A number of you have contacted me asking why we have combined the 4DTV forum with the C Band forum. In addition another member is upset we won't let him promote his "product" here (I will use the term product loosely though)
I will do my best address both issues here.
The decision to merge the 4DTV forum with the C Band forum was actually something we decided to do back in January. However even after the decision was made to merge the two together it was me who decided to keep it open as I had hope that 4DTV could live on through the Skyvision conversion program.
But since that time the Skyvision program has not taken off as I would have hoped and instead of delivering quality satellite programming it carries the redheaded step childen of the popular channels. Channels like USA Network, Discovery Channel, ESPN, CNN, FOX News, HBO and others we and still are missing today.
As much as it hurts me to say from my point of view for all intensive purposes 4DTV is dead. You can't buy a new 4DTV receiver, and the devices maker will no longer support you on it.
The decision to move the threads came on Friday as I read on another forum a bunch of utter and complete BS about SatelliteGuys with these people saying they didn't need us anymore and how they were going their own thing. Since they decided this it sealed my mind that we no longer needed a 4DTV forum here and merged the 4DTV discussions with the C Band forum.
I find it funny that most of the people bitching about this change are the very same people who were slamming us on the other forum. In fact most of these people are moderators on the other forum.
Now on Friday I was going to leave it there. I was happy with the move. (Just FYI over the next few weeks I will be doing more forum pruning here as we get ready for our big move, although no more FTA areas are slated to change)
But as I was saying I was happy with the move... and then my phone rang at my office. The number of the caller id was strange the number was 9100000000. When I answered the phone I was half paying attention expecting it to be another stupid telemarketer trying to sell me toner for my printers (I get those calls all day) it wasn't until the words "possible lawsuit" were uttered that i started paying attention.
The person calling said he was calling from some law firm on behalf of the intellectual property of Motorola. He then started talking about messages posted on SatelliteGuys that were in violation of Motorolas rights and DMCA law. Then he started spewing off comments about postings about reverse engineering Motorola code, j tags, some kind of cables etc... He said that by permitting the discussion of those topics was in violations of their rights and DMCA laws.
Now over the past year we have had a number of people contact me about this claiming to be from Motorola and asking to remove those posts but this call was different. In the past when someone would PM me and ask me to remove the posts I would tell them I would be happy to if they sent me something on Motorola letterhead asking me to remove them. I have never received anything from them on this.
When this happened in the past I contacted the person who is writing the program and explained what was up. And I also told him that as long as I dont get anything in the mail we would continue to support the project as long as we could keep it under the radar. The person I contacted seemed to understand.
And while I have nothing in writing from Motorola or anyone claiming to be representing Motorola the accusations that we were in violation of the DMCA made me pull down all the main postings dealing with that project. And I will be honest the call I got scared me, not because I got a call but because they called me at my work (aka my real job) my work number is not a number I give out, nor do I use my work number to conduct any SatelliteGuys business. In addition this guy was spouting off information about me like he really did his homework on me and the site. IN addition the DMCA stuff he was spewing off was not some kid playing a game, this guy sounded like he was a lawyer and knew what he was doing.
Ultimately I must think about SatelliteGuys as a whole and what is best for our site and all of our members. While I think all this fighting over a product which is no longer supported is silly, I must do whats best for the site.
(For the record I think the 4DTV users should be able to modify their boxes to continue using them to legally receive signals, todays laws are so anti consumer...)
So there you have it and thats what happened. Again I need to look out for whats best for all of SatelliteGuys. To those guys who are upset that the forum was combined and that the info on that program is gone I suggest you pack your bags and go to where you feel safe to talk about it. That place is not here, besides the way you guys have been badmouthing SatelliteGuys I really don't want you here anyways.
I am sorry to sound like a jerk but again I must do whats best for the site.
And that's what happened... period end of discussion. I really don't want to discuss things further on this. Further comments / new threads about this will be removed.
Thank you for your understanding guys.
I will do my best address both issues here.
The decision to merge the 4DTV forum with the C Band forum was actually something we decided to do back in January. However even after the decision was made to merge the two together it was me who decided to keep it open as I had hope that 4DTV could live on through the Skyvision conversion program.
But since that time the Skyvision program has not taken off as I would have hoped and instead of delivering quality satellite programming it carries the redheaded step childen of the popular channels. Channels like USA Network, Discovery Channel, ESPN, CNN, FOX News, HBO and others we and still are missing today.
As much as it hurts me to say from my point of view for all intensive purposes 4DTV is dead. You can't buy a new 4DTV receiver, and the devices maker will no longer support you on it.
The decision to move the threads came on Friday as I read on another forum a bunch of utter and complete BS about SatelliteGuys with these people saying they didn't need us anymore and how they were going their own thing. Since they decided this it sealed my mind that we no longer needed a 4DTV forum here and merged the 4DTV discussions with the C Band forum.
I find it funny that most of the people bitching about this change are the very same people who were slamming us on the other forum. In fact most of these people are moderators on the other forum.
Now on Friday I was going to leave it there. I was happy with the move. (Just FYI over the next few weeks I will be doing more forum pruning here as we get ready for our big move, although no more FTA areas are slated to change)
But as I was saying I was happy with the move... and then my phone rang at my office. The number of the caller id was strange the number was 9100000000. When I answered the phone I was half paying attention expecting it to be another stupid telemarketer trying to sell me toner for my printers (I get those calls all day) it wasn't until the words "possible lawsuit" were uttered that i started paying attention.
The person calling said he was calling from some law firm on behalf of the intellectual property of Motorola. He then started talking about messages posted on SatelliteGuys that were in violation of Motorolas rights and DMCA law. Then he started spewing off comments about postings about reverse engineering Motorola code, j tags, some kind of cables etc... He said that by permitting the discussion of those topics was in violations of their rights and DMCA laws.
Now over the past year we have had a number of people contact me about this claiming to be from Motorola and asking to remove those posts but this call was different. In the past when someone would PM me and ask me to remove the posts I would tell them I would be happy to if they sent me something on Motorola letterhead asking me to remove them. I have never received anything from them on this.
When this happened in the past I contacted the person who is writing the program and explained what was up. And I also told him that as long as I dont get anything in the mail we would continue to support the project as long as we could keep it under the radar. The person I contacted seemed to understand.
And while I have nothing in writing from Motorola or anyone claiming to be representing Motorola the accusations that we were in violation of the DMCA made me pull down all the main postings dealing with that project. And I will be honest the call I got scared me, not because I got a call but because they called me at my work (aka my real job) my work number is not a number I give out, nor do I use my work number to conduct any SatelliteGuys business. In addition this guy was spouting off information about me like he really did his homework on me and the site. IN addition the DMCA stuff he was spewing off was not some kid playing a game, this guy sounded like he was a lawyer and knew what he was doing.
Ultimately I must think about SatelliteGuys as a whole and what is best for our site and all of our members. While I think all this fighting over a product which is no longer supported is silly, I must do whats best for the site.
(For the record I think the 4DTV users should be able to modify their boxes to continue using them to legally receive signals, todays laws are so anti consumer...)
So there you have it and thats what happened. Again I need to look out for whats best for all of SatelliteGuys. To those guys who are upset that the forum was combined and that the info on that program is gone I suggest you pack your bags and go to where you feel safe to talk about it. That place is not here, besides the way you guys have been badmouthing SatelliteGuys I really don't want you here anyways.
I am sorry to sound like a jerk but again I must do whats best for the site.
And that's what happened... period end of discussion. I really don't want to discuss things further on this. Further comments / new threads about this will be removed.
Thank you for your understanding guys.
