If you own a DVR it has an EPG and some come for free, while others rely on paid subscriptions from 3rd party providers like IceTV. Unfortunately IceTV entered voluntary administration on October 6th with TPH Insolvency. This made IceTV users very nervous and began to explain the move away from IceTV support from manufacturers like Humax and Topfield.
This morning an email was sent from the Co-Founder & Executive Director, Colin O’Brien to IceTV subscribers. The email announces that IceTV has ‘assigned the rights’ which translated means they were successful in selling their products and services to an unnamed company. O’Brien has also announced a new single subscription plan of $7.99pm for up to five devices. This is a significant reduction from their previous pricing structure which also indicates where the company went wrong.
For now IceTV users can use the EPG data free of charge, as the new company needs a week to get an online payment gateway setup. As a previous IceTV user, this fall from grace has been a very ugly one and today’s announcement gives me no confidence the new company will succeed where IceTV failed. Getting people to pay for a program guide is always going to be a difficult sell.
You have just received an email from the voluntary administrators who, in the last days, have assigned a new company the rights to IceTV’s services and products. We have re-assembled some of the key team members to start to refresh the guide data to support all the needs of our cloud based Smart Recording, website and apps. They started work early on Friday (last week) and worked over the weekend to have a full seven day time and title listing, with the ever important repeat flags, by early this week. We are delighted to let you know that we have achieved that outcome. We also thank our forum members who have been a great help in correcting the errors that occurred under such a concentrated workload. Our Monday and Friday “New Shows” emails will take a couple of weeks to get going, as will the “Coming Soon” section of the website TV Guide and apps.
Our new subscription is a single product of $7.99 per month for up to five devices. Apart from this change in subscription the business service and the products supported will not change at all. At present the company will continue to trade as IceTV.
Because it will take at least a week to get the on-line payment gateway set up we are happy to provide the EPG data to all our subscribers free-of-charge until that time, including those that lapse. A small but hopefully appreciated gesture on our behalf to partially compensate for the losses you may or will have incurred at the cessation in trading of the old company now in voluntary administration.
At the commencement of this new subscription and payment gateway you will be given a further free 7 days to use IceTV during which time you can decide whether to continue with the service. For ease of renewal the new monthly subscription will have an automated renewal option.
It’s been a tough couple of weeks for all of us and I can’t overstate how we appreciate your loyalty and patience as valued customers and we hope that you continue to support the service so that we can supply an ever improving and stable product.
Thank you all again for your valued support.
Kind regards.
