PiTV signal gone ?

[stevesc]

Anyone watch Pitv ? Lost signal on Saturday evening, not recovered yet as of Sunday evening. Company isn't answering phone calls.

[be236]

What is PiTV? Is that a subscription service like Dish/DTV? Do they have a website you can go to for customer service, etc?

[stevesc]

Welcome to £TV


Their program include 2 SlylinkTv channels. about 5 China channels. one news channel and some minor variety channels. Their web page has not updated in years and their contact email doesn't exist last couple years.
Now the signal's gone, no phone, no email, no nothing. Good thing my contract is up this month. My neighbor just paid a 2 year subscription.

[be236]

Hmm.. their website was flooded this morning,but now it looks back up and running... What happens when you call their 800/866 number? Do you get a live person?

Do you think this PiTV went bust, but their website still remains up for a little longer?

Maybe they couldnt compete with Dish's various Chinese channels... I am just guessing.. that's ashame if they went belly-up, though.

[kilosat]

Looks like they're out of money due to fraud.

http://www.paulhastings.com/tmpdocs/...c_ID=41640.pdf

STUB SATertainment USA is the company I've been going through for billing and what have you, and according to my research, their bank accounts are frozen.

So now, we all have to get together and demand some money.

If you go here:
http://www.sccomplex.org/home/index.htm

You can search for PerdiWave or New World TMT, and get a look at the cases, but here's a PDF if you prefer (attached).

[stevesc]

Looks like 曲建平 and Prediwave is out of business. Property auctions off by bankruptcy court May 16,2007. But according to one article 香港新世界發展 invested in 9 companies headed by 曲建平. As Pitv may still be a viable company, 新世界發展 maybe the new owner of Pitv and will want to keep it alive.

Pitv's phones are now playing recorded message. "Emergy repair of the satellite in progress."

My parent like to watch the 2 politicle talk shows on Skylink, their Korean drama programing is good also. Pitv used to carry Sissy Chen's talk show but no longer. Where can I get Sissy Chen's talk show now? I need recommendation what service to get if Pitv is indeed Kaputt.t...

[be236]

Originally Posted by stevesc

Looks like 曲建平 and Prediwave is out of business. Property auctions off by bankruptcy court May 16,2007. But according to one article 香港新世界發展 invested in 9 companies headed by 曲建平. As Pitv may still be a viable company, 新世界發展 maybe the new owner of Pitv and will want to keep it alive.

Pitv's phones are now playing recorded message. "Emergy repair of the satellite in progress."

My parent like to watch the 2 politicle talk shows on Skylink, their Korean drama programing is good also. Pitv used to carry Sissy Chen's talk show but no longer. Where can I get Sissy Chen's talk show now? I need recommendation what service to get if Pitv is indeed Kaputt.t...

Dish Net has a Great Wall package with many Chinese channels... I think it's around $30 a month.. not sure how to compared with PiTV's offering or pricing... Go to Dish's website and check it out...

[be236]

Originally Posted by kilosat

Looks like they're out of money due to fraud.

http://www.paulhastings.com/tmpdocs/...c_ID=41640.pdf

STUB SATertainment USA is the company I've been going through for billing and what have you, and according to my research, their bank accounts are frozen.

So now, we all have to get together and demand some money.

If you go here:
Santa Clara County Superior Court Complex Litigation

You can search for PerdiWave or New World TMT, and get a look at the cases, but here's a PDF if you prefer (attached).

Wow.. good info... this case started in 2004, and it's just now recently in the last few days that satellite service got shutdown? Just incredible? What was really the problem to run out of business? Did they not have enough customers? Charged too low a monthly-fee? etc??

[kilosat]

Basically, Prediwave was purchased by a big company. And the big company had lots of money.

Prediwave said it was going to develop a technology for interactive satellite TV. And so Big Company invested heavily.

Prediwave told Big Company that it needed to buy a special memory chip from another company called WOW. Big Company was ok with this, believing that the chip was being purchased for a regular market price.

What really happened is the owner of Prediwave set up an account with HSBC under his brother and mom's name, for WOW. And WOW purchased the memory chips, marked the price up 20-fold, and sold them back to Prediwave. In effect, money was laundered within Prediwave, away from Big Company.

When Big Company began investigating Prediwave's spending, they found this and more, and the rest is history. Prediwave's spending accounts have been frozen, and the company's property has been auctioned off.

That's all I know so far, and there may be inaccuracies, but I think it's about right.

Oh, and Prediwave made big big payments to S.T.U.B SATertainment. I think they're basically the same company, which is why our feed is gone. Hopefully someone else will see this as a potential business and go for it.

[kilosat]

As of this morning,

http://www.pitvusa.com/

is not responding. Their mail server continues to function.

[be236]

Originally Posted by kilosat

As of this morning,

http://www.pitvusa.com/

is not responding. Their mail server continues to function.

Yikes.. that's definitely a bad sign... I feel sorry for the employees at PiTV.. There were probably laid off w/o much notice... Also, feel sorry for the customers that paid in advance for this service.. wonder if they get to keep their dishes and receivers and what they can do with 'em? I would guess they can use their dish for FTA watching (just need to get new FTA receiver?)...

Also, wonder if the guy monitoring this TP on Lyngsat has updated his entry yet... Seems there's no way to contact the person.. just have their short name listed on Lyngsat only...

[stevesc]

Lyngsat no longer showing Pitv on the chart, 2 days after I email them the bad news.

Pitv employee ? They were never good for nothing. TV schedules messed up. Serial dramas not played in sequence. Lost signals,lost sound, poor no communications. The programing was good though with Skylink TV and until 3 month ago CTI news and variety shows.

[mluu510]

i am a pitv customer. what do i do now? what's pitv's phone number? i want my remaining money back. thanks.

[su123]

I am a pitv customer too. There is no signal here either. I tried to call but only got a message for the last week. Where can we go to file a compliant about this, and to get our money back?

[kilosat]

The best solution is for us to all pony up and hire a lawyer to get our money back. But that's expensive.

So for now, we should probably contact the Ontario California Chamber of Commerce about what has happened.

When you contact these guys, be sure to state that you had a contract for one or two years of service, and that you have already paid in full. And that now, the company is disappearing, and you are seeking a refund for the remaining time of service. Or something to that effect.

I'm not a lawyer.

Here's the Ontario California Chamber of Commerce web site:
http://www.ontario.org/

If anyone has better ideas, post here! I'd be happy just to have the service back, personally.

[be236]

How is PiTV much different than Dish's "Great Wall Package" of about 20 or so channels? Is it just that PiTV was cheap (like $15/month) vs Dish's $35/month cost?

[stevesc]

Pitv was great that it has 2 SkylinkTV,CTI(until month ago), a number of talk shows representing 2 opposing camps in Taiwan. A number of variety shows, serial dramas and of course those free CCTV, MacTV, buddha channels. Its very good if you came from Taiwan.

The Great Wall has no attraction to anyone not from mainland. All those provincial channels just duplicate CCTV programs most of the time, the rest... provincial news,singing,dancing shows are of no interest to non-mainlanders. Don't get me wrong, I love CCTV, watch the travel, national treasure, archeology,anthoprology ,history programs every day.

What I want now is CTI and Phoenix , better if I don't have to pay DirectTV's $10 basic English programming. Skylink is only available on Dish which require you to subscribe to English,then Chinese packages raising total cost over $55 . Bad deal. Maybe Skylink could find an alternate reseller ?

[be236]

Hmmm.. I think Great Wall has two Skylink channels and CTI.. and I think even half their channels are Taiwan-based like those various ETTV channels, and a few are HK-based (Guangdong hua)... Yeah,I guess Dish Package/Great Wall can be a little expensive...

Looking at their channel list, it looks great...

If you look at the FTA channels beamed into "zhong guo" itself, there are so many... too bad those can't get re-broadcasted by some provider back to USA.. The cost to re-beam 'em could be the reason why they can't be free.. darn!

[su123]

Originally Posted by be236

Yikes.. that's definitely a bad sign... I feel sorry for the employees at PiTV.. There were probably laid off w/o much notice... Also, feel sorry for the customers that paid in advance for this service.. wonder if they get to keep their dishes and receivers and what they can do with 'em? I would guess they can use their dish for FTA watching (just need to get new FTA receiver?)...

Also, wonder if the guy monitoring this TP on Lyngsat has updated his entry yet... Seems there's no way to contact the person.. just have their short name listed on Lyngsat only...

Does anyone know how to convert the Dish from Pi TV for FTA watching? Is there chinese program as well? What equipment do I need and how to set it up? How is the quality of the picture? Help, I am going crazy with out my TV.

[kilosat]

If you're as ticked off as I am, feel free to email the lawyer handling the bankruptcy.

His name is John Fiero, and he represents a committee comprised of the creditors of Prediwave.

Because we are owed money for the services we have already paid for (assuming you pre-paid as we did), we are creditors, and Mr. Fiero is supposed to represent us to the court, and get our money back.

Understand that he can't do this overnight, but he does need to be aware.

John Fiero's email address is JFiero@pszyjw.com. That's JFiero at pszyjw dot com, incase the email address is filtered.

I encourage everyone who has lost service with any provider related to Prediwave or S.T.U.B. SATertainment USA or Pi TV to email Mr. Fiero at once and explain the situation to him.

Thanks!

PS: Here is the website about the current case: Information Website for Unsecured Creditors in PrediWave Corporation Chapter 11 Case