Virgin Media: What is wrong with Virgin Media, Virgin error V53, and what does C133 mean on Virgin?

Virgin Media customers across the country are experiencing issues with their television services.

Virgin Media currently serves around 3.4 million television subscribers in the UK, with 3.2 million of this number being digital cable customers.

However, many of these customers have been complaining of television outages today on Thursday December 2nd.

As of 11.14 am, there had been over 18,000 reports of outages on Downdetector.

Here’s all you need to know about the Virgin Media outage and what common error messages mean.

What is wrong with Virgin Media?

Of the over 18,000 reports on Downdetector, 65% are to do with TV services, 18% to do with TV streaming, and 17% experiencing a total blackout.

Virgin Media has responded to disgruntled customers on Twitter, writing that the company is “aware of an issue currently affecting TV services and are working hard to resolve this as quickly as possible”.

Over 18,000 Virgin Media customers have reported issues with their TV services today. Photo: Virgin Media.

The company later said there had been a “major power outage” causing the problem.

The Virgin Media status page was also down for several hours due to an issue with the server.

What does C133 mean on Virgin?

Many customers are seeing the C133 error message.

The code is accompanied by the message: “There was a problem connecting to the Virgin Media Service.”

According to Virgin Media, the way to resolve this issue is to reboot your TV box by turning it on and off again.

You should then connect to your Virgin Media Service by going to Settings, then Network, selecting Connection in progress: get status or Connect to the Virgin Media Service now.

If that doesn’t resolve the issue, Virgin asks you to get in touch with the customer service team.

You can do so by visiting this page.

What does Virgin Media error V53 mean?

Other users are seeing the error message for V53.

This is accompanied by the message that “this channel is currently unavailable”.

Virgin Media states on its website that this error could mean that there is an issue or planned work in the area.

The company recommends checking whether there is an outage in your area, but unfortunately the status page has also been down periodically.

This would suggest that there is an issue on Virgin Media's end, as confirmed by the company’s Twitter page.

The status page is also now up and running as Virgin Media gets closer to a fix.

When will Virgin Media be back up?

Virgin Media is reportedly working on a solution for the issue right now and said that they aim to have it resolved this afternoon.

At 1.45pm, the company updated its status page.

"We have now restored several channels with customers able to watch BBC One, BBC Two, ITV, ITV+1 and Channel 4. TV360 customers are also able to access apps on their box,” Virgin wrote. “We’re working to restore all channels as quickly as possible and continue to work towards having this resolved this afternoon.”

Then at 3.30pm, the company said engineers were on site working to restore TV services after the major power outage.

The company said: “We are currently attempting to restore more channels. As we do this, it may mean customers temporarily lose access to previously restored channels.

“We recognise this is frustrating for customers and apologise again for the inconvenience caused. We are doing everything we can to get services back as quickly as possible.”

At 10pm, the company stated that most channels were back up and running.

"We’re continuing to restore TV services with almost all channels now back up and many customers services fully restored,” Virgin wrote. “We sincerely apologise for the issues with our TV service earlier.”