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The SKIPPA manual and quick start guide can be downloaded here:
http://support.icetv.com.au/entries/69766800-Product-Manuals-SKIPPA

YAY!

And even though there is so much discussion about it, they certainly aren't in a hurry to comer on here and explain anything.
Very poor I would say!

They really don't need to explain anything other than they're going to be a bit later than expected. Nothing new with pre-orders not arriving at the exact time originally mentioned.

Also, most well regarded companies that take pre-orders, don't actually take your money until they ship....

I've seen plenty of  pre-orders online and they all wanted full payment up front (like crowd sourcing and group buys). Except all other pre-orders wanted everyone to pay full price. This is the first one I've seen where you could save $200 (33% of the RRP). I've never taken part in any before and always ended up either missing out altogether or waiting many extra months for the second batch to arrive long after those who pre-ordered received theirs.

As for them waiting until Friday to tell us skippa would be delayed, I'd like to think they didn't find out themselves until Thursday or Friday.

This week my TIVO has died. Its stuck in bootup. Id say the harddrive is gone...
I now have no TV. Im might have to buy a tuner while i wait for the Skippa to arrive.

You could try running the TiVO without a hard drive, as a set top box, to give you a digital tuner until your skippa arrives. Unplug the TiVO from the power point, let it sit a while to drain off any residual power, then remove the cover and unplug the cable(s) from the HDD. The tivo may still not boot up, but it's worth a try.

Wow.......that didn't go well. ...

I'm confused Rat. You post comments sounding like you are out to sabotage skippa... but then you add a comment suggesting you actually ordered your own skippa (or maybe the company you work for ordered the skippa...)

[not]

No, the first ad did not mention that the autoskip is part of the special offer  (as it proclaimed loudly for the IceTV subscription)  The fact that  it wasn't built into the unit out of the  box wasn't mentioned until this ad.
And no, I am "whinging" because I don't like false advertising, which is what this was, and I would get a bad taste in my mouth, even if I had purchased one already, because I do agree that they  are making  it up as they go, which does not fill me with confidence.

Actually it was clear to those who read between the lines that the pre-order was a bargain. There were 3 balloons indicating 3 benefits of the initial 'pre-order offer':

• Red outline: Free IceTV for the life of your SKIPPA.
• Green outline: No Annual Fees - ever!
• Solid Blue: $399 $599 RRP inc. GST Save $200

The red and green balloons suggested (to me) that the 'Free IceTV" and "No Annual Fees - ever" were 2 separate benefits of the pre-order offer and were subject to change.

The 'pre-order extension offer' has purple and green balloons stating:

• Purple outline: 1 year AutoSkip Included Valued at $39
• Green outline: Free IceTV for the life of your SKIPPA.
• The price isn't in a balloon this time: $449 RRP $599 inc. GST Save $150

The logical conclusion would be clever algorithms that can be automatically updated as needed.

Not sure what is meant by the process described in the earlier post of copying URL from a Network Media player. This suggests that the Skippa is some sort of server (probably DLNA?). It would seem to me that you could use that URL to configure an ftp client to access recordings located on the Skippa on a PC/MAC.

Ian

It's easy enough in Windows Media Player. See the attached images for steps 1 and 2.

Step 1: In Windows Media Player, right-click on the recording and select Properties.
Step 2: Highlight the first line of the Location link, right-click and select Copy.
Step 3: Right-click in your web browser's address bar and select Paste.
Step 4: Press Enter and wait for the file to download to your browser's default download folder.
Step 5: You can rename the file after it has downloaded, otherwise it will have a number as the name.

It seems that DNLA media servers need to build a library everytime they are started, that sounds very slow and frustrating and a major step back.

Yes, this is painful. I do not know if it is the DLNA server that is building the list rather than the DLNA player. For some reason I had assumed that it was the latter.

That's not been my experience. A DLNA server app does take a very long time to index all of your media if you have TBs of videos, music and photos files but it should only do it once after the initial install. After the initial scan to build the index it only needs to add any new files to the index. Of course adding new folders to be indexed will cause some additional pain.

[lot]

By software, I am talking about the nuances, that we won't know until we see the manual.  Mainly (in my case) I want to know how it will compare to TEDS.

You can see here what TEDS could do http://home.exetel.com.au/trappett/teds/  The reason I have held onto Toppy5K this long is because of TEDS.

Reading what it can do, obviously some of those things are not needed with the Skippa, but I am still not clear on  how the Skippa would handle some of the handy things that TEDS is so good at, like, for instance, handling conflicts.  OK, I realise that  conflicts would be a lot less frequent on the Skippa than on the 2 tuner Toppy, but  we still don't know how they will be handled when they occur, or (for instance) can the padding be varied by show or at least network?
Or, (another great way to avoid conflicts) can one pick which repeats one wants to record?  I mean, if there is a show that I like that gets repeated several times during the week, the first one showing in prime time, so it may clash with other shows, but some of the repeats do not.  So, with TED, I can mark that show to record repeats, but only on, say, Saturday night.  So, I don't end up with 4 recordings of the same show and I can choose to record the show at a time when it is least likely to clash with other programs.

Anyway, these are the sorts of things I meant when I said we are still in the dark about the software

Judy, your concerns seem to come from never having used IceTV smart recording. TEDS and your old SD toppy only use the IceTV TV guide.

Most of what TED/S does IceTV smart recording does too. The only TEDS features that IceTV doesn't have (yet) are star ratings to automatically manage conflicts and separate padding options per TV network or channel or channel type (Commercial versus National).

Star ratings for each series really aren't needed when you can record more than 2 shows at once, and they're not wanted if you prefer to manage your recording schedule yourself. If there's a conflict I want to decide what gets dropped. When I used TEDS (8 years ago) I had most of my shows set to 5 stars because I wanted to record them. If I didn't really want to record them I wouldn't have scheduled them in the first place. The shows I didn't care about (which had 1 star) ended up getting cancelled by me anyway. Which made the whole star rating system pointless for me.

When using IceTV smart recording, if you notice a conflict you can set a keyword recording to make that show only record repeats, or set a series to only record on the HD channel or only on SD channels or to only record at a certain time of day or only record 1 episode per day.

Conflicts are handled by the PVRs (not just skippa) then the PVR reports the conflict to you (in My Week on the apps and website and optionally also via email). When you are alerted of a conflict (which is usually 5 days away) you can manage your recording schedules to avoid the conflict this one time or for all future episodes.

When you stream skippa recordings to an ipad or iphone can we then airplay it to an AppleTV?

By using an iOS App, like 8player, that supports AirPlay and DLNA media servers you can use your iPad or iPhone to access media on DLNA servers and stream the media to your Apple TV... except Apple products only support H.264 (.mp4) video files and Australian PVR recordings are mpeg2-ts.

You might want to get a WD TV Live Streaming Media Player as they support DLNA and mpeg2-ts.

They could answer my question with "IceTV choose to withhold the information regarding the manufacturer of Skippa due to commercial confidentiality reasons" then I would have to accept that.

I can't really understand why they would say that, but I'm sure there is much about their business I don't understand, I am no expert.

You answered your own questions. Commercial confidentiality agreements and licensing etc. TiVO, Fetch, Foxtel, Beyonwiz etc don't mention who makes their boxes, so why should IceTV.

I guess that as soon as Skippa is released that someone with a great deal of knowledge about the hardware will open the box up and have a look and will probably know from that who makes it. That is why I don't understand the thoughts behind trying to keep it a secret.

Someone voiding their warranty to open the case and guesstimate who made the box is different to a company breaching any commercial confidentiality or marketing agreements.

I assume that IceTV have chosen a well known and trusted manufacturer that has a history of producing quality PVR hardware, so why would they not want to promote that?

Realistically Skippa should stand on it's own build quality and reliability without needing to bolster it's image by referring to a manufacturer's past successes.

At first I thought maybe the question had not been noticed, that is why I posted it again, but it is now apparent that IceTV chose to ignore it instead of addressing. That is why my tone changed and yes I accept that I did sound demanding and in hindsight I would have been better off just letting it go rather than letting being ignored annoy me.

Have you considered that those answering this forum may not know the answer, or aren't allowed to answer your question. Posts can often be overlooked if other people post shortly after you, resulting in only the last post getting noticed. Other times it may be a case of "I don't the answer so I'll try to find the answer and reply later" or "I don't know the answer so I'll leave it for someone else to reply" (but everyone else is thinking the same thing).

Also, product forums generally tend to be for users to help each other rather than for the manufacturer to answer each and every question.

I do hope the IceTV staff provide timely and appropriate responses to the numerous questions that will no doubt fill these forums when Skippa gets to people's homes.

I expect they will provide their usual level of service.

Not upgrading to Windows 10 is not an option for security considerations and quite frankly if Microsoft is not supporting media centre, then I am not going to support Microsoft.

Why ditch Media Center and Windows 7 or 8.1 just because Windows 10 is coming? Media Center still works extremely well in Win7 and 8.1 and you already own it and have it working how you want, right, so why change?

I had the same problem in trying to find out what Apps are supported. It appears that some devices have restricted lists of what Apps are available.

Ian

Correct, not all devices have all of the apps available. I believe skippa will only have the best apps and not include most of the less popular or less useful apps.

The Opera TV Store website has an emulator available though the emulator only appears to be able to access foreign language apps.

You can install and run the emulator on a computer to imitate a (foreign?) TV, STB or PVR running Opera TV Store. This allows you to browse through and play with the 470 foreign language apps that Opera TV Store has available to the emulator.

Opera TV Store website emulator
http://www.operasoftware.com/products/tv-emulator

The emulator is a standalone file (after you unzip it) but you will need VirtualBox installed to run the emulator.
https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads

I started making a list of all of the apps the Opera TV Store emulator has but I gave up after 98 apps once I realised hardly any of them were English (even though some titles made the apps appear to be English). In the emulator there are about another 470 apps apart from those listed below (about 570 total apps available in the emulator).

EDIT: After shutting down the emulator and later opening it again it started showing me some English apps (though none are listed below).

iLIKE.TV
FPTPlay
DanceTrippin.tv
Viewster
swatch Freeried World Tour
Xb
The North Face
Outside Television
Feedback Kitchen
IFK Goteborg Play
Pitbull
NFB
GastroLab.TV
Lam dep Eva
Vimeo
20minutos
ArrivalTV
Skuff TV Action Sport
Gismeteo
FoodyTV
Redux
Opera Ads Showcase
Adaptive Streaming
CNBC Real-Time
DriveCast
Volume TV
DTS Entertainment
Sony Movie Showtime
Inside The Americas
The World Today with Tario Ali
Dailymotion UK News
Auto Video Review
Imaginary Lines
The Cocktail Spirit
AOL On
Diagonal View
Vegas Sports Advisors
Cultura Latina
Tips for life
Brittany Furlan
Tikclone
TG4
Celebrity Wire Entertainment
Media Review
La Mega Mundial
Fame Comedy
Uzoo
Fame Food
Dailymotion News
Raw Country
AllTime10s
MUZU
Portico Free TV
Blastro
Aupeo
Laura Flanders Show
Splash Entertainment
Absolute Radio
Action24
Astrology - Daily Horoscopes
aANG Showbiz
Baseball Drills and Tips
Basketball Drills and Tips
Tennis Drills and Tips
Hockey Drills and Tips
Viddsee
Smooth Radio
Stop Over
The Mahogany Session
The Show
TheNewContent
ThePapiGfunk
Peregrine Dame
Rooftop Comedy
Rototom Sunsplash
Roxwel
RTV Bor
PRO Production
Ruptly.TV in English
Radio Sentidos
Reboot Entertainment
Weird News Wire
XFM
Whiskey.com
Who Got Next
Ininterview
Unhinged Gamer
Havoc Television
Green.TV
Howdini
iG Comida
iG Delas
iG Gente
Footballtricksonline
Forte Jazz player
Forte Chillout
FY! Magazine
GFQ Network

[not]

I still can't understand what it is about the Skippa that is "not shareable"   ;D

'Not sharable' means you cannot create, move, rename and delete folders or move, rename and delete recordings on the PVR's hard drive while sitting at your home computer. You also cannot copy home videos and photos from your computer to the PVR's hard drive or copy recordings from the PVR to computer.

Network sharing allows a shared drive or folder on a computer (or PVR) to be accessible in 'My Computer' on a Windows PC that is on the same home network, as well as in the Mac and Linux equivalent of 'My Computer'. If you have 2 or more computers on your network and can open My Computer on PC 1 and browse the My Documents, My Pictures or My Music folders on PC 2 then you are using network sharing.

Windows 7 and newer has Home Group which is like a plug-n-play variation of network sharing (using SMB 2 in the background). The network protocol that Microsoft uses is SMB 2 (and SMB 3 in Win 8 ). SMB is also known as Samba - and CIFS which is an old form of SMB. Mac and Linux computers default to using different or more robust protocols like AFP and NFS.

If you can sit at your computer at home and browse files (documents, photos, music or video) stored on another computer at home or a home NAS server, or a USB drive plugged into your router, or browse photos and video on your security camera(s) or browse recordings on your PVR(s) or media center PCs etc then you are using some form of network sharing.

Network sharing only works within a home network. It is not supported over the Internet.

Your old SD toppy is not network sharable. If you had a Beyonwiz T3 it would be because it has SMB and NFS, and maybe also AFP.

The SOC used on the Skippa seems to have 6 recording slots (and presumably one timeshift slot).

The Australian TiVos only had 2 tuners. So if you are zapping between multiple channels, does the timeshift buffer contain all of those channel changes? If yes, then that is of limited value as you can't skip back beyond what you've already seen during your channel zapping. 

I believe the skippa can only timeshift 1 channel at a time (as most PVRs do). But in my experience, timeshifting (on any PVR) is risky as you can lose the timeshift buffer if you accidentally change channels or a recording starts that needs the tuner you were using to timeshift. I find that if what I am viewing is interesting enough to timeshift it is interesting enough to record, so I just skip back to the start of the show and press record. Then I can go ahead an timeshift another channel (and if it is interesting enough I'll record it too).

With the skippa being able to record 6 shows at once and timeshift a 7th there's plenty of flexibility to record the shows you may have timeshifted on a TiVo.