Virgin Media TV down with thousands seeing ‘pixelated channels’

Virgin Media provides phone,television and internet services (Picture: Virgin Media)

Virgin Media – one of the UK’s most used TV and broadband providers – is down for thousands of people.

The outage,which started just after 10.35am,affected more than 4,000 people as of 11.45am,according to outage tracker Downdetector.

The number has since dipped slightly to just under 3,000 after Virgin Media confirmed to Metro that the telecom firm is aware of the issue.

Almost nine in 10 users reporting issues report problems with their TV service,while about one in 10 are reporting problems with their broadband connections.

Most have said that their TV screens are pixellated even after changing the channel. Others say that the channels ‘jump’ around.

The issues are persisting despite customers switching their TV sets or the Virgin Media TV Box on and off.

@virginmedia is there something wrong pic.twitter.com/Ntd1q9AgCv

— Sue Jones (@Suej1959) May 14,2026

TV screens glitch when the signal reaching them is shoddy or disrupted.

Yet users have also said that when using the company’s system checker,the service reports no issues – if the checker even loads at all.

System update on my @virginmedia box today and now some channels do not work properly. Yet I can't check service status cos my account cannot be found? Yeah great. pic.twitter.com/NPPNKIKrB5

— Sy (@5IMON_) May 14,2026

One customer wrote on X: ‘Virgin Media TV not working. Completely pixelated. Tried to find out why. Message just says: “Sorry,there was an issue checking your services.”‘

Another said: ‘Most channels on TIVO pixelated – okay till 20 minutes ago – cannot get current service status from Virgin.’

Virgin Media told Metro that the issue is only impacting TV services,not broadband.

A spokesperson said: ‘We’re aware that some customers are currently experiencing pixelation issues with their television services and we apologise for any inconvenience caused.

‘Our teams are working as a priority to identify the fault and restore services to normal as soon as possible.’

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