TVTV simply stops working

[mikesusangray]

OK, I'm so mad I could spit!

I have complained to SageTV and I have complained to TVTV, and no one takes me seriously.

I use SageTV in Switzerland - and paid plenty of good money for it - with TVTV - which I have also paid for. I have spent hours and hours and hours getting the channel lineup set up correctly. And for the most part, everything works fine.

Until it simply doesn't. That is, once every month or so, all the channels simply disappear. If I click on Program Guide all the channel numbers, all the channel logos, all the program information are simply gone. There is nothing to click on, nothing to choose. SageTV simply stops working.

If I go to setup, tvtv stauts shows that I have a valid account, I've paid up and everything is dandy. But when I click on "Channel Setup" there is simply nothing there. No channels to choose, sort or anthing. Just the options "Done with Channel Setup," "Enable all Channels," Disable Channels," "Add Channel to Lineup," "Change Channel sorting Method."

If I erase my video capture card and reinstall from scratch, I get a picture instantaneously when I clisk "S-Video." I can also watch TV as usual using Media Player Classic. There is absolutely NOTHING wrong with my video card or its functionality. However, as soon as I go into channel setup, NO CHANNELS. I've even tried entering a dummy TVTV username to provoke an error, then re-enter my proper name in hopes of resetting something; still no dice. (Needless to say, I've rebooted umpteen times and reinstalled SageTV ad nauseam.)

Every time this happens, I simply have a TV outage for about a day. Then, without any explanation, everything simply starts working again as though nothing had ever happened. But until that happens, no TV, sorry, bad luck. And this time it has happened the night I was going to record a ball game at 2am that I've been waiting for months to catch.

I have contacted SageTV three times over the past 9 months. Every time they waffle around a while, ask a lot of vague questions and stop answering. I tried to contact TVTV twice. Once by phone, where I spent 10 minutes on a dollar-per-minute line trying to explain to the lady on the phone what EPG and SageTV mean until she put her foot down: she really couldn't help me; after all, TVTV doesn't this kind of stuff - TVTV is for watching TV not running computers. I tried again by email, where I never got an answer at all.

This simply reeks. I'm furious with these two companies for selling me a product that malfunctions on a regular basis and displaying absolutely no interest in helping to figure out what is wrong, let alone find a fix.

I'm a patient guy but missing this game tonight is simply too much. I paid a lot of money (instead of going the open source route) so I wouldn't have to go through this kind of grief. I'm sorry for ranting, but there simply HAS to be a way to get Sage to pay attention.

Mike Gray

[andrew.m.suther]

and the same here! Long time Sage user, who has started paying the tvtv subscription, only to find out that it periodically simply isn't there! It can log in, check how long my tvtv account is valid, sel;ected between "extended" and "basic" services ... and then promptly tell me that there no channels available. Thanks for nothing TVTV. I log back into the the TVTV website myself to see it displaying the SageTV login in the corner. C'mon guys!

[StephaneM]

Originally Posted by mikesusangray

I'm sorry for ranting, but there simply HAS to be a way to get Sage to pay attention.

I think SageTV has your attention, though they cannot do anything: TVTV is not working, period. It has always been a poor service (with no costumer support). When I started the HTPC adventure approx 8 years ago with ShowShifter, TVTV was already there and was already bad (at this time it was free and the only thing you were able to do was schedule recording on their web sites, then your PVR downloaded these rec. jobs from time to time, pretty simple huh, even that failed).

Stop giving your money to company that doesn't deserve it.

XMLTV support is great and there is now a new european paid guide data provider. So you have the choice to either go with the free service or a paid service (though I don't know if this provider is reliable)

Regards,
Stéphane.