altrincham wore off-ice skates (www.off-iceskating.com)


Virgin Media TiVo in numbers

• 2 million – customers since the service launched in December 2010
• 30 million – the number of times customers rated programmes using TiVo’s ‘thumbs up’ or ‘thumbs down’ in January 2014
• 519 million – TV programmes watched on demand using TiVo in 2013

TiVo’s place in popular culture

The service has been name-checked in an increasingly large number of TV shows and films as the future of TV, including:

1. Sex and the City – Miranda falls for TiVo
2. Simpsons – Homer returns home with a TiVo set-top box
3. Futurama – One of the title captions says “Hey TiVo! Suggest this!"
4. How I Met Your Mother – "Almighty TiVo, we thank you for all the gifts you have given us: The power to freeze live TV to go take a leak is nothing short of god-like, and let’s not forget fast-forwarding through commercials. "
5. Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay - "I'm telling you Jorge, the first thing you have to do when you get to America - buy a device called TiVo. Okay? Freedom means nothing if you're a slave to regular programming. I promise you that."


Ten things TiVo can do:

1. Pause and rewind live TV
2. Record three shows while watching a fourth already recorded
3. Set up recordings even when not at home using Virgin TV Anywhere
4. Watch live channels anywhere with WiFi in the UK using Virgin TV Anywhere
5.Store up to 500 hours of TV or around 100 hours of HD TV on a 1TB box
6. Undelete recently deleted programmes
7. Watch catch-up TV from BBC iPlayer, ITV, 4OD and Channel 5
8. Create WishLists to automatically record any show that meets your criteria
9. Give shows a ‘thumbs up’ or ‘thumbs down’ so TiVo can learn what you like \ 10. Enjoy web apps on your big screen including Sportify, YouTube and Netflix

Virgin Media offers four multi award-winning services across the UK and Ireland: broadband, TV, mobile phone and landline.

The company’s dedicated, ultrafast network delivers the fastest widely available broadband speeds to homes and businesses. And we’re expanding this through our £3bn Project Lightning programme, which will reach 17 million premises.

Our interactive TV service brings live programmes, thousands of hours of on-demand programming and the best apps and games in a set-top box, as well as on-the-go for tablets and smartphones.

We launched the world’s first virtual mobile network, offering fantastic value and services to customers. We are also one of the largest fixed-line home phone providers in the UK and Ireland.

Through Virgin Media Business we support entrepreneurs, businesses and the public sector, delivering the fastest widely available broadband speeds and tailor-made services.

Virgin Media is part of Liberty Global, the world’s largest international cable company. Together Virgin Media and Liberty Global serve 27 million customers across 14 countries.