Comments on: Is this true?

By: damocles

damocles — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 03:49:01 +0000

This is most definitely an urban legend and in breach of the Law of Common Sense. The real story is rather more ominous.

Deletion of the series link is in fact arranged by the SIS under ultra-secret clauses of the Electoral Finance Act. Under this legislation, it is the role of the SIS to scour episodes of popular programmes for any mention of policies or points of view that are at odds with the views of the current government. Episodes which fail to conform to Labour Government policy are simply deleted from MySky record settings. Series which continue to offer up nonconformist mutterings will be deleted entirely.

It’s pretty obvious why shows like CSI (‘tough on crime’) and McLeod’s Daughters (‘rural heartland voter bias’) are on the Don’t Play list. BLUE’S CLUES is another programme that is inherently unsound.

HOUSE is probably safe until someone from the department realises it’s not part of Parliament TV. Similarly THE F WORD is presumed to be about ministers’ unguarded whispers and is also OK for now.

And UGLY BETTY automatically gets recorded by every MySky box whether chosen by the householder or not.

By: side show bob

side show bob — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 00:12:54 +0000

llew, if the the mysky dosen’t record McLeod’s Daughters there is hell to pay in our house. But I’m with you, biggest load of Aussie dribble around. In Sth Aus last year and they were filming an episode of this crap and of course the wife wanted to stop, thank God the town had two pubs.

By: virtualmark

virtualmark — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 23:59:05 +0000

Hey there’s no way this is Labour’s fault … it was the Shipley National government in 1999 (with the active support of the Business Roundtable).

But seriously … I have the same problem with MySky dropping series link links after about 3 weeks. But I’d be very surprised if somehow TVNZ and TV3 were able to send some sort of nefarious signal across Sky’s broadcast to tinker with MySky. Methinks that a conspiracy theory promoted by someone with (i) close links to Sky and (ii) an over-active imagination.

I suspect the truth might lie more closely with the way Sky assemble their EPG and how they code their series identifiers.

By: tim barclay

tim barclay — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 23:35:00 +0000

I accept that David, but there is a theme here. And the theme is big brother carefully nurtured by the Labour Party.

By: Ben Wilson

Ben Wilson — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 23:08:44 +0000

DanielM series link is a little better than just making a standing time recording. Firstly, if the time of the show moves and you don’t know, it does, and you don’t lose the show. Second, if the recording conflicts with some other recordings and usages (sometimes happens if you leave the TV on a third channel when you have 2 channels set to record), it automatically finds the next repeat of this show and books that for recording. Which could be at 3am the next morning. Quite choice when it works.

When it doesn’t it’s a biatch. I’m sure it’s a software fault, a hack seems as unlikely as ever as an excuse for bugs.

By: llew

llew — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 21:00:54 +0000

Losing the series link for McLeod’s daughters is surely a positive thing!

By: Nigel

Nigel — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 20:50:53 +0000

Why would they do that ????, if they had Freeview PVR’s maybe, but even then it’s hardly a smart business decision.

It sounds way more like a lack of skill/testing in EPG programming & the integration of the EPG’s isn’t working right, could be it be the source was the programmer covering his tracks

By: DanielM

DanielM — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 20:47:14 +0000

Urban legend like anonymouse said. While I’m not too sure if the content is scraped off the TVNZ/TV3 websites (I’m sure they actually provide this data bacause it is copyrighted to them) it would be Sky that loads this into the system.

Sounds like MySky is flakey. I have a satellite card in my PC with MediaPortal and it picks up Freeview, where I say “Record this show at this time every week.” It does the trick. Who needs “series link”?

By: Wycroft

Wycroft — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 20:36:41 +0000

Yes, have noticed it. Will watch this with interest.

By: george

george — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 20:36:35 +0000

Burt, you’re wrong. It was the moon and the sun.

By: Buggerlugs

Buggerlugs — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 20:31:09 +0000

Jesus – so that’s National’s secret agenda…

By: burt

burt — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 20:29:07 +0000

It was the mother of all budgets that caused this to happen. The failed policies of the past.

By: anonymouse

anonymouse — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 20:17:17 +0000

The EPG (Electronic Program Guide), which is where I would expect the programming links to originate from, is controlled,written, and owned by Sky. They simply scrape the info off the Free to air channels sites, the channels cannot change any info in here.

It sounds more like a software bug in the MySky boxes,

The thing to look for would be comparing TV1,2,3,4 to Prime, ( Which is owned by Sky), and see if there appears to be any difference in loss of links,

This smells like an urban legend.

Also, Interesting to note Foxtel in OZ have just released their HD mysky equivalent box, so I would imagine that it will seep to this part of the world around the time that HD freeview starts up in March,

By: infused

infused — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 20:16:14 +0000

They use to do this in USA about hrm, 9 years ago now with satalite TV to kill of hacked sat boxes. So it’s very possible.

By: BeShakey

BeShakey — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 20:15:14 +0000

tim – TV3 is a private business. If you want to froth at the mouth shouldn’t the conspiracy be how big business is trying to secretly control our lives? Or are you only worried about TVNZ because TV3 is yet to figure out how to penetrate your tin foil hat?

By: david

david — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 20:13:25 +0000

I lose the whole program guide and ability to set up new recordings about once a week and need to reboot.

Haven’t noticed a particular pattern of series links being lost as I have always assumed that it has been because of programming changes or end of series. But I will certainly be watching a lot closer.

By: Adam

Adam — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 20:09:23 +0000

I have notice that series links from the main channels does disappear every now and then. A reboot of the mysky seems to fix the problem. I also have to reboot the mysky when the channel numbers disappear. If this is true then TVNZ & TV3 have some explaining to do.

By: tim barclay

tim barclay — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 20:08:15 +0000

But does’t this just sum up the big brother state the Labour Party is ushering in. Of course why should anyone be surprised. They are socialists who want to confiscate private wealth and control everyone’s lives. Cullen thinks we will weather the economic storm because the GOVERNMENT books are in surplus, he does not care about the highly leveraged balance sheet the average person has.

[DPF: And that is 10 demerits for seriously off topic]

By: ben

ben — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 20:07:51 +0000

I raised the problem of series links and forgotten (non-series link) recordings with Sky in the middle of last year.

They quite simply told lies to us. They said nobody else was having the same issues. We knew two or three other people with Mysky at the time and, IIRC, all of them were having the same issues as we were. Sky assured us this was new to them.

To me, a software fault would more likely explain the lost programming than a conspiracy. DVR is technically difficult and clever software, and still less than a decade old.

We could rule out conspiracy immediately if there are security features that prevent networks from doing that sort of thing (seems like an obvious thing to prevent).

By: kaykaybee

kaykaybee — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 20:05:22 +0000

pathetic if it is true, I was about to have it installed too