Use this thread to document your contacts with ReplayTV and D&M holdings - Page 4

That does sound a little two faced, that the donations are to facilitate *work*, and yet we don't expect anything. But it's clear Henry is not for sale. He does it because he has an interest in WiRNS, Replays, and actually uses them.

(KenL is still a such complete, unrepentant, sycophantic total hoser!)

If you're looking for two-faced political content we will need to get Lizard Boy back on the forum.

Maybe we need to have a benefit.

We can put icecow2003's PayPal button up against the KenL's PayPal button perhaps even include the postpadding ReMember for good measure. Leave em all up until the rapture and put in some promotion. See who tally's up the biggest haul and then donate all the proceeds to the KenL

(that would be one circular buffer)

You can check this very thread to see who is the real king of postpadding.

Here's what I sent and received from Panasonic. I've not called them back as I'd expect the same result as the first call -- an offshore Filipino reading off a script and fingering ReplayTV as the culprit -- they're acting like they've been hosed like the rest of us:

Dear Valued Customer

Case Number: 28760462

We apologize for the delay in providing you with a reply to your inquiry and we hope that this delay has not caused you any inconvenience, based on the description of the problem that you are experiencing this will require additional information.

We would like you to contact our Panasonic Customer Call Center at (800)211-7262. The hours of operation are Monday through Friday 9 AM to 9 PM. Saturday and Sunday 10 AM to 7 PM Eastern Standard Time. A representative will be available to assist you. Please have your case number, which is listed at the top portion of your e-mail, available at the time of the call.

We hope this information is helpful to you. Thank you for contacting Panasonic.

On July 1, 2011 at 3:59 PM, rallenr@socal.rr.com wrote:

Per (cancellation URL here), this applies to the older Panasonic Showstopper units you folks sold in the '90s. You'll appreciate these units (I own four) are virtually worthless without the Programming Guide. Since the units were sold with LIFETIME subscriptions to the programming guide, you can not completely defer your obligations to ReplayTV -- these are Panasonic-labeled units, as are their manuals and packing boxes. What are we loyal customers to do? I have some ideas for you if you'd like to contact me. Be aware there are folks (not me) discussing class action.

Well, since posting yesterday, I've looked at SD's FAQ, service agreement, and so on, and I don't think it's for me. They seem quite obsessed with limiting data to a single geographic region, limiting the number of accounts people can have and so on.

Honestly, I had no idea TV listings distribution was such an anal retentive business. I suppose it shouldn't surprise me since that's seems to be the way with everything controlled by the corporatocracy these days, but still...

The truly sad thing is that TMS data isn't really very good, anyway. I've got over a dozen DVRs, about half of which have program guides, and of those, only one, a Verizon FiOS box, uses non-TMS data. But in my experience, that one generally has the most accurate and up to date listings.

I record a lot of news and information programming from foreign or non-mainstream channels, and many of those programs I've shifted to unsubscribed TiVos or other non-guide based recordings, just because I'd rather have no program title than an incorrect program title.

The Showstopper guide was nice mainly because I could browse and search major broadcast nets from multiple markets on a single device, instead of looking at multiple TiVos. But very little of its guide data was actually unique in my setup. So I've now reconfigured a TiVo to take over that unique data and I guess that's that. (And of course, once again, this involved looking at about 20 zip codes on Zap until I found one that erroneously included a couple of cable lineups for locations 100-150 miles away from the actual zip. So I guess TMS errors do have their uses... )

As for the Showstopper, I'll probably make a modest effort to keep it functional for repeating manual recordings, and that's about it.

Is this an assumption or has some reliable source told you this?

I mean, isn't it also possible that program data beyond the 7/31 has not been purchased, and so the guide will simply shrink to nothing as the end of the month approaches?

(I guess we'll soon find out.)

Yes, I suppose that is possible. I don't know how their TMS agreement works, but i would assume it is based on having access to all data until the day you stop paying for the data (which is also how I would assume Schedules Direct works).

But dozens of sitcoms (starting with "The Odd Couple") have told me what happens when you assume.

I ended up writing the OR Dept. of Justice / Attorney General just to keep someone's legal staff busy. What I received was a 3 page letter response back from the lawyers, Locke Lord Bissell & Liddell, for DNNA. The gist of the letter is 1) They know how long I [we] have used the service. 2) Blame the Govt. on the switch from Analog to Digital TV. [lame] and 3) "Lifetime Service" means "during the lifetime of that product" and under California Law, it has an expected lifetime of just one year.

So DNNA doesn't claim "it's not us, blame directv ...it's their responsibility"? Hmm Interesting.

Har. That's *very* interesting. One year is lifetime. Gee whiz. Lemme call my life insurance carrier.

I called the Replaytv customer support number today. A prerecorded message plays twice essentially reading the message sent to everyone's replay (still connected to the mothership).

Seems like the customer support center was shutdown.

It would appear that the decision to continue the EPG wasn't made till Friday when it was probably too late to change everything back to business as usual. I would imagine that over the next few days they'll sort it all out. I wouldn't be surprised if ultimately the CS number went away and became an email address.

I had the same thought. By the way, I was calling to determine what the new official response was to the question "when will dnna end service next". I imagine it would be something like "we will be honoring our contracts and commitments".

Or just the number was - the center didn't work exclusively for them, so those guys are still there if we could find them.