Banned From IceTV

[tezza007]

Be careful what you say on the IceTV forum. I've just had my subscription cancelled by "MD" Colin O'Brien for saying "raymondjpg and simoncasey, you are both spot on". He obviously has more customers than he needs

[IanSav]

Hi Tezza,

Was there a context that you haven't quoted that triggered the action? This seems a harsh reaction so potentially the trigger could have been equally harsh. Please be careful not to bring any issues over to this forum.

Edit: Added the missing word "not".

Regards,
Ian.

[tezza007]

I was commenting on these 2 posts:

“I think the issue that has been raised a few times is that unpopular late night/ daytime reality shows on the more obscure channels always seem to be added to coming soon but a new series of a popular prime time show needs user prompting to get it added.”
“It may be in Coming Soon now, but it was not when I first posted about it in this thread. Indeed I do not draw attention to any new shows here if they are in Coming Soon.”

[IanSav]

Hi Tezza,

I am not an IceTV person so I know nothing of the policies and politics of their forum. If they don't allow constructive criticism then that is potentially their loss.

Regards,
Ian.

[peteru]

Did they just ban you from the forums or did they also cancel your IceTV service?

[tezza007]

"I also note below your reply to my email regarding my forum post. After some careful consideration I will refund your current month’s subscription and cancel it thereafter. It would seem that you are unhappy with our service and we are unable at the present time, for reasons I outlined in my forum post, to improve it to your satisfaction. So it is better we part ways. I will issue instructions for your full one months subscription to be refunded and cancel your subscription details at the fulfilment of the month’s period."

[Sir Lancelot]

Your gain, ICE TV's loss.

Regards
Lance

[simoncasey]

I've certainly had some run ins in the past with tezza on this forum but I disagree with this approach from icetv. Tezza has posted errors with the icetv epg on an almost daily basis. His account has now been cancelled. MD has stated he welcomes constructive criticism. We all know that means they don't welcome criticism at all unless you preface it with telling them how hard their job is and what a good job they do.

I'm certainly rethinking my subscription (again) as the standard seems to have slipped recently after gradually improving since the restart plus the thought that the MD is trolling the user forum posting aggressive posts eg. "If you think that's 'rubbish' maybe you'd like to make some suggestions?" and "What's your problem?" and then cancelling the account of posters they don't like.

[prl]

... We all know that means they don't welcome criticism at all unless you preface it with telling them how hard their job is and what a good job they do.

I've never seen a need to do that.

[simoncasey]

... We all know that means they don't welcome criticism at all unless you preface it with telling them how hard their job is and what a good job they do.

I've never seen a need to do that.

I was referring to MDs multiple references to appreciating constructive posts and then the classic "I don't wish to seek excuses as I know how hard my guide team works but..." followed by a long list of excuses about how hard it is etc.

Bottom line, it's a commercial business and they provide a number of services on top of the epg, like coming soon, what's on emails, recommendations, etc. If it's too much, they should drop a couple of the extras and focus on the essentials. What they have appeared to miss about tezza is that whilst his posts generally aren't constructive, he does make posts and identifies errors and gaps in the guide. It is the nature of a user forum that it attracts posters who are passionate enough to make the posts.

[tezza007]

I would say that pointing out errors is constructive, as it helped many other subscribers. I was even [jokingly, I presumed] offered a job at one point
I did have a bugbear about what Coming Soon had become though, an ad for SBS docos and lifestyle programs, whilst ignoring proper new shows

[simoncasey]

Yes, pointing out errors is certainly appreciated by other users. Referring toncoming soon as rubbish is probably what triggered the response from MD.

[tezza007]

That's what it's become. It's useless when subscribers have to rely on other subscribers for new shows coming up because they're not docos or lifestyle shows or 50 year old movies. Coming Soon used to be great, but is not so any more. Most of the new show announcements lately have come from subscribers. And it's been happening for months; a couple of us posted about 50 new shows a few months ago, none of which were in Coming Soon

[peteru]

So, maybe it's time to build a crowd-sourced alternative to IceTV. Perhaps a model where your "subscription fee" consists of contributing some data on a regular basis.

[prl]

Fifty new shows not listed in Coming Soon? Where, and about when were they posted?

I agree IceTV Coming Soon has too many shows of little merit from SBS Food Network and sometimes misses shows that I'm interested in, but I don't think hyperbole helps the case.

[simoncasey]

Fifty new shows not listed in Coming Soon? Where, and about when were they posted?

I agree IceTV Coming Soon has too many shows of little merit from SBS Food Network and sometimes misses shows that I'm interested in, but I don't think hyperbole helps the case.

December, but I don't disagree with your point.

[tezza007]

So, maybe it's time to build a crowd-sourced alternative to IceTV. Perhaps a model where your "subscription fee" consists of contributing some data on a regular basis.

I check the guides every day so would be willing to help. Absolutely no coding ability; attempted it back in the mid 80's but it was already too late for me to learn. "Hello World"

[prl]

Fifty new shows not listed in Coming Soon? Where, and about when were they posted?

I agree IceTV Coming Soon has too many shows of little merit from SBS Food Network and sometimes misses shows that I'm interested in, but I don't think hyperbole helps the case.

December, but I don't disagree with your point.

Thanks for the dates. I didn't go far enough back. 50 is pretty much spot on for what was posted in lists of new shows in the New Shows topic in Nov/Dec. However, IceTV had only re-formed in mid-October, and they'd lost at least one of their key EPG content staff, Madeline. There haven't been lists like that posted since, though perhaps they still could be.

They still probably need more prodding on Coming Soon than they should.

[tezza007]

They were resistant to "prods" about Coming Soon, instead defending putting ancient repeats in there of decades old movies and shows and the unending lifestyle shows and docos, leaving it up to people like you to alert the rest of us about new and returning series

[Star6key]

If only there was an Australian version of this.

[tezza007]

You're going to start one?

[prl]

From the bottom of the Web page: "All TV show dates taken from wikipedia." The Wikipedia list for first screening dates in Australia is... umm... somewhat lacking.

It lists 117 shows at the moment. My IceTV MyShows page has more than 550. Of the 29 different shows we're recording this week exactly zero are in the Wikipedia list.

I somehow think that's not an adequate replacement for IceTV's database, for all its faults. It's not even much of a start of one.

[tezza007]

He did say if only there was an Aussie version

[IanSav]

Hi,

Perhaps someone should approach Gracenote, as they now own the original Australian listing company Hww, to see how much they charge for an official data feed.

Regards,
Ian.

[simoncasey]

So, maybe it's time to build a crowd-sourced alternative to IceTV. Perhaps a model where your "subscription fee" consists of contributing some data on a regular basis.

Looking at what icetv provides, I think could be an option for the T series.
Icetv currently:
1 Provides a curated epg
2 Flags repeated shows
3 Provides a method for creating series recordings
4 Has an app to allow series recordings to be managed remotely
5 Provides additional information eg coming soon, what's on this week

If this was crowd sourced it would need:
1 the fta guide would be OK but I think epgrefresh needs an improvement. I believe it should run much more frequently during the day (eg every hour). It probably doesn't need so many settings. Whilst icetv don't update their wig that often, it does check regularly. Most users run epgrefresh overnight but the channels update their epg in the morning
2 we need a way to flag repeats. To me this is the big one. The data is there in the fta guide (ie yourTV) but isn't published to the TV. Is there a way for the BW to read repeat data somehow and blend it with the fta epg. There would need to be a way to generate that data without being a user intensive task.
3 we have autotimers that can easily create series recordings, if we have a reliable repeat flag it will be good enough
4 autotimers are not available on the beyonwiz app. This would be an option but is the obvious gap.
5 we could use a special section of this forum for new shows, recommendations etc.

[prl]

He did say if only there was an Aussie version

And I was saying that that would be both quite easy and almost completely pointless.

[raymondjpg]

2 we need a way to flag repeats. To me this is the big one. The data is there in the fta guide (ie yourTV) but isn't published to the TV. Is there a way for the BW to read repeat data somehow and blend it with the fta epg. There would need to be a way to generate that data without being a user intensive task.

When I was looking for an alternative to the IceTV XML feed for TV Scheduler Pro I set up Windows Task Scheduler for EPG Collector to run just before the time I needed to import the XML file into TV Scheduler. In the process I found that EPG Collector could be configured to detect duplicate (repeat) data and flag it in the resulting XML file. This is a way to generate that data without being a user intensive task, but not I'm afraid a way for the BW to do it. I think that there is a way to import an xml guide into the T series, but I haven't tried it myself. Currently I use the OTA EPG and autotimers, and to some extent rely on IceTV to give me information about repeats, but if I didn't have that then I would probably go down the route of importing a EPG Collector generated EPG with duplicate (repeat) data flagged, and see if that gives a workable solution for program repeats. Further investigation would be needed to see if this process could be automated several times during the day, if needed.

[prl]

Aren't there already sites that offer XML versions of the Australian FTA guides?

However, while there might be ways to import the XML guide into the T series EPG, there's no obvious place to save the repeat information other than as a title tag or other similar hack, and no way to access it from AutoTimers than that way.

[tezza007]

I received an email on the 12th saying I was now banned for a week, expiring on the 18th [making 9 days total] and he's not going to cancel my account
I haven't had a computer till yesterday so haven't posted anywhere for a while

[peteru]

I suppose they still want your $, they just don't want to hear from you.

[tezza007]

Only if it's positive comment