Messages

1

General Discussions / Re: Tapatalk plugin for this forum

« on: December 23, 2011, 11:17:57 AM »

I've installed the required plugin, registered with the Tapatalk network but have had no luck getting it to work.

I'm busy with some major projects at the moment but will have another look at it early in the new year.

2

Smart Recording website and General questions / Re: Feature Request: My Week etc having colours or icons for Genre

« on: August 19, 2011, 04:17:00 PM »

I understand that I was just taking the opportunity to point out a good place to make iPad suggestions for those that want to.

One of the biggest issues I'm having with management is convincing them that it's worth the time to do the iPad version and the question of what we are going to do with the extra space keeps coming up.

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Smart Recording website and General questions / Re: Feature Request: My Week etc having colours or icons for Genre

« on: August 19, 2011, 12:58:47 PM »

There is a thread discussing the iPad App the would be a good place to make suggestions.

http://forum.icetv.com.au/iceforum/smart-recording-on-iphoneipod-touchipad/24/icetv-ipad-update/2545/15

While I can't claim to be any closer to an update I have been looking at improvements to our web service that will make life easier for me when I do get to working on the iPad App. It is definitely on the roadmap though along with larger changes to Interactive.

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EyeTV / Re: Sick of unreliability. Just Ditch the "fetch"

« on: May 23, 2011, 02:49:08 PM »

lol

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EyeTV / Re: Sick of unreliability. Just Ditch the "fetch"

« on: May 23, 2011, 02:25:55 PM »

Amazon are arguing the same way with their music service, they contend that they don't need a licence since the Cloud Drive is just the same as an external hard drive, the labels feel differently

wappinghigh: I appreciate the dialog and yes it is very frustrating for me, I work in IT because I love tech and want to push the boundaries for its use.

As for your recording issues, the BeyonWiz is probably our most reliable PVR and EyeTV is generally pretty good. Have you spoken to our support guys to try and sort things out?

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EyeTV / Re: Sick of unreliability. Just Ditch the "fetch"

« on: May 23, 2011, 01:44:25 PM »

This is just a cop out. If you were recording for a customer's "personal use", why would the law have a problem with this? Does the law say WHERE that recording has to actually exist? Or WHO does that recording for the personal customer? Could not the customer's personal recording be in the "cloud" for example, with a specific software identifier. The model being: I chose on the icetv website what to record. Ice TV records it for me. Then adds a specific personal identifier exclusive to me, and I simply download the recorded file at my convenience when I want to view it. I wouldn't care if I could only view it once. You could have it self delete after that, to please the "authorities" if you want. All I care about is 100% guaranteed viewability of what I want "recorded". At the moment this just doesn't exist.

The problem for us is that as you point out there is much room for "interpretation", it could be that you are correct and that the court would side with us, but there is every chance that they would not.

When we started this company 6 years ago within 6 months of opening the door we were taken to court by Channel Nine, that case took 4 years to resolve ending up in the High Court and costing millions to mount a defense. There is no way that we would take a risk of being litigated against by the networks again, we know they keep a very close eye on us and would be happy to drag us to court again.

What you call a "cop out", we call avoiding unnecessary risk to the business.

We know of two companies currently pursuing exactly the model you propose and so far they are struggling to generate any serious consumer interest. So not only would we be at a serious risk of litigation we would be doing so for a feature that is unlikely to improve our subscription take up rate significantly.

Our gut feeling within the office is that if either of these two companies begin to generate any revenue and gain any sort of mindshare the hammer will fall on them from the networks.

As you say DVR's and VCR recorders have been in existence for decades, effectively against the law. Yet this didn't stop the makers and public from embracing them. Since when should the law be the ONLY factor that dictates the adoption and efficient delivery of technology. If all companies thought like that, we would never have had the internet, computers, facebook, ebay, itunes and the ipod...and probably TV itself....

In an ideal world technology would be unconstrained by commercial/legal factors, unfortunately this is not the case.

There doesn't seem to be any problem with our National broadcaster (and therefore the Commonwealth Government) effectively breaking the very law that they set up and you describe RIGHT NOW. With iView. There is nothing stopping me viewing the same ABC file over and over again. In my house. On the road. On my iphone. Anywhere. So where is the difference with me viewing a file in the same way that I ask YOU to record for me?

The ABC are the copyright holders of their own content and are free to deliver it any way they like, iView is nothing like a PVR (even a network one such as you envisage).

So we have the ABC breaking the law. And you say IceTv "can't"......If you guys don't get the balls to take them on, you won't HAVE a business model when catchup TV takes on. You won't even have a business! So what are you waiting for? Hire some very smart lawyers. And get going. Because what you are doing right now just doesn't cut it any more....Catchup TV is 100% effective. Your service is not....

As above the ABC is not breaking copyright by distributing their own content using their own application, this is also true for the commercial catchup TV services.

As far as IceTV having the balls to take on the networks our record stands for itself, our landmark case against Nine has made history and changed the way copyright is interpreted with regards to compilations of "facts", Telstra have had their previous win against Desktop Marketing over the copyright in the white pages brought into question as well as the TAB having rights to some sporting results.

It is prudent to pick your battles in a situation like this, the right to independently compile a TV guide was crucial to the business while a network DVR is not (at this time).

We also have a different take on the catchup TV question, we believe that a good PVR precludes the need for catchup TV services rather than the other way around. 
Having said that we are amendable to working with catchup TV services to provide more options to our customers, we are about giving users control over their viewing habits.

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EyeTV / Re: Sick of unreliability. Just Ditch the "fetch"

« on: May 23, 2011, 05:48:21 AM »

tonymy01 is dead right on this one..

We have certainly discussed this idea in the office many times and there are serious legal issues that make it impossible.

About 2 years ago the law was changed to allow you to record TV programs for personal use, prior to that it was technically illegal to use a PVR or VCR but clearly that law wasn't enforced.

The law now allows recording of TV shows but only for personal use, not commercial use, in fact even for personal use there are a bunch of stupid restrictions that make your head hurt.

When you record a TV show you are allowed to watch it once only, you are then supposed to delete it. If you and your family were to watch a movie and you fell asleep in the middle then you can watch the rest later but no one else is allowed to.... Not sure how they plan to enforce that part.

In any case for a commercial entity, and particularly one that has spent so much time and money in legal battles with the networks, there is no way we would touch this unless the law was changed.

8

Topfield / Re: Recording errors on the IceTV website

« on: April 21, 2011, 08:39:24 AM »

Can't you take the matters further with the manufacturer's directly and perhaps work with the firmware engineer's to resolve these issues?

This is a subject near and dear to my heart and a constant source of frustration.

During the implementation phase I work closely with the engineers involved, often literally sitting beside them as they write their firmware.

As a direct response to the, shall we say lax efforts, on the part of some of our partners we have mandated that accurate error reporting is required in order to gain certification from us.
Unfortunately many models were developed prior to this requirement and are exempt from it.

Rest assured that we are taking a far harder line on this these days and in time we hope to have all supported devices behaving well.

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Smart Recording on iPhone/iPod Touch/iPad / Re: IceTV ipad update?

« on: April 15, 2011, 10:49:51 AM »

Suggestion noted, I'll add it to the TODO list and discuss it with the team.

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Smart Recording on iPhone/iPod Touch/iPad / Re: IceTV ipad update?

« on: April 15, 2011, 09:29:01 AM »

Thanks for the heads up markb I hadn't seen it, I'll check it out. We have a lot of work planned on Interactive this year so this is the time to suggest things while our plans are still fluid.

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Smart Recording on iPhone/iPod Touch/iPad / Re: No cancel option on replaced shows

« on: April 08, 2011, 12:32:17 PM »

Sadly I've been forced to shift priorities for a while but I'm hoping to get back to it in the next week or so.

The iPhone side of the problem will definitely be addressed in the next update, the server-side component as soon as I can get back to it.

Sadly we have limited engineering resources and a couple of very demanding projects on our plate at the moment.

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Smart Recording on iPhone/iPod Touch/iPad / Re: IceTV ipad update?

« on: March 31, 2011, 03:23:28 PM »

Hi markb,
I appreciate your feedback and while I agree that iPad users can make use of the website there is certainly a case of an iPad app as well.

To address your concerns, we are planning on a serious revamp to the whole interactive site to make it more "app-like" and in general a smoother and more pleasant experience in general. We will certainly consider IMDb, Metacritic & Rotten Tomatoes links as they are just as applicable to the website as the iPhone.

As for the "bug" regarding timers locked to a channel, the news is not so good. This is not a bug but an intentional design choice, we used to have the channel setting but we were constantly receiving feedback from users  suggesting that it was not particularly useful and that the current Network + quality method would be better. Of course this was when the networks were still providing SD + HD simulcasts, now with the multi-channel no HD simulcast situation the channels method would probably be better.

Unfortunately reverting back to a channel based system would require changes across the board and updates to APIs used by third parties, in short a hell of a lot of work, so we certainly have no plans to do it any time soon if at all.

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Smart Recording on iPhone/iPod Touch/iPad / Re: IceTV ipad update?

« on: March 30, 2011, 03:40:22 PM »

I'm not so sure about that, I don't know that there has to be a lot of upscaling moving to the iPad.

My plan is to start with "basic" iPad support in an upcoming version, essentially providing all the current functionality but in an iPad layout rather than an upscaled iPhone one.

Once the basic iPad functionality is done then we would look to find better uses for the larger screen size in future updates.

The biggest issue, aside from resources, is securing legal content to fill the extra space. We can't just scrape websites for reviews, images etc like some other apps you see around the place, everything must be our own content or properly licensed (at our expense).

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Smart Recording on iPhone/iPod Touch/iPad / Re: iPhone App V2.6(27)

« on: March 24, 2011, 10:45:28 PM »

Thanks for the bug report Futzle, this is a known issue, the show is actually being deleted but the local information on the phone is not being updated.

This is a known issue and is on the list of bugs to be fixed for the 2.7 update. I don't have a firm deadline for the release of 2.7 at the this time but it should be within the next 3-4 weeks.

15

Smart Recording on iPhone/iPod Touch/iPad / Re: No cancel option on replaced shows

« on: March 23, 2011, 10:17:00 AM »

Lisey,

Thanks for the info, I've had a preliminary look and unfortunately I can't provide a definitive answer, I'm swamped today & tomorrow so I've set aside some time on Friday to dig deeper into the issues.

I'll get back to you as soon as I have something more concrete.

Tony: I will do some testing (at the same time) of the show moved/deleted functionality to see that the correct messages are being sent to client PVRs.