Information on new HD Channels & response to FreeTV's EPG Announcement

Started by Daniel Hall at IceTV, November 19, 2007, 02:14:29 PM

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Kirben

Sounds like baturbo wants an accurate TV guide for Seven HD, considering it is available in other TV guides, and the price paid for the IceTV service.

The Seven HD channel is currently showing different content in afternoon and evening time slots, so the current data provided by IceTV isn't accurate at the moment.

Unfortunately IceTV are waiting for SevenHD to go full strength programming, with the TV guide added two weeks about that. Maybe IceTV can clarify what they mean by full strength programming?


dgaust

I would assume that would be 2 weeks from Monday. As of yesterday, they're now showing 50 hours of alternate programming a week on the HD channel.

Daniel Hall at IceTV

We understand the frustration that some of our users have at the moment with their not being any programming information for the new HD Channels within the IceTV EPG service.

As most of our subscribers are aware, we receive no official support from any of the commercial free-to-air TV networks and therefore are unable to provide accurate TV guide listings for the new Seven and Ten HD channels at this point in time.

We (and any other EPG provider that we know of) are not legally permitted to use the published information that is currently publicly available on their websites or their partnering websites. We have made formal requests to do so to both Networks, but unfortunately we have not been able to gain their permission.

Copying their published information is a direct breach of copyright and therefore if we did go ahead and simply copy this information, our service would be no different to that of the illegal, ‘scraped’ EPG services available and ultimately our service would cease to exist and our subscribers suffer.

We are not prepared to jeopardise our current service by doing this and we will continue to use our methods of prediction and independent compilation, even if it means that it may take 2-3weeks in order to have our listings made available.

Rest assured that our team is working very hard to release our own independent TV guide listings for these new Channels within the IceTV EPG as soon as humanly possible.

We are aiming for a possible release of this information in early 2008 and by this time we suspect that the two networks will have more consistent HD programming in place for us all to enjoy.

As soon as we can, we will include the information in our IceTV EPG service and we will notify all our users of great news.

In the meantime we hope you all have a fantastic Christmas and a Happy New Year and as always, we thank you for choosing IceTV.
Regards,

Daniel.
CTO.

Kirben

This is ridiculous, you promised proper TV guides for HD channels, 2-3 weeks after 'full sength' programming. And now you state maybe proper TV guides for HD channels in early 2008! with not even a specific month mentioned for 2008!

The 'methods of prediction' point is even more disappointing, I thought I was paying for an accurate TV guide. Not for any predictions of programming, which can never account for the frequent changes by commercial TV networks.

If you are able to compile an independent TV guide for the Seven, Nine and Ten networks, then why is it taking much longer for their HD channels?

I would ask about your sources of TV guide information, but I doubt that information would be provided.

chopper

Quote from: Daniel Hall on December 17, 2007, 02:21:17 PM
Rest assured that our team is working very hard to release our own independent TV guide listings for these new Channels within the IceTV EPG as soon as humanly possible.

We are aiming for a possible release of this information in early 2008 and by this time we suspect that the two networks will have more consistent HD programming in place for us all to enjoy.

As soon as we can, we will include the information in our IceTV EPG service and we will notify all our users of great news.

In the meantime we hope you all have a fantastic Christmas and a Happy New Year and as always, we thank you for choosing IceTV.

Thankyou.  Look forward to it.  Have a fantastic Christmas and a Happy New Year to you too.

Cheerio.

To the impatient others ... it's not the end of life on earth ! 

scoop98

Not good enough!

Quote
"We are not prepared to jeopardise our current service by doing this and we will continue to use our methods of prediction and independent compilation, even if it means that it may take 2-3weeks in order to have our listings made available."

You got to be kidding.  Do you use a psychic! 

My one year subscription is expiring on the 31/12/07...you can guess what I'll be doing!!

NOTE:- I sell Media Centre PC's as part of my job... You can guess that I will not be recommending IceTV for the foreseeable future.

Nomad

WTF? now ICE have removed the Ch70 and Ch12 HD info except for "wait till 2008".  This means all my Media Centre recordings set for these channels will fail.

Good effort guys. Not Happy

Damon

philzgr8

Absolutely disgraceful! You guys have been pushing your 12 month subscriptions while purporting to be in a position to provide an accurate guide which you now state you are not in a position to provide. I respectfully suggest that all subscriptions should now be suspended until an accurate guide is provided. To those who say it's not the end of the world... Of course it's not but I'm paying for a service and I'm not getting it. If my ISP tells me I can only connect to a percentage of the sites available I'll be going elsewhere or expecting a refund until they get it right and I don't see that Ice is any different. I think Ice has no real choice but to either suspend subscriptions immediately or refund a proportion of the subscription equivalent to the period where there service is incorrect!

scoop98

Quote from: philzgr8 on December 18, 2007, 08:36:58 AM
Absolutely disgraceful! You guys have been pushing your 12 month subscriptions while purporting to be in a position to provide an accurate guide which you now state you are not in a position to provide. I respectfully suggest that all subscriptions should now be suspended until an accurate guide is provided. To those who say it's not the end of the world... Of course it's not but I'm paying for a service and I'm not getting it. If my ISP tells me I can only connect to a percentage of the sites available I'll be going elsewhere or expecting a refund until they get it right and I don't see that Ice is any different. I think Ice has no real choice but to either suspend subscriptions immediately or refund a proportion of the subscription equivalent to the period where there service is incorrect!

Or they might put up prices "because of the extra work load" for the new HD channels!!!  Wouldn't that be popular!

Matt

Quote from: Nomad on December 17, 2007, 11:49:18 PM
This means all my Media Centre recordings set for these channels will fail.

Just to underscore this, I'm very frustrated with the Ice approach too.  I spoke to Daniel this morning so do understand that the predictability of shows on the HD channels was becoming increasingly difficult to pick but those of us who have spent some time in setting up HD recording schedules are now, effectively, screwed. 

The number of prime time shows that were ditched for multi-channeling were fairly minimal in my experience so the blanket approach seems rash.  A quick view of Anthony Simiion's fabulous "What's in High Definition this week" guide would back this up.  http://www.dtvforum.info/index.php?showtopic=28574

Ice: if you're going to make serious changes to the content which will effect our setups please give us some notice before simply turning it off.

philzgr8

Quote from: scoop98 on December 18, 2007, 09:49:00 AM
Or they might put up prices "because of the extra work load" for the new HD channels!!!  Wouldn't that be popular!
...and when they do it will become even more worthwhile to fund the development of an EIT stream scraper (the code for which already exists) which will provide for free a far more accurate EPG than IceTV can ever offer. If you want to post inanities go ahead but frankly I'm not happy paying for a second rate service!

Matt at IceTV

On behalf of IceTV I would like to apologise in advance for any inconvenience the delay in publishing the program guide data for the new HD channels within our IceTV EPG service is causing our loyal customer base.

As most of you are aware, we are still in a current legal battle with Channel Nine (although we won the case in August), and we are still not authorised to use any of the published information available from the 3 major free-to-air TV networks, despite repeated attempts to gain official access.

What this means, is that we cannot and do not gather any program guide information directly from the TV network's websites or from any 3rd party website or published source that contains their own copyrightable information. The way in which we independently compile our own copyrightable guide listings is the very reason why we won our court case against Channel Nine in August. While we are still fighting them we must continue to use our accepted methods.

SevenHD started broadcasting their HD content on the new channel on Monday the 10th of December although very lightly, while TenHD began this Sunday (16/12/07). We had previously advised everyone that the likely turn around for us would be 2-3 weeks and we are still hopeful in achieving this as recently suggestested with "coming in early 2008" comments.

Quote from: Daniel Hall on December 17, 2007, 02:21:17 PM
... Copying their published information is a direct breach of copyright and therefore if we did go ahead and simply copy this information, our service would be no different to that of the illegal, "scraped" EPG services available and ultimately our service would cease to exist and our subscribers suffer.

We are not prepared to jeopardise our current service by doing this and we will continue to use our methods of prediction and independent compilation, even if it means that it may take 2-3weeks in order to have our listings made available.

Rest assured that our team is working very hard to release our own independent TV guide listings for these new Channels within the IceTV EPG as soon as humanly possible.

We are aiming for a possible release of this information in early 2008 and by this time we suspect that the two networks will have more consistent HD programming in place for us all to enjoy.

As soon as we can, we will include the information in our IceTV EPG service and we will notify all our users of great news.

We simply cannot put it any straighter than that... staff are literally working around the clock to get this information up and running for everyone and we are confident based on our current progress that we will be ready to release the information by mid January, which is what we meant when we said in "early 2008". Copying direct information from the TV networks or writing applications that do... is not an option.

Quote from: Nomad on December 17, 2007, 11:49:18 PM
...now ICE have removed the Ch70 and Ch12 HD

As both Seven and Ten are now utilising their new HD Channels and broadcasting a vast array of different content to that which is on their SD Channels, the EPG data we displayed in the IceTV EPG was becoming very inconsistent and this inaccuracy is what led us to removing the listings altogether. I accept that this was a rash move on our behalf and one that should have been better communicated to everyone, but we were receiving an increase in complaints from customers who were recording shows only to find something completely different later on.

Quote from: scoop98 on December 18, 2007, 09:49:00 AM
Or they might put up prices "because of the extra work load" for the new HD channels!!!  Wouldn't that be popular!

This is something we have never done and we have done the exact opposite. Over the time that we have been providing a  service commercially, we have consistently lowered the cost of our subscription and offered numerous discount promotions for everyone to take advantage of at regular stages. While  also doing this, we have increased the features and functionality across the many different device platforms that we are compatible with and included these as part of the IceTV service .

Having said all of this... I do want to once again apologise for any inconvenience this process is going to cause our customers in advance. I appreciate the frustration that some of you have with not being able to utilise the HD program guide information for the new channels, but I ask that you remain patient during this time and be reassured that we will resume the fantastic service that we have consistantly delivered in the very near future for everyone to enjoy.

On behalf of IceTV, I thank you all for your patience and for your continued support.

If you would like to discuss this matter further, please don't hesitate to contact me directly via email (info@icetv.com.au) as I will be working throughout the Christmas break and will be personally making sure that we try to achieve the above as soon as possible.

In the meantime we hope you all have a fantastic Christmas and a Happy New Year and as always, we thank you for choosing IceTV.

Regards,

mattk
General Manager
IceTV Pty Limited
General Manager
IceTV Pty
1300 654 803

chopper

Quote from: mattk on December 18, 2007, 02:44:57 PM
As most of you are aware, we are still in a current legal battle with Channel Nine (although we won the case in August), and we are still not authorised to use any of the published information available from the 3 major free-to-air TV networks, despite repeated attempts to gain official access.

Well you can quote one channel 9 customer back to them that they should pull their finger out of their arses as they're just pissing off their own customer base and making them feel negative to their channel and their channel's ads. 

Again, who's inconvenienced ?  The people that hopefully maybe some of them think they want to entice to watch their channel.  Tell them either fix it or show more nice boobs in the 7:30-9:40 timeslot !

Circuitau

Quote from: mattk on December 18, 2007, 02:44:57 PM
As both Seven and Ten are now utilising their new HD Channels and broadcasting a vast array of different content to that which is on their SD Channels, the EPG data we displayed in the IceTV EPG was becoming very inconsistent and this inaccuracy is what led us to removing the listings altogether. I accept that this was a rash move on our behalf and one that should have been better communicated to everyone, but we were receiving an increase in complaints from customers who were recording shows only to find something completely different later on.

Hang on one bloody minute, my Ice setup is to copy normal channels to HD guide as it worked for me in the past.
Now you have gone and changed that too, why? the bloody guide is useless now.

Things are going from bad to worse WTF is wrong with you people ?


dJOS

Quote from: Nomad on December 17, 2007, 11:49:18 PM
WTF? now ICE have removed the Ch70 and Ch12 HD info except for "wait till 2008".  This means all my Media Centre recordings set for these channels will fail.

Good effort guys. Not Happy

Damon

WTF!!!!!! I just noticed this too! I've had to go and set a bunch of Prime time shows to record on 10-SD even tho primetime shows are simulcast!!! not Happy!!!  >:(
My Home Theatre Project

Quad Tuner 7MC box now replaced by 2x TiVo's HD's by order of the Wife!