Truevisions Cutting The Service...

[dominique355]

Last Saturday June 16, without warning, Truevisions cut the signal to my two satellite receivers. For some 7 years I have been a paying Platinum customer for two receivers.

When I contacted their call center, they informed me that I must change the receivers and promised to send a technician Sunday afternoon.

Sunday, a technician showed up and installed a new receiver in the living room. So far so good. Then he came to my AV room to change the system where I use a Dreambox for viewing and recording. The new receiver, a Humax, has no recording capabilities. The decoder card does not work in the Dreambox, apparently the card is linked to the receiver.

I checked the manual and found out that an external Hard disk can be connected to the Truevisions supplied receiver for recording and play-back.

All external hard disks connect to another device through USB (Ver. 2.0 or now the faster 3.0), but the system supplied by Truevisons is eSATA, a format used for internal hard disks. All attempts to find an external hard disk with an eSATA connection failed. In all Phantip Plaza there was no external hard disk connection through eSATA.

Finally a nice guy in Phantip Plaza suggested to buy an external storage device, which can connect to a computer through eSATA. All I had to do was buying an internal hard disk, mount it inside this device and connect it. So I did...

When I connected all this to the Truevisions receiver I was greeted with a message to call Truevisions Call Center, which I did. I was informed that for recording TV shows I need to pay an additional THB 99 per month, after which they will send the appropriate signal to my receiver. <deleted>! Another 99 THB/m for recording a signal I get anyway? This is unheard of! Abuse of monopoly?

But that's not all. When I tried to formal the hard disk, another error message appeared, (ER39), asking me to reconnect the eSATA device, which I did, to no avail.

So I called Truevisions Call Center again. (I have them on speed dial by now), but they were unable to help,asking me about the hard disk's rpm and other stuff I have no idea about. The rpm of the hard disk? Seriously?

So they promised to send a technician, next Friday. That's right, next Friday. Meanwhile I pay for services nor rendered.

That is the way Truevisions cares about its customers!

Isn't it time to break that monopoly of Truevisions and stop this abusing of customers?

[dominique355]

Some further information:

Truevisons recommends 3 different hard disks for attaching to the Humax HD H200S:

- Western Digital: WDC WD5000BEICT-00KA970 : On the website wdc.com this model does not exist

- Seagate: ST9500325AS: On the Seagate website this model is named but flagged as "Not available".

- Hitachi: HTS545050B9A300: On the website www.HGST.com this model does not exist.

I also searched www.humax.com for info about the receiver Truevisons forces us to use. The model HD H200S does not exist there. Very few models of Humax do NOT have a built in hard disk for recording. The few which do not have a hard disk all connect to hard disk through USB. Yet when I asked the Truevisions technician on the phone why Truevisions choose an eSATA connection instead of the ususal USB port found in portable hard disks, he told me that USB is not fast enough to record a tv show. I wonder how these other Humax models do it.

I wonder if anyone out there has been able to make this Humax receiver properly work as a recorder. Anyone?

[laowai1960]

TrueVisions sell compatible, external, 500 GB hard drives for B4,780.

[MartinBKK]

TrueVisions sell compatible, external, 500 GB hard drives for B4,780.

That is more than double what they should be

[astral]

The subject is covered extensively here

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