The Walking Dead Season 7, first half has disappeared without warning...

[Anonymous User]

Hi, I'm a new customer who signed up in February to finally watch The Walking Dead from the very beginning, having been badgered by several friends for a long time to do so. And mightily impressive it is. Having joyfully binged my way through the first six seasons I started watching the seventh, watching episode 3 yesterday.

Today however I discovered that the first eight episodes of Season 7 are no longer available. These episodes did not carry an expiry date nor the usual 30-day countdown, and I've seen no warning of their removal. Having come so far watching the show I'm pretty gutted, and I've noticed several people on Twitter voicing the same concern. 

Is this standard practice? I really don't want to wait for the Blu-Ray to be released, so any help or advice would be greatly appreciated, thank you.

SE.

[Anonymous User]

@Anonymous User @schnapps

Hello! I am on this, I'll report back when I have answers! 

[Anonymous User]

@Anonymous User

They should now be available, Ive checked and I can see them (on the ROI site), let me know if they're still not showing for you!

[Anonymous User]

Hi Mary E,

I can see them there now (and they weren't there earlier today). Thanks for getting this sorted.

So is the problem then, as schnapps suggested, that some episodes don't copy over when new content is added to the Irish servers? As explained above, this has occured before with other shows.

I'll come on here in future to report any missing content. However, your helpdesk staff appear to not understand what is going on in these instances. Someone need to upskill them. It seemed quite obvious to me, based on the pattern of the missing episodes, that this was not a rights issue.

If you wish I can pm you the (inadequate copy/paste) responses I received from the helpdesk and you can chase it up with the powers that be. I won't publicly add the responses here. I don't want to get anyone in trouble but for what seems like a pretty simple issue of overlooked content, your staff should really be more clued in.

Regards,

Seán

[Anonymous User]

@Anonymous User  This is what I was seeing, for ref.

[Anonymous User]

@Anonymous User

No problem. 

I know they weren't there, I checked when you flagged and they were definitley missing. 

When it was investigated, they were present in the background, but weren't showing, so they were 'un-published' and 're-published', essentially we turned it off and then back on again and voilá. 

This can happen on both the UK and ROI platforms. Obviously we try to minimise the occurances but incidents do occur. I wont bore you with the ins and outs but the reason something could be present on one platform and not the other is that the UK and ROI currently run on two different systems. We're working on getting to one system but as you can imagine thats taking some time. 

If you could send me over the chat transcripts, that would be helpful, thank you. 

Obviously I would love to think you'll never have another content-related issue, but if if if that happens... feel free to @ me

[Anonymous User]

Thanks @Anonymous User. I appreciate this sensible explanation. I am aware you have a disparity between the UK and ROI systems alright. as previously when I had a similar issue with Silicon Valley, one of the helpdesk staff sent me a .com url (UK) to prove to me the episodes existed, but as soon as I logged in it resolved to the .com/ie and the episodes were gone again. I actually think the helpdesk staff dealing with ROI are not aware of the issue and also that it can occur independently on the UK and ROI sites.

It's great to now know who to go to if I come across this issue again. I was very tempted to cancel my passes and ditch NowTV until these issues are ironed out.

I shall pm you the transcripts now in bit.

Cheers

[schnapps]

@Anonymous User

Thanks for resolving this matter quickly for @Anonymous User  and all the other ROI members who are TWD fans

@Anonymous Usera quick question off topic, you mentioned in one of your posts that you are using a Roku box, would that be the NowTV ROI spec box powered by Roku or an actual Roku streaming box ?

The only reason i am asking was when i raised the question recently to a senior NowTV staff member i was told that Roku players are not currently supported in ROI (unless this has changed in the last week or so).

Just curious that's  all and i don't want to give NowTV ROI forum members  on here the wrong information

[Anonymous User]

@schnapps  Thank you for your help on this matter. The official NowTV spec boxes in ROI are Roku boxes and that is what I have. The screensaver even has a "Roku Powered " logo spinning around.

In general NowTV is a great service. I think people want to pay for reasonably priced, stable content over pirating any day. I do find the box software has its kinks, however but these are tolerable. The missing content issue is the most frustrating but in the 3 months I have had the box, I have only encountered this 3 times. Thanks to you and Mary E, I now know who to turn to.

I have seen some disquiet online that the ROI pricing is more expensive than the UK - £7.99 vs €15 for the entertainment pass. This is dissappointing but for now I am still happy from a value for money aspect. Unfortunately we tend to get hit with an "Irish-tax" here... which maybe has to do with economies of scale feeding into region pricing, I don't know. £7.99 (€9) is outstanding value. But I guess I'll have to suck up the €15 over here .

[schnapps]

@Anonymous User

The NowTV boxes here in the UK and ROI are a stripped down version of the Roku boxes with a modified Roku OS with the NowTV UI imbedded into the software.

I class these above boxes has NowTV boxes rather than the full blown higher price Roku Players that have more functionality and Apps available from the Roku Apps Store.

Over here in the UK you can buy NowTV vouchers / Gift cards from Authorized Retailers which in the long run can save you money compared to the monthly subscription fees.

Just wondering, does NowTV ROI offer something similar where you can buy from ROI outlets NowTV pass vouchers to apply to your account or are ROI users stuck with a monthly subscription payment only ?   

[Anonymous User]

@schnapps

Thanks for the calrificaiton re. the Roku box modification.

Re. the passes, I have not come across any outlets where you can purchase vouchers. My box came with a 2-month voucher and Just-Eat (the take away company) were offering a free 1-month pass when you ordered food through them back in July. But aside from those promotions, you can only do the monthly rolling sub as far as I know.  So yeah, that's use getting a bit shafted again.

But look, it's always been this way. Back in the 80s the price of the Beano was through the roof and when there was free gift, it was taken off the Irish imports for whatever reason. God forbid we might get a free bag of KP Skips taped to the front of a comic when they weren't actually for sale in the country. We coudn't be having those evil UK crisps corrupting our young no could we.

Sorry, gone off on a bit of a tangent there but you get me.