Twas The Night Before Christmas
Twas the Night Before Christmas and I was in the mood to enjoy a holiday movie with my family. Sure TBS was playing "A Christmas Story" for 24 stright hours, but because I have seen this movie about 999,999 times before I searched for other holiday offerings for us to enjoy.
As I sat down among my vast collection of satellite and IPTV boxes I remembered that I subscribed to a neat IPTV service called ITVN. I chose ITVN as it offers the Starz and Starz On Demand services. I figured that the Starz On Demand service would offer something festive for us to watch.
I turned on my ITVN box and navigated my way through the maze of ITVN menus and found Starz On Demand. I went in and selected the Holiday Favorites menu to find it blank, not a single program listed. I then go to another selection and find only a handful of movies there. I think to myself that something is wrong, so I go through the menus again to the live Starz Channels, and happen to stumble upon a holiday movie that we would all enjoy so I select it. After a few moments of negotiations with the ITVN Box and the ITVN servers I see a picture… well I see darkness… yes the video I am getting is black screen. I think this is strange so I select a different Starz Channel and get the same a black screen.
I call ITVN who is closed for the holidays, so I go to their website which hosts their support forum. In investigating this further it appears that the Stars channels have been black since December 18th. I have left messages for support (as have others) and have received no reply from ITVN. I have tried calling ITVN and have just got an answering machine. Is this the end of the line for ITVN?
ITVN began its life as XTV, which delivered over 75 adult channels via IPTV. As the service matured it became ITVN who tried to go mainstream and offer real programs via IPTV. Starz was one of the first mainstream services to become available on ITVN. The IPTV service also became the first provider to bring Setanta Sports into soccer fans living rooms here in the USA. Over the past year the company has had financial troubles and put itself up for sale.
The technology behind ITVN has always been ahead of its time offering customers nice sharp clear pictures on their set top box. Many times when enjoying the service I still found myself amazed that I was actually watching this amazing video via a standard Internet connection.
Hopefully someone from Starz of ITVN will see this message and fix the problem so that the few thousand subscribers to Starz can once again enjoy the service they are paying $14.95 a month for.
If this is the beginning of the end for ITVN and if in the future ITVN is no more, I will always say that the first true provider of IPTV in the USA was ITVN. I keep on saying that IPTV is the future of television, and I hope that ITVN is part of that future too.
After not being able to watch anything from Starz on ITVN, my family and me sat down and watched “A Christmas Story” for the millionth time. Sure it’s a strange movie but every time I watch it I see something that I never saw before. Maybe next year my wife will listen to me when I tell her I really do want one of those Leg Lamps for Christmas! (She always thinks I am joking… but heck that a major prize!)
Join us here at MultiChannel.COM this Friday afternoon as I plan to put on my magic hat and give you my Satellite Industry predictions for 2008.