Voom to disable OTA tuner in STB?

[Lobstah]

The lack of a rental program was one of the things that made me hold off for as long as I did. My opinion was (and is) that the technology was changing far to quickly for me to drop $750.

Bottom line is that the people who bought took a risk. Some folks bought Edsels, too. Yugos didn't hang around too long either.

Those chickens have now come home to roost.

Lob

 

[wase4711]

Actually, you'd be incorrect. Unless it specifically states it DOES NOT remain in force if Voom goes under then it still applies and the are still liable. Again, the company running Voom did not go bankrupt.

I would disagree. MP....once VOOM ceases to exist, I can't imagine any court trying to force Cablevision to "honor" the warranty of their defunct division..thats why VOOM LLC was formed, I assume, to keep things "seperate"..

I hope for the folks who made the mistake of buying their receiver get some sort of relief, but I wouldn't bet a dime on it...

 

[madpoet]

But they didn't ever spin off. Cablevision is and always has been responsible for Voom. It is simply a product they provide. There was never any seperation between the two entities, therefore Cablevision remains the responsible party. And if you don't think courts will uphold warranties, you're wrong.

Now all that aside, I think CV will have a plan to avoid going through it. It's FAR easier for them to write off a loss on a few thousand (if that many) of us who own the receivers.

 

[wase4711]

I thought VOOM was setup as a LLC; that way, their liabilities would be seperate from the parent company...

Oh well, who knows, but I do agree it would be much cheaper to give the poor souls who bought recievers some sort of compensation, to avoid the nightmare costs of fighting it in court.
Knowing *C and the way they seem to do business, they will probably issue you guys a credit memo to use on their Cable Network!!!

 

[madpoet]

Voom LLC was established but the transfer of Voom itself was never made to it. Voom remained a Cablevision asset to the end.

 

[Indy]

I thought VOOM was setup as a LLC; that way, their liabilities would be seperate from the parent company...

Oh well, who knows, but I do agree it would be much cheaper to give the poor souls who bought recievers some sort of compensation, to avoid the nightmare costs of fighting it in court.
Knowing *C and the way they seem to do business, they will probably issue you guys a credit memo to use on their Cable Network!!!

A corporation can not own a Limited Liability Company.

 

[dodge]

voom stb

I would not return the voom stb, unless they made me, what would voom do with them anyways, the service is dead, the sad thing about it is, that most of the stb's will eventually end up in a landfill, If they work for ota, I personally would like a few to use and cancel my locals with dish, they gotta be better than that crappy ota tuner in my 811.

 

[sbhnet]

I can see them sending a kill signal to those people who have leased equipment to insure the return of the soon to be useless STB's.

Except I haven't seen any instructions as to how we are to send the leased boxes back.

sbh

 

[dankgus]

dankgus, here's the delimna. Those boxes were sold with a 2 year warranty. Legally they HAVE to honor that warranty. Voom did not go bankrupt because they were never a seperate entity from CV. Thereforce CV assumes the responsibility and liability. I've got about a year left on both my boxes for warranty, and you better believe if they don't buy me out I will file warranty requests on both of them. And if it isn't honored, I will contact my state AG. He likes to sue everyone and their mother anyway. I'm not being silly here and asking for all my money back. I want a very fairly prorated refund. They can have their hardware back, and I will never say a bad word about them.

-MP

I would have to see the warranty agreement to be any more sure of my position on this. If the warranty agreement says a defective box will be replaced for 2 years than there isn't much to pursue as the box isn't defective and if it was, they could just send you another. Really, prorating the purchase price is a hard argument to make, but don't let me discourage you. I have been in situations before (somewhat like this one) where I just had to give up even though I thought I was right, but deep down I knew I was wrong. Sometimes the opposition even gives in knowing they are right but wanting to maintain a good relationship (like bounced check fees, they will give you the money back if you ask!). If I had purchased the STB I would probably be pissed, yet realize that I gambled and lost.

Hey, it can't hurt to pursue a refund from Voom, go for it!

--Dan

 

[miamicanes]

Well, I can see one tiny possibility... if Voom were to intentionally disable the OTA tuners on purchased boxes after shutdown, and it could be proven in court that it would have been trivially easy for them to have left them enabled, there might be two possible legal avenues available (both would have to be class-action in order to make any real financial sense)

* owners could ask a court to pierce the corporate veil and hold Cablevision liable for an intentional act of vandalism committed against the STB owners' private property and seek cash damages.

* owners could ask a court for equitable relief to force Cablevision to either buy back the receivers for the purchase price less what the owners would have paid in monthly rent, or force Voom to somehow re-enable the boxes (at that point, it would probably be a moot point, since 2-3 years from now HD OTA tuners will cost < $150 and nothing short of issuing new cards to authorize the boxes would likely be feasible since the broadcast infrastructure currently used for Voom will have long since been repurposed). The nice thing about equity is that you don't have to prove any laws or contracts were violated... you just need to show that the defendant was an a$$hole for no good reason and unfairly caused needless injury or injustice.


Really, the smart thing for Voom to do would be to just leave the OTA tuners enabled, then send everyone who leased one or more boxes a prepaid mailer with the option to just buy the box (as an OTA tuner) for $25-50 (billing anyone who failed to return or buy the box after 3 months and 3+ nastygrams some fictitious overinflated price). The $25-50 Cablevision would make would probably be more than they'd end up with if they had to pay shipping via FedEx/UPS/DHL, inventorying, storage, and sale to some surplus liquidator... and they'd leave behind people who were disappointed about losing Voom, but at least satisfied that they got a nice going-away present.

Think about it. The flood of Voom boxes that would end up on eBay would probably do more to spur people who've not yet been sufficiently motivated to buy an OTA box to go out and do it... and maybe buy one or two extras so they could watch DVD-quality OTA programming on their non-HDTVs. It would go down in history as Charles Dolan's ultimate legacy, bringing HDTV into the homes of people whom up to now haven't considered it as a big deal, and getting the word out that even NORMAL TVs look better with HDTV tuners (at $250/pop, it's hard to justify... at $50-100, it's fairly easy).

I think that Cablevision's handling of the boxes post-shutdown OTA capabilities will be a good indication of who's calling the shots. If Dolan's in charge, they'll likely leave the tuners enabled, and might even just write off the boxes altogether. If the rest of the board is firmly in control, they'll likely do the Corporate America "Send in the Stormtroopers" strategy that will end up costing them more than they'd have made by just walking away AND piss off just about everyone possible.

 

[kirkdj]

OTA Working for Now

I signed on with Dish 2 weeks ago and disconnected the voom boxes. I tried one on them today on a non satilite tv....just has ota channels on it and all the old ota channels worked OK.

Does anyone know that if these boxes aren't hooked up to a dish to receive a kill signal, will they continue to work? Or is there a time bomb in them to die if no sat. signal is received?

If there is and voom enables these boxes for ota, would I have to hook it back up to the dish to receive the enabling signal?

 

[miamicanes]

In all honesty, I suspect the boxen's post-Voom firmware has long since been implanted. Whether it's a time bomb, or a benevolent gift, is anyone's guess at this point... but I seriously doubt leaving the box connected to the satellite at any point between now and eternity will ultimately make any negative difference. If they're going to self-destruct or shut down, they've long-since been given their suicide orders and will do it regardless of whether they hear the command from the satellite or not.

I'm guessing that OTA probably WILL remain enabled indefinitely, at least for purchased boxen, if only because the cost of paying someone to write the final enabling code and deploy it is almost certainly less than the cost of defending themselves against some uncertain number of lawsuits from box-owning former Voomers. Remember, there's NOTHING that scares big corporations more than unknown risk or uncertainty, because it upsets Wall Street and depresses stock prices.

If purchased boxen become doorstops, I suspect that more than a few angry New York-area Voomers will sue them in small claims court just get revenge by using CVC's own law firm as a proxy to wring the cash out of them anyway (that's the nice thing about small-claims court suits against big corporations... it costs less than a hundred bucks and a day off from work to give THEIR law firm an excuse to bill them THOUSANDS of dollars.)

 

[smeagal]

Just got official word that not only will ota be disabled but an explosion with enough force to destroy your entire house will result unless you personally drive the recievers back to voom and they disable the time bomb!!!!!!!!!

 

[truggy0]

I just called Voom, the csr dont even know how the unit will be effected. Just that it will go dead at midnight, and they dont know about the ota stations. we will all find out together...

 

[techweb]

I unplugged mine just in case.

 

[truggy0]

Yep, I have 3, I unplugged 2..Just in case

 

[wase4711]

mine have been put back in the box since last week when Comcast got installed.....

 

[gunn55]

What midnight East or West?

 

[Lobstah]

Too late...you missed it!



Lob

 

[truggy0]

West coast midnight....