Virgin Media’s TV boxes have just got a lot chattier. The company has launched Smart Search, a new AI-powered search feature for its TV 360 and Stream boxes that lets you find something to watch by describing it, rather than remembering exactly what it’s called.
Ask for “a feel-good film”, something the whole family can watch, or that space adventure you saw years ago, and it’ll come back with suggestions.
It’s free and already live, so there’s nothing to install: press and hold the microphone button on your remote and start talking.
Virgin isn’t the first to do this, not by a long way. EE TV launched a feature with the exact same name earlier this year, and Sky, Amazon, Google and Apple are all busy teaching their TVs to hold a conversation.
None of them has quite answered the awkward question, though: is anyone talking to their telly like this?
What Is Virgin Media’s Smart Search?
For anyone new to Virgin Media’s TV service, it currently comes on two boxes, both only available to Virgin’s broadband customers. The TV 360 is the traditional, cable-connected box that can record.
The Stream box is a smaller box that delivers everything over broadband, and it’s now the default for new customers.
Both remotes already had a microphone button, and you could already use your voice to search for a show, an actor or a genre. Last year, Virgin also gave its search a long-overdue visual makeover, swapping text lists for picture tiles.
What Smart Search changes is what you can say. Virgin says it’s powered by AI and natural language technology, and understands conversational requests, so you can search the way you’d naturally speak instead of in keywords.
According to Virgin Media, you can now ask for:
- Something new: “show me new releases” or “suggest a new show to watch”
- A mood: “find a feel-good film”, something to make you laugh, or something scary to hide behind a pillow from
- Who’s watching: a film for the whole family, or something to watch with your mates
- An actor: films and shows featuring a favourite star, plus recommendations based on their work
- A genre: action, thrillers, rom-coms and so on
- A title you’ve forgotten: describe the main thing you remember, like a “space adventure film” or a “detective crime drama”
You then get a list of recommendations to browse. The existing text search is still there if you’d rather type, and Smart Search is included on all TV 360 and Stream boxes at no extra cost.
Virgin hasn’t said which AI model is behind it, or whether the results take into account what you usually watch.
How To Use Smart Search On Virgin TV
Using it takes three steps:
- Press and hold the microphone button on your TV 360 or Stream remote.
- Say what you’re looking for: a genre, a mood, an actor, or the kind of thing you fancy watching.
- Browse the results, and pick something.
Virgin also offers some tips for getting the best results:
Be specific, it says: a clear search “such as ‘funny films’ or ‘action movies'” gives Smart Search a better idea of what you want. Stick to the key details, rather than describing the entire story. And if you’re not finding anything, try searching for a mood, genre or actor instead.
All sensible advice, and also a fairly polite way of saying: don’t get too chatty with it.
Meet The UK’s “TV Personalities”, Apparently
Virgin Media’s Smart Search launch comes with a survey, and this survey comes with regional personalities.
According to research commissioned by Virgin, Liverpool viewers are the nation’s “Peacekeepers”, the most likely to use AI to settle arguments over what to watch.
Belfast viewers are the “Mood Matchers”, Cardiff are the “Chatterboxes”, and Newcastle are the “Solo Streamers”, who’d rather watch on their own and skip the negotiations altogether. Fair enough.
Behind the labels, Virgin’s point is that we’re tired of scrolling. More than one in five people feel they regularly spend too long browsing before picking something, and almost half believe an AI assistant could recommend a better programme than they’d choose themselves.
“With nearly 60% of viewers wanting a helping hand in finding what to watch, we’ve launched Smart Search on Virgin TV to make content discovery quicker, simpler and more intuitive than ever before,” said Louise Fussell, Virgin Media’s TV & Entertainment Product Director.
Everyone’s Doing It
Virgin has plenty of company. Practically every TV company in the UK is adding some kind of AI search right now.
EE TV launched its own AI Smart Search back in March – yes, same name – along with Mood Matcher, which asks you a few quick questions and serves up a shortlist. The catch at launch was that it only worked on EE’s custom Apple TV box, not its own EE TV boxes, which EE said would get it “at a later date”.
Sky is going further with Sky OS 2.0, the big software update for Sky Glass and Sky Stream that’s currently in beta.
Its voice search is getting an AI upgrade called Smart Voice, which can handle follow-up questions and give you actual answers. Ask “What time is The Traitors on this week?” and you get a time, not a list of search results. Sky expects OS 2.0 to reach everyone before the end of the year.
Amazon has been rolling out Alexa+, the generative AI version of Alexa, in the UK since March. It comes built into the new Fire TV Stick 4K, and it’s free during Early Access. After that, it’ll be included with Prime, or cost £19.99 a month without it.
Google has its Gemini AI assistant on Google TV. It launched in the US and Canada first, and started arriving in the UK this year, beginning with some TCL TVs.
Apple has gone all in, too. Its new £299 Apple TV 4K, on sale from November 13, is built around Siri AI, a rebuilt and more conversational Siri, with microphones built in so you don’t even need the remote.
Roku is the one that feels a bit behind. Its voice search handles the basics well, like finding a film or an actor, or opening an app, but it’s voice search rather than a full assistant.
In the US, Roku has started adding AI to its voice search, so you can ask questions about films and actors, but we haven’t seen that arrive here. As of September, UK users were also still waiting for the redesigned home screen Americans got in May.
Given where everyone else is heading, it would be a surprise if Roku doesn’t catch up at some point.
But Does Anyone Actually Use It?
On paper, it all sounds great, and it looks even better in a demo. In demo land, you ask for “a cosy film for a rainy Sunday”, and up pops a neat row of cosy films. You ask Sky when The Traitors is on, and it tells you.
Back on the average sofa, though, I keep coming back to the same question: does anyone talk to their TV like this?
Think about how most of us use the microphone button now, if we use it at all. We say the name of a show. Maybe part of the name, when we can’t remember the rest. And at the very height of sophistication, “show me films with Tom Holland”.
Holding the remote up to your mouth and asking for “a feel-good film the whole family will enjoy that isn’t too long”, in front of the whole family, is something else entirely. It’ll be fun the first couple of times, but I’m not convinced it sticks.
Virgin’s own figures don’t really settle it. Most of them are about what people believe, or say they would do: almost half think AI could pick something better, and over half in Edinburgh say they’d use an AI assistant to make finding something easier.
Saying you’d do something in a survey and doing it on a Tuesday night aren’t the same thing.
There’s only one figure about real use, and it’s hardly a ringing endorsement. Belfast is named the most enthusiastic adopter in the UK, with nearly a third of viewers using AI TV recommendations every month.
If the keenest city in the country is at nearly a third, once a month, the rest of us aren’t exactly chatting away every evening.
And then there’s Virgin’s own advice to keep it simple, with searches like “funny films” or “action movies”. TV boxes have handled that kind of search for years. Virgin’s previous search already understood genres like “thriller”.
The most positive evidence so far comes from Amazon. When I spoke to Fire TV boss Aidan Marcuss in June, he said that where Alexa+ is fully available, people use it two and a half times as much as the old Alexa, asking more complicated questions in more natural language.
He also said that has held up over months: “not just a flash in the pan”.
But that’s Amazon’s own figure, about Alexa+ in general rather than TV search specifically. And voice assistants have overpromised before: the original Alexa promised a lot at launch, and plenty of Echo owners will remember hearing “Sorry, I don’t understand” more often than they’d like.
Bottom Line
Smart Search costs nothing extra and the old search hasn’t gone anywhere, so if you have a TV 360 or Stream box, there’s nothing to lose by trying it. If it finds that film whose name has been on the tip of your tongue for a week, it’s earned its place.
There’s also little doubt about where TV is heading. Virgin, EE, Sky, Amazon, Google and Apple are all betting that we’ll want to chat with our TVs, and Roku will very likely join them.
Whether we will is less clear. Most of us are happy to say a title into the remote, but discussing our mood with the telly is a much bigger ask. For now, I think the jury’s still out on whether people really use these smart queries, or whether they just make for a nice demo. Time will tell.
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