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I have 1 pvr and always felt this multiple recorders was a con ... How many synchronous programs can you need to record anyway?  My T3 has 4 tuners and that is overkill.
Ice TV has been great to keep my timers organised, but it won't be that hard to convert them across to auto timers ... The only missing thing for me will be the occasional remote recording, but with all the free catch up services, who cares.

Multiple recorders wasn't a con. Most people only have 1, so allowing you to have multiple recorders on 1 account was a bonus only for the small percentage who are power users. I think they said they increased it to 10 because some skipper buyers already had 5 recorders.

Catchup doesn't show every program, and my Beyonwiz is hopeless for viewing the catchup channels, so I'd rather record it when it was aired... which brings me back to needing ice tv.

IMHO auto timers and taps are a poor second if they have to use the fta guide.

My prediction is they will require a year up front.... Service will decline ... Then they will bugger off with 3-6 months of the second bite you guys are going to pay them.

I read it is as $8 per month, paid by the month. So the most we could lose is less than $8.

As long as it's a new company with no links to the old.

At least i got my Skippa (actually not sure if that was a bonus - could have lodged a claim with Paypal otherwise) but if anyone from the old company shows up in the new one I won't have anything to do with their products (management and board that is - not support or other staff).

I sent an email explaining all this to support and saying Yes if it's a totally different company. Not sure if it will count but there you go.

I don't have a problem with the existing/previous owner(s) rescuing ice tv. 

Going by what I have been told by icetv staff, once it all comes out we will realise that the management and owners of icetv were not to blame for the current situation. It plays out like a falling row of dominos as they struggled to reverse the unfolding situation.

Apparently ice tv got repeatedly stuffed around and lied to by a company that was supplying their Skippa and then repeatedly changed their terms as they went along. Previously agreed to shared development costs became solely icetv's costs, skippa's manufacturing cost price went up minimum order quantities tripled, then they had to pay in full in advance, and delivery timeframes blew out to 4 months, the manufacturer suddenly decided to cease operations in Australia on 30 September and the manufacturer's previously arranged service and retail distribution deals vanished. Once icetv realised that to meet the current version of these ever changing terms they would need to then operate dangerously close to the red for the next 6 months with no guarantee of retail chain stores taking up the skippa and aus post making more profit from delivering each skippa than ice tv would make last thursday one of ice tv's secured creditors called in the substantial loan that they had lent the company during the time of the channel nine court cases (where the court awarded costs were millions less than the actual costs), and to ensure icetv's growth over the following years. Once the funds from that loan were demanded the house of cards came down.

Even though I and my family are losing a combined decade of subscriptions I personally would still subscribe to a new/similar version of the ice guide and series recording as long UEC are not involved and I would prefer Colin O'Brien and the current/previous staff to still be involved. Colin is said to have been the enthusiastic driving force behind ice tv for the last decade or more and at least with him involved I'm confident that the right person is steering the ship. I believe O'Brien and his family have lost millions.

I don't have Apple products but I'm just curious, are those having a problem with the app using 24 hour time mode on the phone and those not having a problem using AM/PM time mode? Or vice versa?

Does the IceTV iPhone app have a 12/24 hour time mode setting?

Or it could be that the app expects the week to start on Sunday, while the phone is set for the week to start on Monday. In which case the work around (until the app is fixed) should be to set your iPhone to use UK as the International Region format when set to AM/PM time.

I just had a look.  I haven't noticed that, apparently, it has changed it's settings (the iPhone) from my  normal 24hour clock to am/pm setting.  So, I just changed it and tried again.  I still seem to be showing shows from last night (I can scroll down and see shows up to 9.30pm (the IceTV app has changed to 24 hour clock, when I changed the iPhone's setting)

So, I am not sure, is this correct the way it should be?

You might need to reset the app from it's settings menu to force it to refresh the guide.

I don't have Apple products but I'm just curious, are those having a problem with the app using 24 hour time mode on the phone and those not having a problem using AM/PM time mode? Or vice versa?

Does the IceTV iPhone app have a 12/24 hour time mode setting?

Or it could be that the app expects the week to start on Sunday, while the phone is set for the week to start on Monday. In which case the work around (until the app is fixed) should be to set your iPhone to use UK as the International Region format when set to AM/PM time.

I really don't undertsand how a manufacturer that is capable of making 1.5million units that pushed out the skippa production the first time then the 0.5million units that pushed out your manufacture slot a second time, how on earth could it have not made your entire skippa order so that all units arrived at once instead of 3 separate shipments?

Depends on their credit terms with the manufacturer.  If this is their first order with a new supplier it is likely goods only released on full payment.

So how is it they couldn't pay in full when we're all paying up front?

Of course they would have paid in full, when required to do so. It's not like they don't have the money. Remember they are buying through an Aussie branch of an OEM that has their HQ on another continent. IceTV would pay the local branch of the OEM. And the OEM's HQ would be paying the factory. Who knows what kind of relationship the OEM's HQ currently has with the chosen factory (who are apparently in another hemisphere and speak a different language).

When you think about the various personnel that the information has to travel through during it's trip from Factory to OEM HQ to Local OEM to IceTV to Us Consumers there's a lot of room for information about dates and deadlines and quantities to get misinterpreted by the Chinese Whispers effect as the message goes down the line.

And that's not accounting for the language and cultural differences including sarcasm that may be taken as a factual statement, or a sense of humour that is not understood.

Vortical, you seem to be suggesting that some skippas were made after the 1.5million other boxes (STBs or PVRs?) but before the 0.5million boxes? I took it to mean that production of all skippas was delayed until after those pushinsky's 2million boxes were finished. The factory would have to be manufacturing the full order in one production run. They'd be crazy not to. If they'd started they wouldn't stop until all xx thousand skippas were made.

The small quantity that arrived(?) a couple of weeks ago may have been left over from the QA sample batch. If I was IceTV copping all this flak (or the OEM assumedly getting constant pressure from IceTV) I'd fly in the first pallet load as soon as they were ready while the factory continues to produce the rest of the order. Which seems to tally with what someone here posted about "the rest of the skippas are only a week behind this batch".

Maybe they are so busy posting Skippas they forgot about the newsletter.

Or maybe there just wasn't anything good on this weekend 

:)

Those delivery timeframes were written years ago and would include a weekend (or two, if it's more than 7 days). Most products purchased from IceTV are drop-shipped from the distributor and one of the distributors only had courier pickups twice per week when that page was written.

That unit looks like it will do everything you want.  However, I would check what the DLNA player interface is like.

For me the usability and interface are key. Very few devices with YouTube can access your 'play later' list (AppleTV can). Very few devices can fast forward or skip forward AND back seamlessly in ALL file types (Kodi on decent hardware comes close). These little things might not matter to many people but when you are used to them anything that cannot do the same is a disappointment.

The Laser MMC-S30 does look like a very nice network media player. But there have been plenty of devices with excellent specs that never lived up to their promise. Dvico, DXtreme, AppleTV, WDTV etc. They had great specs but weren't great at everything. I cannot find an online review of the Laser MMC-S30 anywhere which is a worry.

Best of both worlds.

;D First I have to be convinced that Win10 is actually better.

Me too. Plus nothing is free from Microsoft so I'm waiting for the catch.

From what I hear, it is an improvement on Win8, which was arguably a backward step from Win7  ::)

Anything is an improvement on Win 8. But apparently Win 8.1 is okay. Though I'll stick with Win 7 thanks.

Except, as far as I can tell, none of these options are available  :'(

Correct. We're just brainstorming what smart padding options we'd want added to the website. This way they'd benefit all IceTV compatible recorders and not just skippa.

When the IceTV branded PVR was first announced, one feature that I said would be important was the ability to combine consecutive timers on the same LCN, either globally or manually for particular instances. This feature is apparently not included.

I would prefer the ability to adjust pre and post padding for individual timers; definitely you should be able to set different padding for each Network or each LCN.

You'd only need a minimal setting for the national channels (ABC and SBS) and another setting for the commercial channels.

But maybe also one for certain genres. e.g. Set a global setting in your account online to add an extra 30, 45 or 60 minutes to live sport.

So it turns out that it wasn't greater than anticipated demand but "Manufacturing Delays" that is to blame.  They were telling fibs.

I'm yet to receive an email update either but noticed the new estimated delivery date on the web page today.

Just to be clear, I'm not all that bothered by the actual delay, shit happens.  I just don't like being lied to.

I doubt they were telling lies. If you've ever had any experience with mass production you'd understand (though still not be happy). For example, Increasing a production run from 10 days to 12 days could result in losing your spot in line. Days 11 and 12 would have already been booked for another customer's order and if this customer is a regular who places big orders then there's no chance of delaying their production run. So the whole 12 days of skippa production gets shafted until after this other customer's production run has finished. I'm just thankful that this bigger customer's order will only take a few weeks and not a few months.

Note: I'm not suggesting that skippa's production run takes 10 days or 12 days. They were just examples.

If you are wondering why they didn't just stick with the original production run and do the other shorter production run later, I'd assume that the cost of setting up each production run would probably cost a lot more than the value that the small 2nd production run of product would be worth.

I'm sorry Judy but you are just making excuses to make yourself feel better for choosing to battle on with an old SD toppy while the rest of us look forward to using our new Skippa.

Hi Judy, I just realised that you have ordered a Skippa.

I'll pay you those (although I don't really know what IceTV smart recording is ;D)  But I am willing to bet that TEDS was smarter  :D  As for HD (except for some offerings on the HD channels - very few, as it happens-) I am not that bothered.  I record those with Windows MC

TED started off as a free alternative to IceTV to get a 7 day TV guide onto the 5k toppies. Then TEDS appeared to add TiVo like recording features to 5k toppies. By it's end TEDS had a lot of options and some clever tricks - like a 5 star rating system to decide which shows to drop when there's a conflict.

If you use IceTV with your Windows Media Center and let IceTV manage your series recordings on it then you are already using IceTV smart recording.

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Judy, I was wondering the same thing. You can edit recordings on Topfield PVRs.

Ian

The only PVRs I know of that can truly edit recordings are the antique SD Toppies and the good old DP series Beyonwiz PVRs. The TMS Topfields, T series Beyonwiz and Strong PVRs just pretend to edit the recording (so don't really save any HDD space). It's like a very time consuming Manually setup AutoSkip...

Beyonwiz T series and Humax PVRs cannot edit recordings (pretend or real).

(ignoring the autoskip for a minute - which BTW, does not say anywhere in the manual that it is an optional extra) you can set the skip function for one time limit only.  Say, 3 minutes.  If the commercial is longer or shorter than that, too bad.

if the commercial is longer than 3 minutes you would do the same as on your antique toppy or any other PVR. i.e. Skip back 10 or 15 or 20 seconds. With just two manual skip buttons you wouldn't set one of them to 3 minutes. You'd set it to 30 seconds (and press it 5 times or just hold it for a second). If you had 4 manual skip buttons you might set one to 3 minutes and one to 30 seconds. And set the back buttons to 3 minutes and 10 or 15 seconds. This is exactly the same as 99% of the PVRs out there. Having AutoSkip doesn't limit the manual skip in any way.

the "i-Plate" will allow you to have a quick look at what's on the channel you're watching (wouldn't you know that already?)

Not if you are zapping channels looking for something to watch.

And you are forever being directed to your tablet or iPhone or PC.  I don't own a tablet, my iPhone (even if it was right next to me, which it usually isn't) has too small a screen for comfort, and if I wanted to go to the PC in the middle of watching TV, just to change the setting, then why do I have a TV?

Instead lets spend half the night on a computer playing with TEDS software when we should be at the TV - with or without a tablet or phone on the coffee table (it's optional).

There were more...  Amazing how much my ancient Toppy 5K can do that the Skippa apparently can't  :'(

You haven't really listed anything yet.  8)

Without really trying I can list 3 major things the skippa (or almost any HD IceTV compatible PVR) can do that an old SD toppy can't:

1. View and Record the HD channels.
2. Record more than 2 channels at once.
3. Use IceTV smart recording.

I'm sorry Judy but you are just making excuses to make yourself feel better for choosing to battle on with an old SD toppy while the rest of us look forward to using our new Skippa.

We may be getting off topic, but is there not some legislation requiring truth in advertising?  The EPG is a form of advertising the networks products (the programmes that they broadcast) and are they not required to advertise honestly?

I believe that the networks are only required to accurately advertise their shows' (intended) start times during prime-time on the day the shows air. And this is only due to parental ratings (e.g. so kids don't see a few minutes of an adult show that started earlier than advertised). This is why, in the FTA guide, you see the networks changing their start times in ridiculous 1 minute increments during the current day.