Virgin Media joins iPlayer and Sky to broadcast Wimbledon in 4K

Owners of Virgin’s latest and greatest V6 set-top box will be able to watch the Wimbledon final in crisp 4K. 

The cable broadcast will only cover the tennis tournament’s final matches, which puts Virgin behind the official iPlayer app — although this app is also available on the companies set-top box.

Virgin makes no mention of HDR in its press release, but later confirmed that HDR would be available if you watch through the V6’s iPlayer app, but not if you watch it through cable.

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You’ll be able to access the 4K stream by pressing the red button while you’re watching the coverage on Eurosport 1 or 2 HD (channels 521 and 522 respectively), but only if you’re a ‘Full House’ Virgin Media subscriber.

Otherwise, you can access the stream by pressing the home button on your remote and selecting the appropriate tile.

Virgin will broadcast the matches over cable (so thankfully doesn’t require a fast internet connection), but you won’t get HDR this way.

You can access the most amount of 4K tennis matches by using the iPlayer app directly, either through the V6 box or another compatible device (a full list is available on the BBC’s website).  Here you’ll be able to watch all centre court matches, but the speed of your internet connection will be important to getting a decent stream.

Sky has also announced that it will be broadcasting a certain matches in 4K. These broadcasts will be happening over satellite rather than broadband, but like Virgin’s red button offering it will unfortunately only be available in 4K, not HDR.

Sky’s coverage will also only cover the semi-finals and above.

A year ago you would have struggled to find live 4K content, so it’s great that we’ve had two tournaments in a row that have offered so much next-generation video content.

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It still feels like the standards have a little way to go before they’re completely ubiquitous. We’re still not getting every match in 4K, some platforms are missing HDR, and you still have to pick a special stream to get the new format.

But the amount of progress we’ve seen in the last six months has been remarkable. It was only last year that the BBC was taking its first tentative steps into its 4K future, and to reach the point of doing regular live 4K broadcasts so quickly is impressive.

What’s your platform of choice for watching Wimbledon in 4K? Let us know @TrustedReviews.