[dodo]

I can't seem to see this posted anywhere. I noticed that Hyperreality was not posting so much on this forum, and note that the business is no longer a supplier of DigiTV hardware due to the difficulty in obtaining stock.

Oh well, all good things must come to an end (ie. Nebula Electronics).

Good luck, Richard, with your future ventures, you've always been excellent to deal with.

Personally, with the Vista debacle making it glaringly obvious that Nebula is finished, I've also moved on (I just use Webscheduler and Mediaportal instead, and now have a MacBook as my primary PC!)

[maxxx]

I didn't buy my card off HyperReality, but had heaps of help, support and advice without which it would surely have been in the bin long ago.

Richard - THANKS

[murrayt]

Yes a sad loss I think, as the level of support and committment to customers was unsurpassed in my experience, and he gave time tirelessly to this forum (and some others I noticed as well).

I gather he is still around (based on some recent posts I've read)

Many thanks though (from another in the Oz contingent)

[Pixelz]

This is bad news. The HyperReality TS Streaming tool was my main motivation for buying Nebula.

Does anyone know if HyperReality will now be a distributor for any competitor's tuner hardware?

[BonkEye]

Seen here [link]

I'd like to say thanks too to Hyper - even though I'm not in Oz you've cerntainly helped me with some problems. Thanks

[Anarchi]

sry to hear this, thanks Richard for your support! One in a million

[jimwillsher]

Another nail in Nebula's coffin. They can't supply the hardware, they can't supply the software, and they can't provide the communications. Not much left really is there.

"HR" was a great, knowledgable supporter. Shame to see them go. But also a shame to see Nebula go down the pan too....


Jim

Edit: And I can't type.

[Anarchi]

Whats happening with Nebula?

Are they discontinuing the Neb?

[dodo]

[Anarchi]

[Bill]

I suspect Nebula are a long way from going bust.

[avid]

[Kanga]

[HyperReality]

Well, I suppose it's not surprising that this thread has turned into an anti-Nebula rant-fest, almost to the point where I wasn't going to post anything here.

Anyway, thanks to all those who have posted their thanks to us - it is much appreciated. Thanks go from us to all our customers who have supported our business over the years, and who continue to support us today. Please understand that we always did our best to provide the best DigiTV support and service that we could, and that we are still continuing to do the best we can now within the limits of the resources we can now bring to bear on it.

We are still around, of a fashion, but are currently out of the hardware game, instead focussing of Australian sales and support of the VideoReDo MPEG editing software package. Dealing in quality software like VideoReDo is a much less stressful prospect than dealing with hardware, particularly when the hardware is now a commodity product that is being mass produced out of China and Taiwan at bargain basement prices (and in a lot of cases, with bargain basement hardware, software, and driver quality).

It is unfortunate, to say the least, that things went downhill for us with Nebula, and with Nebula in general. Please believe me when I say that it wasn't for want of trying on our part here at HR - we did everything possible for our customers, for Nebula, and for ourselves, to try and keep things going as they had been, but eventually it simply got to the point where it had cost us too much money to continue.

Unhappily for me (and for everyone), before we called it quits, we had provided a number of pieces of code to Nebula that they appear to have decided not to use (so far anyway), including a rewrite of the BDA subsystem to improve compatibility and performance with third party BDA devices, and updates to our builds of the BDA and WDM drivers, including hooks to provide remote control support into DigiTV when the DigiTV devices are used with the BDA drivers, and even unsigned 64 bit PCI BDA and WDM driver builds (admittedly I'm uncertain whether those would actually work, given that we had no XP64 installations here at the time - the driver did compile though!).

There was some talk at the end of last year about me providing development support for other parts of DigiTV, if only to assist in resolving some of the Australian specific DigiTV problems, but unfortunately for everyone, that all fell through.

We did consider doing what a number of other Australian companies are doing, and simply import and rebadge OEM DVB-T hardware from China and Taiwan, but we didn't find any hardware we were totally happy with, and we couldn't get access to the driver source code either, which made us uncomfortable. The costs involved in code-signing and WHQL compliance for Vista x64 drivers are also prohibitive for a small business, unless we wanted to stick with what all the others do and simply provide whatever drivers the manufacturers provide, regardless of the quality - we see other companies playing the "I'll pass that on the driver developers" game, trying to imply that they have some control over such developments (or that they do such things in-house), and I have a bit of a laugh now, and be happy that we don't have that problem.

Also, given the current retail pricing of products, unless you have a compelling competitive advantage (a rock-solid BDA version of DigiTV would have been nice!), then it really isn't worth the effort any more for a small import business like ours.

As far as Nebula goes, in recent times we have had no contact with them, and as a result we have no idea what their plans are for the future, where they currently stand from a business point of view, when or if signed x64 drivers for Vista for the current DigiTV hardware will be released, whether they will ever incorporate the code I wrote for them, or whether they will get on top of the Vista and multicore/multithreading issues that are still present in later releases. For us and all our customers, I wish I could answer those questions, or have some way of making things happen quicker, but I don't.

I will still be hanging around here, and I am still involved in doing things like deleting spam, but my day to day involvement is limited now (that plus not much has been happening around here or at Nebula lately by the looks of things).

Bill is also continuing to work above and beyond the call of duty to keep things happening, and I (and you all should) thank him again for that.

[avid]

Richard,

Thank you for this posting. It explains far more than you needed to and does help in the general understanding of the Nebula "situation".

But more ... thank you for all your assistance over the last few years to the wider community. The advice, help and software you have provided has been of great benefit across the world, and not just in Australia.

And finally, thank you for your work as a moderator here on the forum. Maybe in that role you should be deleting my postings from this thread - what is a UK member doing posting to an "Australia Support" area??

Good luck with VideoReDo etc. I am an extremely happy (albeit occasional) user of VIdeoReDo and it does exactly what it claims and appears to be bullet-proof in use. Don't forget to post a note to the forum here if you pick up other new and interesting pieces of software to distribute - anything that meets your quality standards will be well worth considering.

Brian

[dodo]

[Batter Pudding Hurler]

First - I still find the Nebula PCI card and v3.7.06 of the software on XP a great product. I have learnt it's oddities, and live round them. This product has completely changed how I watch TV, and I haven't seen any adverts in months. I also want to thank HR for his help to the community in general as I remember getting help from him in my early Nebula days



Now for my "2 cents worth"....

When a company stops talking to it's distributors, there is something seriously wrong.

The Nebula-Electronics website is now looking old and static. Copyright dates are stuck in 2006. And the front page links to 3.7.05 as the "latest" version. Even though this one is buggy in the UK and was quickly patched with 7.3.06 back at the start of the year.

Even posts about Vista are stuck in time, with reference to a "future" release of the software - dated for April.

Then one swaps over to the "other" company called Nebula-Media. Suddenly we have a split of the company into two.... but again the website is just not changing enough for an active company.

I have worked as a programmer in a couple of small UK companies in the past. Often what happens is the company struggles along with a small team of programmers - sometimes only one or two people. Usually you have one "expert" on the code who created the main part of the product, and then there is a "junior" who is playing "catch-up" on learning how the product works. (And often also learning how to program at the same time!!)

In both the companies I worked for I saw the head programmer "walk out" due to problems in the company or better job offers elsewhere. When this happens, suddenly everthing is dropped into the hands of the junior, and (s)he then struggles to keep up. Especially as the company has been driving the progammers hard to "release product"... and the documentation just falls by the wayside..... new features are just hacked onto the side of the old code... and chaos starts to occur as the overall picture is lost.

With all the troubles coinciding with the new Vista release, this adds up to a tougher problem for any "junior" programmers. Having to do a crash course in the new OS, tracing bugs in a program without documentation, and all this while the marketing guys are trying to shift these new "media" products. (As an example of the inexperience of the programmers: hiding the cursor or stopping a screensaver from starting is just a single line of simple windows API code.... but even simple fixes like this are missing)

It all seems like too much of a DejaVu to me. Programmers wanting to fight bugs in an unfinished product, but being swapped onto the new future products instead. Products that are then priced wildly high (£1800 for a Media Server!! Could buy two decent PCs for that!!)


It's all a great pity. The hardware works great, slightly fussy about quality components to support it - just like a thouroughbred racehorse. Software is great (in XP), but being 98% finished means it is just not quite good enough for me to be able to recommend to my clients.

Maybe, by 2008, the programming "team" may of caught up again. But by then it looks like Nebula may have to start again with a good chunk of it's userbase. Those of us with XP are used to working around the odd GPF, but I fear the patience of the Vista users will of been strained too far.


I have patience... and wish Nebula luck.... but it's a great pity to see yet another UK Electronics company loose out to Chinese competition.


And finally..... anyone noticed the strange photo used on the front page of the Nebula-Media home page? Why is the girl in the background looking so bored\fed-up? Is she trying to use DigiTV on Vista? LoL

[Batter Pudding Hurler]

Errr... things are looking bad. I have been nosing round Companies House and Nebula Electronics have not put any accounts in for last year.... currenly marked as "Overdue" since May 2007.


The Nebula Group Ltd is worse as those accounts were due in March (And it looks like they have never put any accounts in for the previously dormant company...)


And as Nebula Media Ltd was creating in Jan this year, there have been no accounts to return yet....



This all reminds me of the games that went on when one of the old companies I worked for started going bankrupt.... games were played to keep the product and intellectual property rights by transfering them to a new company, while the staff and debts were left employed by the original company - who then went into recievership. I so do hope this isn't what is happening at Nebula.. but I don't have a comfy feeling about this one.



This bored Googler then carried on.... any one want a job? A job advert went on at the end of July for an Admin Assistant....


And this just goes to show how small Nebula must be. This person is only required for 10 hours per week, but will have to cover all these areas in that time....

Reception duties including telephone answering and dealing with visitors
Processing and despatch of daily orders
Component and stationery stock control and ordering
Data input
Filing / copying invoices for VAT return
Responding to customers email and telephone enquiries
Experience Required


Receptionist, Despatch, Stock Control, VAT returns and dealing with customer support. No wonder forumites are not getting answers to their emails.... sounds like there is no one there _to_ answer....


I am almost tempted to email Nebula with a fake request for a developer's job to see what the response is...

[Bill]

I wouldn't read too much in to the late accounts, I haven't filed mine yet and it only takes a slight complication for the accountants to hang things up.

The temp job could be just a useful extra pair of hands.

It would be well worth remembering that it is in all of our best interests for Nebula to thrive and continue the development of Digitv.

If the company fails, there will never be another update, there will never be 64bit drivers. The software rights will not magically fall into the public domain. We will all lose.

[BonkEye]

There are already those that have jumped ship. I moved from north to south last month and have yet to put my uDigitv in to the PC. There are so many of us now that are fed up with the lack of communication/feedback (and with HR, a product to stock) that people move elsewhere - and I'm one of them.

When I bought my cards many moons ago it was on the premise that this was the best thing since sliced bread - it's far from it now, and without DECENT support for Vista now it'll never get that way - and it'll never get the userbase back - How many people have had Hauppauge cards and turned their back - Do people still recommend them?

[beardedwonder]

Hyper: With those bits of code that you were talking about, would that mean that the Nebula remote could be used in Media Portal (with the BDA drivers)?

[HyperReality]

[RogerH]

I am starting to wonder about what is happening with Nebula as they used to
respond to my enquiries be it late at times but not any more.
I recently upgraded my Video card and seeing as I nvidia cards were a
problem for Nebula, I changed to Radeon. Well that solved the problem at least for SD but cannot received HD, exactly the same problem as with
WMC with Nebula BDA drivers. (Vista)
I am still waiting for this company to respond.
I too use VideoReDo which I find so much easier to use than any other
editing software on the market.
Good luck to you Richard!

[HyperReality]

[one2go]

Damn, I have been away since last year, finished building a new HTPC and thought let me see if I can hook up my USB device to Vista Media Centre. Well what a surprise. Richard you have been a stalwart on this site and I wish you the best.

Now for the million dollar question, what other hardware can be used instead of DigiTV? I My HTPC is a dual boot machine but in no way will I use DigiTV on the XP partition and be stuck with nothing on the Vista partion.

Please any recommendations for a substitute as this piece either goes to eBay or my favorite charity.

[vur]

I too would like to add an unsolicited testimonial to you Richard. A little bit of me died today when I read of your decision to part ways with Nebula.

I would echo the experiences of others here regarding your patient and thorough help both through this forum and lengthy phone calls.

I too am an happy VideoReDo user and wish you well with it. I am also confident that you will succeed with any other product you choose to promote; you certainly deserve success.

You have my permission to use this as a reference and I am sure the others would be pleased to do so as well if you simply ask.

[nigel348]

Currently, I'm trying to use my Nebula Digit-TV with the new Vista Media Center and it can't find services.

Now I understand why I couldn't get the supoort I did when I first purchased the card.

Bit sad I now need to look for another Digital TV card that's Vista compatiable.

Thank you for the heads up.

[HyperReality]