TVGOS ( TV Guide On Screen ) Devices - Page 46

Political comments removed.

View the photo’s of Guides with the TV Guide logo on them, Rovi owns them. All of these Guides are managed at the same Rovi location, by the same engineers and support help.

If you see the TV Guide logo on anything then Rovi owns it, right down to the TV guide magazine in the rack at grocery store check out line.

I am hoping that Canada’s consumer protection agency will actually protect TVGOS users and stop Rovi. I believe Comcast of North America is the biggest player behind this matter. No Comcast Overseas?

WE WILL RENT A BOX MEIN FUHRER of north America.

Service Providers from Rovi’s page
• Cox Communications
• Verizon
• Dish Networks
• Sky
• Comcast
• DirectTV
• Time Warner Cable
• NDS
• UPC
TiVo should be on this list (see photo)
I could not find a photo of DirecTV, but they are on this list.

Not that the government has anything to do with TVGOS anyway.

I figured this would happen sooner or later, probably sooner, so I was already mentally prepared to pony up for a Tivo Premiere with "lifetime" subscription. Now it's time to bite the bullet.

Would be nice if cable companies could get the data off of the internet and send the packet data downstream as usual using their inverters.

Well.

My KDS60XBR2 is going green, now TVGOS is going, period. And cable-cards took the last train out some time ago.

I'm actually willing to buy a new TV, but do any solutions exist for a cable television viewer who wishes to live in an STB-free environment?
Is there any combination of CE equipment that will give me the functional equivalent of what I have enjoyed for the last five years?

Does this mean that if I get my guide data from cable (San Jose Comcast in my case) and not OTA, the service will continiue ?
I have two devices that use TvGos, a Pioneer Kuro Plasma and a Sony DVR.
They are both giving me the ROVI message .....

Todd

It's a message everyone gets, even those with internet access. That one says you "may" not lose it. I have a screen shot a few pages back. It is not the same as the cable message.

I'm still waiting for Rovi to pop up the message that says.. New Rovi Message

I just saw this in my TVGOS... WTFFFFFF! Well, I guess it was good while it lasted. ARRIS tried pulling the same thing some months back with discontinuing the MOXI guide data, but I guess enough people complained and they backtracked.

It seems PBS OTA is the first to go. I have not heard of any cable feed losing data.

I was leaning towards the same conclusion about the PBS stations shutting down first. My cable will go when my CBS OTA goes. The cable data comes from my CBS station. I'm sure of this because every TVGOS outage that my CBS station has experienced over the last 3 years has effected cable as well.

Mark

I phrased it that way on purpose. I was curious if there were cable companies that passed through the TVGOS data. My little company strips all PSIP data, but in the past has let the KYW TVGOS data come through on a few occasions. I never would have noticed except it happened after a reset of my test unit and I saw a clock set channel of 10 rather than 12. It didn't last. It was strange though since my digital KYW did not contain the data. Who knows what goes on at cable companies.

Has anyone in the Santa Clara area considered just walking up to their front door and talking with them? How about asking what it would take to keep the service on going? There must be a number that would encourage them to continue. If we have that we at least would have a starting point for discussion. Anyone? What do we have to lose at this point?

I had thought that on-going TVGOS support was thru the revenue generated by the left-side ads. Though, I have to wonder if someone believes that there are too few people viewing these ads on TVGOS anymore. Possibly, this warning message was also intended to get those still using TVGOS to raise their hands, and be counted.

Possibly, we need to "help" Rovi, and support some kind of real TVGOS viewer numbers (ratings)?

You have a good point, but with internet based 10.2 TVGOS you have to use several keystrokes to view the ads. There are about 10 right now, include a version of the shutdown ad.

This is exactly the reason I suggest someone in the Santa Clara area go to them and speak to someone on a personal level so we can actually know what gives and not have to guess. They may tell us to take a hike but unless someone takes the time everything is speculation. If on the otherhand they are willing to give us some means of supporting the system we can try to work out a plan. If I wasn't 1000 miles away I would go but there must be someone near that can take an hour to find out our options. it must be done soon or everything will be torn down.

Three words. Class Action Lawsuit.

My response to the Sony questionnaire:

What could we have done to resolve your issue?

Provide an alternative way for me to use my DHG-HDD 250 after the Rovi Guide service is discontinued, this unit loses most of its functionality if it does not have guide data. Retrofit the machine with a network connection, to restore the guide data over the internet - or compensate me with an equivalent item that has the same ability to record over the air HD programming and store it on hard drive. I am tired of being told that Sony is not responsible for a third party application like Rovi causing my DVR to lose functions.

For about the last year there have been no ads on the Sony except a CBS ad occasionally. I believe that Rovi stopped selling ad space about a year ago, which probably should have been a sign of bad things to come.

Mark

 

And the next time they run out of toilet paper, you know what they're going to use.

A Class Action Lawsuit never yields anything of value, except to the lawyers. Over the years, I have been in a few Class Action Lawsuits. In the end, those actually "harmed" got anywhere between $0.03 and $3.57 in compensation, but the lawyers got $$$millions.

Honestly, so what if I got $1. My DHG would still be worthless.

Sony had no express or implied warranty with you to provide guide service or keep the box functional forever, so this 'lawsuit' will go nowhere. It would be nice if they provide a manual clock set update so you could do manual recordings without the guide, but fer cryin' out loud we're talking about 7+ year old hardware here. This is ancient tech in the CE world.

Well.. yes, and no. In the case of most "ancient tech" there are many newer, bigger, better, far superior choices that you can readily go out and plunk your money down on. In the case of the Sony DHG, not so much . . .

I would say that Sony (and the others who chose to market devices using TVGOS data) had a duty and responsibility to maintain a good working relationship with their agent/partner Rovi. If this would involve them paying a fee to Rovi, then so be it.

To me there is a quite a difference between never having TVGOS data (you had the option to have returned the device after purchase), and having it working just fine but then being taken away.

Dropping TVGOS data supporting is pretty akin to having Sony sending a secret signal to your device to intentionally disable it. I mean, our DHG units are essentially being disabled by this.



IMHO, the service life of equipment would be expected to be around 20 years. Yea, some individual units might fail sooner, but a majority should still be working.

'Duty and responsibility' does not equal warranty or contract with the purchaser, and that's all any court is going to care about. All this lawsuit talk is just pissing in the wind.

The only hope you have right now is that Sony will provide a clock set fix to maintain customer goodwill, avoid bad PR for bricking units, etc. That is it.

And there's no way in hell that the expected service life of these boxes is 20 years, so I don't know what you're getting on about. The majority of drives will fail way before then.

If this were to get significant media attention, then Sony would be forced to defend their position of letting products die intentionally. Imagine the potential impact on sales and loss revenue that could occur if consumers started second guessing before buying Sony vs. the cost of a simple software update.

Because there was no manual clock set included in this unit, either they have a design flaw, or they inferred that TVGOS or some other source to set the clock would be available indefinitely. No one in their right mind would have invested this kind of money for this product if they had the slightest inkling that it would some day go belly up. Espcially one backed by a big name company like SONY... I think public opinion, not the small group here on this forum might be enough to sway Sony to help us out. Media attention (or possibly even the hint to Sony about media attention) might be the only thing that could add a few more years to our equipment.

Help you out, maybe, but still, all you can expect to get is a way to set the clock manually, and that's only if it's possible for them to do.

 

His point is that all this "lawsuit", and "compensation" talk is pointless. They were careful to cover their rear ends on that in the fine print.

Edited by Rammitinski - 11/15/12 at 10:37pm

RoviCorp's fb page pretty much says it all: "I’m sorry to hear this issue is affecting you. To deliver the data broadcast service in the past, Rovi worked with over-the-air traditional broadcast data service providers. Our agreements with these service providers are ending as a result of the market change to digital data services delivered through the Internet. In addition, cable television systems are beginning to encrypt their signal, which will disrupt the transmission of data through these broadcast services. The guides in Internet-connected TVs are not affected by this change. Again, our apologies for the inconvenience this has caused."

Well, let's just translate that into English: "Sure sucks to be you."

Oh wait...I see...it's so clear to me now: It's the MARKET CHANGE! I should have known. We forgive you, RoviCorp...now, take a flying leap.
Edited by donottosmeok - 11/15/12 at 8:15am

If you lose OTA data for TVGOS, the common place to update your new information is:

http://www.rabbitears.info/market.php?request=tvgos

As this posting, they list 192 stations with 42 not sending. That leaves 150 markets but I think that needs to be updated.

Also, I lost listings for three days last week. This morning they are back. I never lost clock data update packets.

Sony's not the one cutting the service, Rovi is. As far as I have heard, Internet-connected Sony TVs will continue to receive TVGOS.

It's sort of like when the company that makes the Play Station 3 forced a firmware update that disabled the "Other OS" feature that had worked fine for years and was an advertised feature of the unit. Which company was that again?

Sony does things to its customers because the customers keep buying regardless. I haven't bought a Sony product in more than 10 years, since before the whole rootkit fiasco. (Exception: I got a dirt-cheap Sony S3HD radio on eBay a few years ago, used, so money didn't go to Sony for that sale.) Time and again, Sony has done things to their customers and customers have responded by... continuing to buy Sony products. If customers won't punish Sony, why should Sony change its behavior?

Not that I think this is a Sony-related issue; this is pretty evidently specific to Rovi ending the over-the-air TVGOS service.

Hard drives, as hardware, only have an expected life of 5-10 years.

Yeah, I haven't touched my listing in a few weeks. Not sure if I should continue to update it or not, as I could probably just go through and pull all the PBS stations at once, or I can just pull the listing entirely and say the service is being ended.

- Trip