IceTV Resurrected

Started by Dave at IceTV, October 16, 2015, 11:59:20 AM

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simoncasey

Quote from: antmanThe offer would have been made to, and accepted by, the administrator, not any of the secured creditors (proofs of debt have not been finalised yet)
The meeting on Friday was the first meeting of the creditors so I think they would have agreed it.

antman

Quote from: hutch on October 20, 2015, 05:24:37 PM
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 true. It's a new company. At least one of the directors of the old company is a director of the new company but I haven't seen any information on other directors or the shareholders. They have employed some of the employees of the old company who know how to use the assets they have acquired to run the EPG service and related services.

What they haven't acquired is the cashflow (or cash) or of the old company so, given that they are starting from scratch, how do they pay the bills (including staff wages) if they "honour" subscriptions paid to a different business that has gone bust (not that they have any legal obligations to honour the obligations owed by a separate company)?

antman

#167
Quote from: simoncasey on October 20, 2015, 05:49:17 PM
Quote from: antmanThe offer would have been made to, and accepted by, the administrator, not any of the secured creditors (proofs of debt have not been finalised yet)
The meeting on Friday was the first meeting of the creditors so I think they would have agreed it.

Probably, but the purchasers would not have made the offer to the creditors and the creditors wouldn't have received any money and still may not, depending on what is available once the liquidation has finished. There can't be any distribution to creditors while the process of identifying them is still on foot, among many other reasons. I accept that the administrator's acceptance was possibly subject to agreement at the creditors' meeting but I don't think that the administrators would be obliged to obtain the agreement of creditors unless they enter into a scheme of arrangement.

TimC

Quote from: Cashie on October 20, 2015, 03:23:29 PM
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.

Icebox, Fetch box (Not IceTV Capable)

Dacho

Dave that's fantastic news, your support over the years has been exceptional.
Not many places you can ring on a Saturday to find they are in the process of responding to the email you've just sent and then fix things while your on the phone.
Using EPG on TV compared to icetv has always lead me and my wife to want icetv, with icetv removing the pause between changing channels.
Skippa is my 3rd STB connected to ICETV and I'm up for continuing paying an ongoing subscription.
Nice to have the latest Firmware and the autoskip processing now not getting stuck on files.
All the best to the team and also thanks for taking the risk of producing the perfect STB with ICETV integration.
D

antman

Quote from: TimC on October 20, 2015, 06:35:01 PM
Quote from: Cashie on October 20, 2015, 03:23:29 PM
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.

That's how I look at it too.

Quote from: TimC on October 20, 2015, 06:35:01 PM
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.

I'm curious about that too. I wonder whether there is any possibility of court action against UEC for breach of contract.

Quote from: TimC on October 20, 2015, 06:35:01 PM
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.

I suspect that it wasn't accessible at all and went into paying other bills: wages, aged creditors, development costs, etc. rather than it being invested somewhere and accessible, even if not at short notice. Presumably, they intended to pay for the earlier units ordered from UAC out of the cash flow from later units and other operations or perhaps from borrowings but that these did not eventuate in sufficient time.

I never took out a subscription of more than 12 months at a time, even with the generous discounts offered from time to time, not so much because I thought that they wouldn't be honoured but because I just don't know when developments in technology (or me adopting a different technology) or a competitor offering a better service might render IceTV obsolete. However, I was a little concerned that some of the offers appeared to be overly prioritising bringing in short-term cash at the expense of long-term cash flow.

One thing that I think is clear is that those waiting on undelivered Skippas will be out of luck. Undoubtedly, the contract between UAC and IceTV would have provided for automatic termination if either party entered administration so there is no longer any obligation on UAC to supply units. Since it is likely that IceTV never owned any of the undelivered units, customers have no legal claim against UAC to deliver them.


drumkit

#171
I find it interesting reading all the supportive posts that go.

"Oh ive been ripped off (and you have been) but I'm happy to pay again for the service because it was/is so wonderful."

Yes the service was good.   I would have even thought about repurchasing it but having the same person in charge who ran it before feels wrong especially when so many people lost their money.   Almost inevitably those people who posts the most supportive posts have huge numbers of posts on the forum here (what can you possibly post 1000+ posts on a support forum for a EPG???).   That feels cult like.   "I've just been ripped off but I still love the person who did it".

Some accused me of being Angry in the reply to my previous post.  Not at all I've lost very little (probably six months and that was discounted) and have a fairly unbiased opinion on what is happening here.  I don't get how people can be so rabidly supportive of the rerisen company.  I definitely understand the people who will re-sign up (because it serves a purpose) I just don't get the unwavering support posts.



Oh and lets put the $7.99/month in perspective.   Its not that great a deal.   For $8.99/month you can get netflix (sd) which actually includes the content as well as something akin to an EPG (eg a selection control/search etc..). 


raj

#172
Quote from: hutch on October 20, 2015, 05:24:37 PM
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.

raj

Quote from: antman on October 20, 2015, 05:12:53 PMIt doesn't appear that is what has happened here. In this case, a new company has purchased the assets of the company in administration (it appears only those assets related to the EPG and related services as well as the business name "IceTV" but not any assets related to the Skippa) with a view to operating them to provide a similar service to that provided by the original company. Only those assets have been acquired and no debt has been paid out: all of the debts and other obligations (as well as the rights and benefits) of the previous company stay with that company under the control of the administrator. The offer would have been made to, and accepted by, the administrator, not any of the secured creditors (proofs of debt have not been finalised yet) There has been no indication yet that any creditors have been paid out or a scheme of arrangement entered into nor whether any liabilities have been carried over in relation to employees (accrued annual leave, long service leave, etc.) who have been employed by the new company. Whatever was paid for the assets will go into the pool available to pay out the administrators and then creditors according to the order of priority set down by the relevant laws, predominantly the (Commonwealth) Corporations Act.

The order of priorities goes:

Government (in particular ATO, but also takes into account things like rates)
Administrator
Secured creditor(s)
Unsecured creditors (all of us including employees, their unused leave, superannuation that has not been paid in, etc)

The only problem is that by the time it gets to the unsecured creditors, there is little left if anything.

I got caught up when a client of mine went in to voluntary administration and I was owed just under $10,000. After over 12 months in administration, the unsecured creditors (all of us including employees, their unused leave, superannuation that has not been paid in, etc) ended up with just under 23 c in the $. The bank sold its debt to an unsecured creditor who was owed the most for even less than that, and the one who was the sole secured creditor and the largest unsecured creditor ended up with the company assets minus all the liabilities where he sold the remnants to another company and covered his debt. The rest of us missed out.

It is a mess.

simoncasey

Quote from: drumkit on October 20, 2015, 07:47:05 PM
I find it interesting reading all the supportive posts that go.

"Oh ive been ripped off (and you have been) but I'm happy to pay again for the service because it was/is so wonderful."

Yes the service was good.   I would have even thought about repurchasing it but having the same person in charge who ran it before feels wrong especially when so many people lost their money.   Almost inevitably those people who posts the most supportive posts have huge numbers of posts on the forum here (what can you possibly post 1000+ posts on a support forum for a EPG???).   That feels cult like.   "I've just been ripped off but I still love the person who did it".

Some accused me of being Angry in the reply to my previous post.  Not at all I've lost very little (probably six months and that was discounted) and have a fairly unbiased opinion on what is happening here.  I don't get how people can be so rabidly supportive of the rerisen company.  I definitely understand the people who will re-sign up (because it serves a purpose) I just don't get the unwavering support posts.



Oh and lets put the $7.99/month in perspective.   Its not that great a deal.   For $8.99/month you can get netflix (sd) which actually includes the content as well as something akin to an EPG (eg a selection control/search etc..).
A lot of the people who are supportive do not feel they have been ripped off. Lost money, yes. But ripped off implies a deliberate action by the party. We are yet to see if what they did was deliberate or just ill conceived. And we don't know whose fault it is.

simoncasey

#175
Quote from: raj on October 20, 2015, 08:41:03 PM

The order of priorities goes:

Government (in particular ATO, but also takes into account things like rates)
Administrator
Secured creditor(s)
Unsecured creditors (all of us including employees, their unused leave, superannuation that has not been paid in, etc)

The only problem is that by the time it gets to the unsecured creditors, there is little left if anything.

I got caught up when a client of mine went in to voluntary administration and I was owed just under $10,000. After over 12 months in administration, the unsecured creditors (all of us including employees, their unused leave, superannuation that has not been paid in, etc) ended up with just under 23 c in the $. The bank sold its debt to an unsecured creditor who was owed the most for even less than that, and the one who was the sole secured creditor and the largest unsecured creditor ended up with the company assets minus all the liabilities where he sold the remnants to another company and covered his debt. The rest of us missed out.

It is a mess.
That is not the correct order. The ato are a creditor. Employees are priority creditors and get paid before unsecured creditors. The first people to get paid are creditors established during the administration phase. The administrators personally guarantee the running of the business during administration and if there is no money to cover the business during that period, then the administrators are personally liable.

jeisner

#176
Quote from: raj on October 20, 2015, 08:30:44 PM
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... ...

Paul55

Quote from: jeisner on October 20, 2015, 09:01:35 PM
Anyway no reason to hang around here, thanks for all the fish... ...

Ok, off you go then

TimC

Icebox, Fetch box (Not IceTV Capable)

Heideho

It's disappointing reading the negative comments showing up now there is a future for the EPG. As one who contemplated the future without it I'm pretty happy that IceTV is still around. Sad to be financially disadvantaged? Certainly. But, lesser of two evils in my case. Keep up the great work IceTV people and hopefully we'll soon forget the sad times.
Brisbane