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Then after receiving the latest offer in August this year, I decided to purchase a further 5 year extension. ... So I have something like 9 years left to run.

I have been with them for 5 years now, I had maybe a year left. I was going to renew in August when they started really pushing all these deals and even lifetime deals (with skippa) but it made me very suspicious that they were in trouble and trying to earn as much cash as possible in the short term.

Not a good sign, so I held off. The reason I am now using topfield TAPs (smartepg and webcontrol) and not paying for icetv anymore is (1) smartepg and webcontrol actually work really well (2) I don't like that the idea that they were pushing heavily discounted 'lifetime' connections when they may well have known it wasn't looking good that lifetime would be very long at all.

So I accept that they have to start again and not honor previous subscriptions as a way to keep the business going, I just don't want to do business with them anymore.

Anyway no reason to hang around here, thanks for all the fish... ...

Consequently, the owners of the old IceTV are the owners of the new IceTV less all the obligations they had to their customers (not to mention creditors and presumably staff as well).

All the customers are meant to run back and rebuy their services (not to mention hardware) from the same person who took their previous money?

Am I missing something here?   Are we meant to feel happy about that ?

Not really, the phoenix has risen..

Personally it has been good for me as it caused me to investigate the TAPs available for my topfield and I discovered SMARTEPG. As I really only record less than half a dozen shows a week (on series link) this has worked out well as I can make do without ICETV using SMARTEPG and WEBCONTROL.

Very keen to see this occur.. i.e. A device that ICETV have control over supporting, the Humax padding debacle was not fun..

I had the first ICETV compatible Strong unit which reset randomly as did my beyonwiz p1, the Humax was never able to reply padding correctly if coming on from standby mode (ended up returning it, and they are the only option available here now)..

I do have two Topfield Masterpieces which are completely reliable units but feeling a bit dated.. It would be nice to see a unit ICETV have control over and with true quad recorders and catch up playback like SBS and particularity iView (a feature the topfield is sorely lacking)... Sadly the slingshot playback would probbaly not work for me with my 2mbps ADSL2+ that just barely plays an iview video let alone uploading a stream...

Well as I said I sent back my Humax, on friday my replacement Topfield TRF2400 arrived, low power usage standby and reliable recording (with padding)..

Thanks ICETV for sorting it out..

No more Humax for me, sticking with Topfield  ;D

It is funny, calling technical support I seem to have no issues getting through to someone, but when calling and selecting sales I am yet to actually be able to get on to someone.. strange you think sales would be a priority?

We have not had any padding issues in over a week since making the power saving setting changes recommended by Humax. We use the IceTV app on iPads to control the PVR (one of the use cases that need to be tested.

As stated I still had issues, maybe less often but it wasn't right still.. My other problem with that fix is the unit goes from using 1w in standby to 30+ watts in standby.. I don't need another device sucking 30 watts 24x7 because padding won't work.. YMMV of course..

BTW if you only watched the PVR on average 4 hours a day 365 days a year, changing the standby mode for the other 20 hours would cost an extra $54 a year in electricity (by my calculations).. These things add up and it is not an acceptable fix whilst telling me/us that the difference in power usage is "negligable"..

On the broader issue of the suitability of the Humax/IceTV solution, I am quite pleased. It is a huge improvement on my old Pansonic PVR

Not to mention the Strong units ICETV sold in the past, terrible stability in my experience.. So yes it is an improvement..

What bothered me is ICETV has described the issue here and know there is an fault, they also mentioned it would be fixed in "weeks not months". So many weeks later Humax is seemingly back peddling and trying to blaim ICETV, they only agreed to refund me when I pointed out my Topfield unit doesn't have padding issues on the same shows, so it can't be ICETVs fault..

Anyway mine has been returned now, I am waiting on ICETV to contact me so I can organise the topfield replacement, I am curious to see what happens on this issue, if/when it gets fixed other than disabling the advertised 1w standby mode (which wasn't 100% anyway for me)..

I chose the Humax/IceTV combination because it appeared to be the easiest for my wife to use.

That is true it is the most friendly for non-technical minded people I think.. Apple users would love it..

BTW, the ABCs iView app is really well implemented

Agreed..

Even on Beyonwizes, which seem, out of them, Topfields and Humax, to behave best with IceTV, occasional tending and weeding is necessary. Sometimes shows continue to display "queued" on IceTV when the timer has been set on the Beyonwiz, and sometimes the show shows the yellow error triangle when the timer has in fact been set correctly. These are two problems that I've long complained about on this forum, but without the problem still comes up occasionally.

I have owned 4 different companies' ICETV compatible PVRs..

Humax - padding issues as we all know.

Strong - Worst of the lot has reseting issues when playing and recording at the same time, big problem as show that is recording is lost, and Strong released a new model and stopped supporting their customers.. Gave to my mother in law, she only uses it as a set top box and to pause live tv, works fine for that..

Beyonwiz - I had bad luck with mine also had random reset issues, though others don't get this so maybe I had a bad one? I returned it to JB HiFi for the topfield..

Topfield 2400 - I think the best of the lot has one minor issue when there is a blackout it doesn't pick the network connection back up again unless you go in and out of the network settings (don't need to change anything).. I very rarely get blackouts, I only noticed it as I have had electrical work done a bit lately so turned on and off a few times... Otherwise I don't have any issues at all with ICETV and this unit, extremely reliable...

And anyway, the last statement from Ice (which seems likes eons ago now) was that they pretty much knew what it was, and were working on fixing it...

They might but Humax, based on my contact with them, are still in the investigating phase trying to find the issue rather than knowing what it is and fixing the programming...

Anyway I was in contact with Humax and have been given an RA and have returned it today to ICETV.. I will buy another Topfield 2400 as I know they work, the Humax seemed like a real bargain but, like you, I don't need to be spending my free time trying to help them fix their product which currently doesn't work.

Another reply from Humax after I told them that even with the power hungry PSS OFF mode it still is not reliable..

We have many testing boxes and one of our box that had the block as series, although we had 20 mins padding at the front and at the back, the back padding didn't get recorded.
However, other 'The Block' has been recorded with no problem with correct padding.
It is possible that event information from IceTV on 'The Block' was not correct.

Will you kindly wait until next week for us to carry out testing with other IceTV compatible products on 'The Block' along with our testing HDR-7500T and see what happens? If all different products are behaving the same the issue with The Block missing end padding could be mere information difference from IceTV.

So are they blaming ICETV?? the recording scheduled on the Humax was from 7-8pm how could it then be ICETVs fault??? Its funny my topfield has never had problems with padding (I have been using ICETV for 2 years with various recorders) only the Humax has issues and now they are suggesting it isn't their fault??

It is a 60 minute show, you put 20min padding on the end and it records 60mins worth, how could the scheduling from ICETV be at fault, when the Humax schedule also shows a 60min show (after downloaded from ICETV)..

Does leaving the Humax on all the time solve the padding problem?

No it doesn't for me, still seems touch and go, sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't, mostly the later..

(I have been doing a lot of testing, something it seems to me Humax didn't bother with)

The Humax advice is worth a try. I have made the changes suggested and will see if the padding issue is fixed over the next few weeks.

Well I have had PSS OFF for two days now, yesterday I got my hopes up as it correctly recorded 'the block' with padding, but tonight PSS was still off and padding did not work for 'the block', which meant I missed the last 10 minutes... boo hiss Humax, another fail, still not consistent...

In the absence of better information from Humax about PSS OFF power consumption, it may need an enterprising forum member with a Humax and an energy meter to answer that question. However, low cost power meters are typically rubbish at measuring low power consumption levels.

OK in PSS ON mode as lingfish states the HDD powers down and so does the LCD display..

In PSS OFF mode the LCD screen stays on with the time displayed (no huge deal) but also the HDD does NOT power down, ever, I can hear it continuing to spin even 5 hours later dispite the unit is soft powered down. So the power draw difference is HUGE < 1W to > 10W (at least over 10 fold difference) no matter what some Humax rep states in a non technical roundabout way..

I am still not 100% certain whether this fixes the padding issue, that is yet to be proven, but it is effectively breaking their whole advertisment that it uses < 1W in standby as to make base features work (recording with padding) you have to disable the true standby mode..

I wonder if waiting and hoping for an update... whether I should see if I can return it   

Good luck on both fronts, we have waited 3 months for an update thus far, I just today decided to try the second option and I am awaiting a response from ICETV before I seek advice from the ACCC.. (The 'responses' from Humax were just the last straw for me)..

The ACCC is pretty clear on their site..
"You are only entitled to a refund or replacement if the problem is major or cannot be fixed.  If the problem is not major and can be fixed within a reasonable time, the store can choose to refund, repair or replace the product."

Well I consider it a major problem if a recorder fails consistently to record shows completely (as padding, an advertised feature to ensure this does not work).. But even if it is not a major problem, I believe they have failed to fix it in a reasonable time frame, though really what is reasonable?

OK, let's assume several = three or more. That means that according to the source there's less than 0.1% difference in power consumption (3 years > 1000 days) between having PSS on or OFF. So why is there an option at all?

Who knows? maybe they mean an extra day on the average house power bill in a few years.. would make more sense, otherwise as you say why bother with the mode at all?

I did ask for the exact power consumption difference (we know PSS ON is claimed to be < 1W), she avoided answering that question, twice now..

I have been getting this for a while with various shows, just never bothered posting..

If you add American Pickers 2010 (7mate) for tonight (23/05/2012) and look in 'my week' on the desktop website it works and looks fine, but on Android you see 2 of each episode, one at 9:30 and the other at 9:35 and one at 10:30 and the other at 10:35...