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I am one year into a four year subscription. I paid $140 it. Seeing as IceTV is still IceTV (resurrected), I think my subscription should be honoured.

Not nice, but consider this. Around 14 months ago I purchased the same 4 year extension to my IceTV subscription. Then after receiving the latest offer in August this year, I decided to purchase a further 5 year extension. This was August 14. So I have something like 9 years left to run.

I have registered a Proof of Debt for the $229 (and a bit) I am owed for the purchase of a subscription that I will now not have honoured.

I'm a little confused on the timeline here.
...
Perhaps I have missed something ?

No, you have not. There is a well known crane manufacturer that does the same thing. Over the past 30 years, it has had numerous bouts of administration where they have risen from the ashes. The common thing is that the new name always starts with a V.

In this case, it comes down to the how much is owed, and whether the bank (generally the only secured creditor) is open to an offer.

What happens is that someone who know the bank is not going to get far will approach the bank and make them an offer. The secured creditor knows that the way to get the most is to keep the administrators hands off the assets as they will quickly dwindle. The other group is lawyers. The last thing they want is for it to end up in court.

So, an offer is made to the secured creditor to buy its debt for a very small amount. The bank will be able to offset its income against the loss, so the bank might have received only say 20 c in the $ if it went through normally. Someone with money might offer the bank say 10 c in the dollar or even less. The bank knows it will get this immediately, whereas in administration, it could drag on for years and the bank might actually end up with only 1 or 2 c in the dollar.

So, the company starts again minus the debts.

So, there are a couple of things to do. The first is to complete and mail in the POD document the administrators have sent out. You can get your transaction history, and the renewals are always added to the end of any existing subscription.

The next is to never go for a long subscription period as you have no way of knowing how long a company will be in business for.

In the case of IceTV, my guess is that it was the attempt to get into the PVR marked that was the cause of the current problems. Product development is a money pit, and the assumption here was that the first attempt would be successful. The reality is that there are many failed products that go through the development cycle before you get your first successful one. Why do you think companies buy out competitors rather than compete?

About the only thing that might sway those taken for a ride will be that they are only going to be out by $7.99 if things go pear shaped.

Essentially, the new owners are on notice. Screw with the customers, and they will end up being screwed as well, because there are no more chances.

If they cannot make a go of it, don't promise something that you know cannot be delivered.

Oh, and good to see that the staff have kept their jobs, that is really the most important thing here.

Hopefully NOT the ones that saw the company end up in the state that it is, otherwise, this might end up as the definitive phoenix company.

I agree; there are a lot of services provided beyond the provision of the EPG that for me is worth $8/m.

That may be the case if you were just paying a $7.99/month fee, but IceTV gladly took $149 from me last year and $125 from me in late August this year, so it is hard to see how that then becomes worth it.

As a minimum, the most recent payment should be returned as there is no way that management would not have known there was a problem then. These things do not happen so suddenly.

What would be your reaction if you had to pay close to $25/month or more? Would it be worthwhile then? In my case given I have something approaching $250 going to dust in the space of a few weeks makes it not so good at all!

Goods News Everyone

The necessary staff with IceTV experience have returned and the IceTV TV Guide will resume being updated from tomorrow.

Existing accounts, including series recordings etc, remain intact. But unfortunately any remaining time on existing subscriptions from the old IceTV company will expire *soon.

Not necessarily great news.

It is a matter of just weeks ago that IceTV ran a promotion where they were quite happy to offer extensions to subscriptions and take money all the while knowing that they were in trouble. It is never a case of everything going along smoothly and then suddenly falling off the cliff. It was late August with no hint of a problem that saw me extend my subscription that I had a while to run with. I did this because there was no hint of any issue and I figured that I would take it up with there being a mutual benefit to both parties. Then just weeks later I get the e-mail saying that the company is in administration!

My account status with years to go on it all makes this a little hollow. About the only thing in its favour for subscribers to any new service is that the most you can lose is $7.99 rather than the several hundred dollars.

Thanks for the suggestions. I'll give it a go.

I suppose this is what "catch up TV" is for :(

G'day,

I am currently interstate for around 4 weeks and I wanted to be able to control recordings via IceTV. Some channels have taken to changing the time of recordings to thwart PVR's.

Before I left, I made the mistake of setting the unit on standby. As a result, the BW will only wake up when a scheduled recording is to start.

Is there any way that the BW can be controlled via IceTV so stay on so that changes made via IceTV can happen as the information is exchanged?

Thanks.

Fairly Sure C31 Melbourne aren't sending an EPG, at least not yet.
However, they do send the papers and others a guide, wouldn't take much for IceTV to request a copy.

In Sydney it is TVS, and TVS have been providing their own EPG. It seems that the issue here is that IceTV want it in a particular format and TVS aren't doing this.

G'day,

It is a kludge, but I think this is what is intended.

Disable IceTV EPG on your PVR. This will enable the standard FTA EPG.

Now make Channel 31 (or should that now be 44 :) ) your current channel. This will see it get the 7 day FTA EPG.

Now go back and turn the IceTV EPG back on.

You will need to do this every 7 days, or if you switch things off.

It is a bit of a kludge, but hopefully IceTV and the community broadcasters can get their act together.

I am surprised it has gone on for this long. Surely advertisers cannot be aware of this as if they were, they would be jumping up and down. How difficult can it be? IceTV need the data in a certain format. TVS (or whatever they are called where you are) have data even if it is in a different format. All that needs to happen is for an application to be written to translate it from one format into another.

There is another thread called 'WTV Perth' where I've answered this query. TVS are fine about us having their guide and we're fine to take it. However, they have acknowledged there is work needed on their data delivery. We await an outcome as eagerly as you. Hopefully not too far away.

Well, for the past week I have been unable to use the IceTV guide as my Minitar Ethernet>wireless bridge decided that it was not going to do any wireless any more. As a result I had to rely on just the FTA EPG. Interestingly there was a very good EPG being provided by TVS. Unfortunately I have not been able to merge the IceTV EPG and the FTA EPG for TVS.

It is a real pity that this cannot be advanced as there are a lot of excellent programs that go missing because of this.