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I saw something somewhere that some plugpacks were off voltage an causing problems. 

It may be worth buying an equivalent off the shelf plugpack and trying it.

Have a look in some of the "freezing" bug reports for where it was discussed.

The new firmware 1.1.10604 fixes Addskip, but there are a couple of other fairly minor bugs though.

I have noticed difficulty starting a playback sometimes. e.g
I open "My Recordings", scroll down to the required recording and press the "Ok" button on the remote.

The result: the screen goes blank for a second or so and then shows Live TV.

Opening "My Recordings" again shows the recording highlighted and an arrow pointing to the right. e.g. as if I had pressed the the "#" button. At least I think it is "#". It could be the "*" button. (I am working from memory at the moment)

I can repeat this exercise many times before it will start and I am yet to find an alternative approach start a playback.

If anyone can suggest a work around, please help.

On a sidenote, is there any value in continuing with bug reports?

Dave,

What I am finding is that regardless of where I am it always takes you back to the beginning of the previous add break.

The result is that if an addskip happens a bit early, it is difficult to navigate back to the beginning of the break.

I can't help thinking that "Chris" must have paid a fairly hefty price to re-own the EPG subscription service.

This is my take on Administration
Administrators aren't altruistic. They administer because they make money doing it. How?

They take control of the company. They pay themselves a fairly hefty "salary". Salary is not quite the right word here but it serves. 

If the company can support them and continue to make a profit they eventually step back, take their salary and leave the original owners to continue less a lot of their spare cash.
The reality is that most healthy businesses can't survive this process let alone a strugglling one.

If the company can't support them and continue to profit, they usually sell off the assets for as much as they can get, and negotiate with the various creditors to accept a cent in the dollar amount, so they (the creditors) can realise their loss and write it off against their tax. While all this is going on the administrators are paying themselves their hefty "salary" out of what remains of the company's cashflow.

When all the negotiations are finalised, the company no longer exists. The secured creditors get a little back, the unsecured creditors (Us) get virtually nothing, and the original owners lose any money they had invested in the original company (unless they had somehow siphoned of the money before the administrators got involved).

This discription is probably too simplistic but there you go.

I find it interesting that the admistrator was willing to sell off the part of the business that was capable of profit so early in the process.
I am not saying the administrator or the original owners have done anything underhanded by the way.

Maybe the fact the UEC/Altech has shut up shop in Australia means that the Shop side of the business can be wound up pretty quickly.

However I'm happy.  I lost a bit of subscription, but my EPG service continues for a reasonable cost. I was one of the lucky ones to receive a Skippa. Its a little buggy, but I can workaround most of them.

My only concern is whether the EPG service will be able to continue with development of the Skippa firmware to eradicate the remaining bugs. 
I can't see any profit in it for them, so I'm guessing not, but I can hope.

Personally Id rather not have the ability to set the series by the remote.

The fact that the data on the Skippa can replace the data held at IceTV means that it is pretty easy to lose your older series recordings. 

I lost most of mine early on due to a bug, but I can see lots of ways that it can all go wrong.  I'm happy using my phone app.

I am wondering.  Is the company providing the new EPG service operating under the administration or is it operating independantly on it's own. i.e. free and clear of administration.

Ok, off you go then

Hear Hear

I have found a new bug in 1110604. 

When you press the Back add skip button it jumps back to the end of the previous set of adds rather than the beginning of the latest set of adds. (See Below)
                                                  When you
              Jumps back                   Press button
              to here                          Here
CCCCCCCAAAAAAACCCCCCAAAAAACCCCC

I have found I had to go to manual skip because the auto skip tends to jump Too early (About a second - a lot can happen in a second.) It really needs to delay until the add just starts so you know you have seen all the content.

I have decided the new charges are unreasonable for the service and I've found an alternative solution (TiVo).

Good for you. 

However I have yet to see anything that does what IceTV does. It saves me the time to go hunting through guides each week to find what I want to record.
To me it is well worth $8 a month. As for trust, I don't care. If they go bust again, I'll lose $8. Big deal.

However, I am curious why so many seem to be venting on IceTV when UEC/Altech seems to be more likely to be the problem.
From what I have read, they appear to have been throwing their weight around by changing the terms of payments with little or no notice.

While I look forward to finding out where the up-front money paid for the Skippas ended up, I can also appreciate that in business, having a pool of money sitting in a low interest bank account while you are waiting for something to happen is just plain dumb.  You put it where you can get the best return on investment.
However when a supplier changes the terms of payments you may not be able to access it quickly enough and that can be terminal.

IceTV chose to go into voluntary administration instead of waiting for UEC/Altech to force the issue.
At least one of their original owners has reinvested money to keep at least the EPG service running. I don't see that as dishonourable.

UEC/Altech appear to have just closed their doors and shut up shop (with all the remaining Skippas).  It seems that to them, writing off the remaining Skippas was easier than waiting for IceTV to sort out its cashflow. They seem to have little concern for what happens to IceTV, or those people that have paid up front. My guess is that there was a bit of fault on both sides, but when a huge multinational clashes with a relatively small Australian business guess who gets smashed.

Granted IceTV should have been better prepared and as a result lots of people are getting hurt, although it seems to be Papal and the credit card companies are more likely to bear the brunt of most of it. The fact that the company is in administration does not automatically mean there has been some skullduggery on IceTVs part.

Dave,

Can the older firmwares be placed somewhere, so we can go back to one if we have a problem?

That's a lot of moolah, even for a company the size of UEC. Will there be a rebirth of these machine with perhaps a new logo stuck over the Skippa label?

Add FTA EPG harvesting and you have a "standard" PVR with ICETV as an option just like the Humax, Wizes, Toppys, Strongs, etc. Then clear up the current bugs and presto, we have a working reincarnation of our Skippa.

Hmmm. I wonder how hard it would be to stick the Skippa Software on it?

[real]

The only problem with that is (from previous experience) that if you want to cancel one, they insist on issuing you with a new card, which is a real pain.  I have lots of direct debits going through my credit card

I would have thought that cancelling would simply be a matter of logging on to your account in IceTV and cancelling there.

Apologies, I placed the original of this message in the wrong forum.

Thanks for the initial message Warkus.  I just found it and my claim is now in.
Its definitely worth a try.

I have already lodged are report with IceTV. It's not an account issue as I have only ever had one.
I have been told that the new firmware will fix the problem. Apparently it will fix many things.
I wonder what new bugs it will introduce.

Regardless, I think it is important that everyone knows that this bug is there so they can check their old timers.

I haven't seen anything in the other bug reports reporting it.

I always expected there would be a few issues from the start.
It is a new produce doing things that haven't been done before (e.g. setting Series Reordings directly from the PVR).
However this one hurts, as one of the most important things IceTV provides is that history. Over time I began to trust it.
I can't remember what all those old timers were.