TiVo Service ending on 31 October 2017

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16 posts

Geek

#1729640 3-Mar-2017 21:49

I have received an email about TiVo NZ end of service and in the same email I was advised to request the refund of my balance however number of attempts to submit refund request have failed always with same error "Invalid bank account number". Account is correct and active with Westpac bank and sadly there are no contact details or email address for TiVo support. Only number listed takes me to Spark Business and they have no idea how to process the refund. I wonder how many Kiwis out there have money sitting in TiVo accounts and the way things look like now all that money will be unclaimable. I am seriously considering going to Fair Go although amount ia not big but it's the matter of principals. Any suggestions how to contact TiVo?

Jaxson

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#1729655 3-Mar-2017 22:32

mattwnz: It's satellite

Yeah i was wondering that too. A lot of the suggested PVRs are satellite based, and for Freeview that means icky SD ness. Yuck.

michaelmurfy

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#1729675 3-Mar-2017 23:14

mesak: I have received an email about TiVo NZ end of service and in the same email I was advised to request the refund of my balance however number of attempts to submit refund request have failed always with same error "Invalid bank account number". Account is correct and active with Westpac bank and sadly there are no contact details or email address for TiVo support. Only number listed takes me to Spark Business and they have no idea how to process the refund. I wonder how many Kiwis out there have money sitting in TiVo accounts and the way things look like now all that money will be unclaimable. I am seriously considering going to Fair Go although amount ia not big but it's the matter of principals. Any suggestions how to contact TiVo?

Ugh... For the suffix with Westpac do this:

If your account number for example is 03-0123-01234567-030 then you'll enter 03-0123-01234567-30. It trips up so many web forms. TiVo whilst a great product is getting on a bit now and it makes no financial sense to pay for the servers etc to keep it running. I know it sucks, but really play the below video and just let it go:

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mattwnz

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#1729684 4-Mar-2017 00:21

Jaxson:
mattwnz: It's satellite

Yeah i was wondering that too. A lot of the suggested PVRs are satellite based, and for Freeview that means icky SD ness. Yuck.

If you are in an area that can get UHF HD freeview, there is no point in looking at satellite PVRs, as the satellite picture quality is rubbish compared to UHF. Fast motion complex images just turn to mush. I think the satellite signal is mainly for those in remote areas of NZ. So really the only DVR options that compare with the tivo are UHF ones. So getting one from overseas would be risky in terms of it working with NZs signal. I did find this one at http://www.freeviewshop.co.nz/xcruiser-xdsr600hd500-pvr-digital-satellite-receiver.html but it's interface looks more dated than the tivos, and looks like it has a windows vista wallpaper which is weird. I recall these guys used to do a lot of different PVRs but now it look like they only do this one. I am guessing there isn't a big demand these days for PVRs , with ondemand and netflix etc. As I have got the hardware , I think setting up a windows media centre PC with a few USB tuners is my cheapest option at the moment, and is what I used before the tivo.

sarahfoxnz

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Master Geek

#1729685 4-Mar-2017 00:35

Hello. Just seen the advertisement / memo that TIVO will cease to be.

Ive been through these messages, but cant see this. in Nz, ahs anyone discussed getting FREEVIEW ?

The Tivo gets the EPG for up to 14 days ahead. From the freeview website, we can see programming up to a week in advance (not 2 weeks)...

Does the freeview programming guide work the same as the freeview guide ? similar / not as good ? / better ?

are there any other devices that are good to get - that has similar / better features than Tivo ? i heard Mysky mentioned - but im not on Sky & dont intend on getting sky.

dieselVtwin

1 post

Wannabe Geek

#1729686 4-Mar-2017 01:10

Hi all,

Long time lurker here, but the email yesterday was like a kick in the guts.

As most of you are doing, I'm also scrambling on figuring something out. Unlike my norm, I don't want to wait until October to do something about this. Priorities and all, I guess.

Yesterday afternoon I was doing some googling and found http://www.altepg.com/ which appears to be related to http://www.tivoland.com/ . This/these guys were apparently in a similar position a few years ago as we are now facing and decided to do something to "save themselves". I was thinking that they might coop with us, either in knowledge or possibly in provisioning some sort of a work around to extend our "brick date".

If we patterned our work around like altepg/tivoland did, it would likely mean that we would need up alter the software config on out Tivos to look somewhere else for EPG, and maybe how we handle other things like the re-authorization required after a reset of a system. I'm technical, so I know that it's probably possible; but I also know that it's not trivial and there's no way I would be "strong enough" to do this on my own. Uugh!

This evening my thoughts went back to something I read in this thread sometime yesterday about getting the IP addresses or DNS names that our Tivos are configured to look for. To do that would probably be somewhere between a nightmare and a fluke. But then I thought about maybe just approaching the Hybrid Television people about it and asking the status of the current license with Tivo, if Tivo was likely to be willing to engage with someone else, or whatever else we might dream up to talk about.

When I googled Hybrid Television I found this http://www.insolvencywatch.co.nz/solvent-liquidations/hybrid-television-services-new-zealand-limited/#axzz4aGAvpLNh which shows that Hybrid apparently put themselves into liquidation. The listed directors of Hybrid are in Australia, BUT the liquidators are Ernst & Young LTD in Christchurch.

So now I'm thinking that the October 2017 date is likely to be when the agreement between Tivo and Hybrid runs out, or possibly some date that Hybrid decided to stop being liable for Consumer Guarantees claims.

Looking at www.tivo.com, it's fairly apparent that Tivo offerings for AU/NZ hasn't kept up. I'm sure that a big part of that is due to cost of manufacturing the devices and ROI for this market, i.e. "money".

Having said all of this, I'm not sure if there's anything here to salvage, but I'm open to discuss. If there was a really good alternative to move to then this whole Tivo thing wouldn't matter. But as for my family, I'm really sad about loosing my Tivos and my wife and boys are basically in mourning over it.

Would a group of us want to put something together and approach EY about it any remaining Tivo contract, or getting a Tivo contact to discuss a contract? Or, perhaps, contacting altepg/Tivoland about a mutual assist thing?

Any thoughts or ideas?

Cheers,

Alan

michaelmurfy

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#1729687 4-Mar-2017 01:12

sarahfoxnz: Ive been through these messages, but cant see this. in Nz, ahs anyone discussed getting FREEVIEW ?

Tivo is simply Freeview|HD however requires internet connectivity to phone home to download the EPG etc. It doesn't use the Freeview EPG which is the biggest problem here. Replacing the Tivo with a Freeview|HD box is your best bet. This Panasonic unit will likely be one of the more ideal replacements in NZ and even supports Netflix (a little bit of an upgrade from Quickflix).

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sarahfoxnz

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Master Geek

#1729688 4-Mar-2017 01:18

mattwnz:

old3eyes:

ouple of years ago that TiVo could do a subscription system here but was shouted down by everyone who said that they paid for a lifetime EPG and that's how it was going to be. Now the life support is going to be turned off.

I suspect that wouldn't have made any difference, as the amount that people would have been prepared to pay, simply for a data feed of freeview channels, wouldn't have covered the cost to run it. How much would you be prepared to pay, a hundred a year? For not much more you can get netflix.

How much would it actually cost ?

a) a website / other interface that TV channels use to update / change their programming details.

b) a small database to hold / store the info...

c) a website or other method that the current TIVO units use - to extract the data & save into their tivo units..

it will be relatively cheap to operate - even a $1 a month subscription will generate profit...

from what ive read, the Australian company has lost the contract from USA to service Australia & NZ. (maybe another company is bidding for the contract ?)

michaelmurfy

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#1729690 4-Mar-2017 04:46

sarahfoxnz: How much would it actually cost ?

Quite a bit actually:

1) at-least a single systems administrator to look after the systems, apply security patches etc.
2) the contract to use the Tivo name, server software etc can't come cheap either.
3) The infrastructure itself with redundancy.
4) customer service reps - even if they were not full-time will cost too.

You could get a third party company with the skills required but we also don't know what restrictions Tivo has on their software behind the scenes. It would be nice to keep things running but you've also got to consider you're supporting a unit that is a number of years old now and all support has to end eventually.

I've had cloud devices (for example - the Ninja Block) that were reliant on the cloud and have had their services shut down... It sucks, but you find a replacement and live with it. In the nature of IoT we'll be seeing this far more these days but in the scheme of things we also don't know how many active Tivo devices there are. I've got one still active left at a previous flat of mine and there are quite a few here too but I would estimate there may be less than 1000 active devices out there now.

tdgeek

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#1729691 4-Mar-2017 05:57

I cant really see the big issue here. And the idea of mashing tuners, PC, etc to make a Tivo replacement. I don't like the Tivo UI, too small, too busy too colourful, but thats just me, I can see many love it

Seems the DISH T2200 is still off limits due to issues, and that just leave Panny recorders, such as the 260 that Michael mentioned and the 760

I have a 720, and the only issue I have the the load time for the guide, and no EPG grid option. Is the 260 and 760 any different?

compost

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Ultimate Geek

#1729706 4-Mar-2017 08:25

14 pages of discussion in 2 days with no clear answers indicates a pretty large installed base that is underwhelmed with the available options.

So Fetch TV your time starts now! There are no off the shelf locally retailed competitors that even come close to getting 4.5 star reviews so the market is yours if you want it. To maximise your opportunity you have 8 months to roll out to NZ. Most owners just want an easy to use Freeview PVR, so your non-Freeview channel offering wouldn't have to be particularly impressive at first. Distribution would be relatively easy to establish, you can just extend your existing channel relationships with Harvey Norman and JB Hifi.

A time-poor geek is hardly a geek at all

DMCM

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Master Geek

#1729707 4-Mar-2017 08:28

michaelmurfy:

sarahfoxnz: How much would it actually cost ?

Quite a bit actually:

1) at-least a single systems administrator to look after the systems, apply security patches etc.
2) the contract to use the Tivo name, server software etc can't come cheap either.
3) The infrastructure itself with redundancy.
4) customer service reps - even if they were not full-time will cost too.

You could get a third party company with the skills required but we also don't know what restrictions Tivo has on their software behind the scenes. It would be nice to keep things running but you've also got to consider you're supporting a unit that is a number of years old now and all support has to end eventually.

I've had cloud devices (for example - the Ninja Block) that were reliant on the cloud and have had their services shut down... It sucks, but you find a replacement and live with it. In the nature of IoT we'll be seeing this far more these days but in the scheme of things we also don't know how many active Tivo devices there are. I've got one still active left at a previous flat of mine and there are quite a few here too but I would estimate there may be less than 1000 active devices out there now.

If said server was (say) a Windows Azure box, all patching and redundancy comes for free.

Jaxson

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#1729711 4-Mar-2017 08:54

Most channels were touchy about releasing their guide data. I suspect TiVo did a lot of work to be able to legally reuse this data. Those agreements would cease after the service ends, so there would be much work to do this again formally.

Far more sensible to use the existing MHEG5 EPG scraping process and determine how to mold that data into something the 8 year old TIVOs would recognise, if a redirect was in place when it phoned home.

The Panasonic slow to load EPG is Freeview fault. They don't seem to cache the data, but load it fresh every time. It's a fixed package offering required as part of the Freeview approval. If Freeview had ever offered full EIT data, like they do on the satellite service, then we would hav options and access to far more sensible EPG formats and UI.

tdgeek

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#1729722 4-Mar-2017 09:10

Jaxson: Most channels were touchy about releasing their guide data. I suspect TiVo did a lot of work to be able to legally reuse this data. Those agreements would cease after the service ends, so there would be much work to do this again formally.

Far more sensible to use the existing MHEG5 EPG scraping process and determine how to mold that data into something the 8 year old TIVOs would recognise, if a redirect was in place when it phoned home.

The Panasonic slow to load EPG is Freeview fault. They don't seem to cache the data, but load it fresh every time. It's a fixed package offering required as part of the Freeview approval. If Freeview had ever offered full EIT data, like they do on the satellite service, then we would hav options and access to far more sensible EPG formats and UI.

Panasonic it is then, as no other choice for NZ Freeview plug and play. Slow load of the guide, no grid, but no other downsides.

mikeypnz

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Geek

#1729724 4-Mar-2017 09:17

It was done with the Series1 TiVo units, I'm sure that it can be done with Tivo 320s, probably needs a new Hard disk load. Maybe it can be funded by donations to pay for the internet server bits required. I would be consider scraping one channel and loaded into the server.

Once it is up and working we can then look at a Facebook group to manage the news releases and get the existing Tivo users onboard. Then sell replacement Hard disks (as is the case now) on trademe, so people can install them. We should be able to get many more years of use out of the TiVos.

I was never involved with the series1 units, but saw it working. Sometimes a channel would stop when when there was a problem but was fixed quickly.

Needs a couple of clever people to get this going,

Mike

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