vTuner Offline on Some Devices [Nov 2014]

[MK_Slinky]

Hi all,

It looks as though vTuner is now off-line again on some devices. My own STR-DN1040 Receiver remains unaffected at this time however my BDP-S7200 Blu-ray is displaying the following message:

“This service cannot be accessed at this time because the server replied with incorrect or invalid information”.

Please report any other affected devices here for simplicity of colaborating the information, kindly do not start a new thread.

Thanks in advance!

[MK_Slinky]

Hi all,

For those of you who have found some stations are still missing on your devices I just wanted to add an update of my own which hopefully can explain the reasons why.

Currently I am viewing vTuner on my BDP-S7200 Blu-ray Player. I am looking specifically at the United Kingdom  ALL STATIONS list. On my device there are a total of 415 stations to choose from in this category. However, on the vTuner website in the exact same category there are 1,498 stations listed.

Likewise if I look at the ALL STATIONS list for France on my BD Player, there are 262 stations listed. On vTuner there are 1,898

Germany ALL STATIONS list - 476 stations --- vTuner website 1,815

Italy ALL STATIONS list - 374 stations --- vTuner website 897

This situation seems the same with every country I've looked at and in every scenario the vTuner website has more stations than on our devices. Maybe we only receive a random selection which changes over time? If you have missing stations, perhaps you now understand why. vTuner control what we can access and if they change the listings we're at their mercy.

Anyway, I hope you find this information useful.

Cheers

[richardc79]

Thank you for the information, it is very usefull.

So we can conclude that the service from vTuner to our Sony devices is (very) limited.

Again i want to add that this limitation is only on Sony devices, so yeah i think it is still a contract issue between vTuner and Sony.

For me the result is that with the limited stations available for my sony device the whole device is getting useless because that was the reason i bought it in the first place.

Sony really needs to solve this issue or refund customers in my opinion.

I don't know how customer rights in other countries are like, but i think here in the Netherlands customers have a lot of rights and there are a couple of organisations where you can complain about this ridiculous situation.

Because of the fact sony didn't respond to my last mails i seriously considering to get in contact with a couple of these organizations because as a customer i now have serious disadvantage from this because of Sony.

[teinob]

Absolutely agree:

it is a ridiculous situation (indeed it is, but sad too) and

it is a case for consumer protection organisations!

--> Please send this case in your particular country to these organisations!

I already did in Switzerland, as there is a rather popular tv broadcast which dedects exactly such cases and confronts the players with the facts. Hopefully they will investigate this Sony/vTuner situation.

I think that's the only way to urge Sony and vTuner to declare, what the problem is, and to resolve it.

Please let's put this case into public, otherwise they won't see the need to react and are hoping that we will recalm after a while (having the feeling to have done everything right). 

And please post it here as soon as it is reported - because I'm still hoping that someone at Sony reads this thread (hope dies last...)

Cheers!

[Pistabacsi]

Update.

Still no 6 Music here.

I have exactly the same status as @MK_Slinky 

Got a reply from Sony support this morning telling me to contact the dealer as "this is a 3rd party issue".

My response was rather frank, albeit polite, but I will play along for now.

I have also told Sony that I would rather sort this out without involving the Authority For Customer Protection here in Hungary.

As for news sites & tech blogs, not sure who to really shake up on this topic, but if you lot have already managed to put it into the public domain, please post a link here & I'll get it buzzed around on social media.

[wilsonmfw]

It is so obviously a Sony problem but they just do not seem to care about
their customers! Such a shame, devices good but support let's them down do
badly. As you say, vTuner works on other suppliers platforms, obviously
the likes of Denon are complying with their contractual obligations and
paying their bills!

[Pistabacsi]

I think that's the message everyone needs to make crystal clear in any communication on this topic, be it with Sony themselves or consumer action bodies.

[MK_Slinky]

---

@richardc79 wrote:

Thank you for the information, it is very usefull.

So we can conclude that the service from vTuner to our Sony devices is (very) limited.

Again i want to add that this limitation is only on Sony devices, so yeah i think it is still a contract issue between vTuner and Sony.......

---

Hi Richard,

Yes vTuner station lists are limited but what I didn't say is that they've always been limited. Even before these problems occurred we only had certain stations, not all of them. When you add up the total listing as found on the vTuner website there are far too many to add to any one device. In the Music category alone there are a total of 35,797 stations whilst in the Talk category there are 7,501. Add them all together and that's a whopping 43,298 stations in all !!!

You might already have noticed that we don't have a search feature on our Sony products or at least there isn't one on my devices, can you imagine trying to scroll through thousands of stations just to find one? I don't know how vTuner decide what we do receive but it's quite logical that they only give us a select few.

I don't believe it's a contract issue at all. For me service has resumed on both devices and is as good as it ever was. In fact I would go one step further and say it has been improved, there's certainly more 320 kbps stations than I was previously aware of.

I understand that things may be slow to improve in other countries but the one thing we cannot lose site of is that vTuner has indeed started to come back on line or at least it has here in the UK. No doubt other regions will follow suit but you have to play the waiting game a little longer, or so it would seem.

I found this information on the vTuner website useful

Frequently Asked Questions

1. Why do stations not work sometimes? The stations can only support a limited number of listeners at any time. If the station's servers have reached their limit of listeners you will not be connected. Often if you try again in a few minutes you will be connected to the station.   2. Why isn't my favorite Internet radio station on the station list? Not all stations can be accessed with vTuner. Station sometimes do not allow other sites to link to their stream.

[richardc79]

@MK_Slinky 

Here in the netherlands the local selection is really limited after this issue. (see also the other post with the local selection defferences)

Again, a friend who is using a Denon with the vTuner service has way more content and the local selection for the netherlands and as far as i can see he has the amount of station i used to have on my sony.

So, nevertheless i cannot agree with that one.

I lost all my favourite local stations just because i am using a Sony device..

[MK_Slinky]

Maybe buy a Denon instead?

Failing that you'll have to hang on and see if things improve, it's early days!

[Pistabacsi]

Several attempts throughout today have yielded no change in service.

What is weird is that in the BBC listing BBC 6 Music doesn't appear (on the device). However it is 2nd in the list of Editor's Picks. 

Okay, so it's early days (it was 5 weeks last time) & I am trying to be as patient as possible.

But I am still of the firm opinion that Sony & vTuner have drastically reduced the scope of the service without warning, effectively crippling our gear that we spent hard earned cash on.

That they can't sort out what amounts to a playground spat is testament to their ineptitude & not exactly demonstrating the capabilty of 2 companies supposedly at the forefront of technology.

It's quite embarrasing really.