As Media Insider revealed 10 days ago,<\/a> some viewers had taken to TVNZ\u2019s Facebook page, other social media sites, chat forums and real life to variously describe the app upgrade as \u201cdisastrous\u201d, a \u201cdisgrace\u201d, a \u201cnightmare\u201d, \u201ca total shambles\u201d and an \u201cabsolute mess\u201d.<\/p>\nAmong myriad complaints, some customers said they had been left with blank (full-blue) screens, frozen-screen wheels of doom, low-quality pictures, lost watchlists of their favourite TV shows and the absence of closed captions.<\/p>\n
Others said the app crashed frequently or didn\u2019t open at all.<\/p>\n
In a social media message last week, TVNZ said sorry.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re aware of issues affecting some of our viewers. We apologise for any inconvenience. Our team is working through these as quickly as possible, and a number of solutions are in place already. Fixes will continue to roll out as work progresses. Thank you for your patience.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"One]()
One of the various messages some TVNZ+ users have been served up.<\/p>\n
Hutchinson told Media Insider on Thursday: \u201cWe know there are probably a few thousand people currently having problems, and we also know that the majority of them are on older televisions. <\/p>\n
\u201cOur full focus is on those older televisions now.\u201d<\/p>\n
He defended the way TVNZ had handled the problems and its communication with customers \u2013 some people have complained that it\u2019s been impossible to speak with anyone, or that they haven\u2019t heard back.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve just done one of the biggest, essentially change-outs of a very popular, always-being-used-every-hour-of-every-day platform,\u201d Hutchinson said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s rarely been done in New Zealand and broadly speaking, it went well. In fact, it probably went better than we initially expected.\u201d<\/p>\n
He believed customer communication had been \u201cabsolutely appropriate for the small number of audience who have been impacted\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve tried to communicate with them, particularly … \u2018We believe we\u2019ve got a fix for you. Please try again.\u2019 Often, that has just been plenty. <\/p>\n
\u201cHave we needed to do broader communications? There are hundreds of thousands of people every day watching without any problems. What would we be saying to them?\u201d<\/p>\n
Media Insider was still receiving emails last week from viewers having a broad range of problems.<\/p>\n
Hutchinson offered an explanation and hope.<\/p>\n
He said TVNZ+ was available on almost 100 different devices, which made this project a lot more sophisticated than, say, a news website overhaul.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you think of a classic news website, it\u2019s the web, Android phones and iPhones. <\/p>\n
\u201cBut for us, we actually have to account for the fact that Samsung 2016 [TVs] and Samsung 2019 are radically different from each other, let alone Samsung 2023 and 2025. <\/p>\n
\u201cSo we\u2019re now working through which of these older TVs our audiences are having some problems with and resolving those issues.<\/p>\n
\u201cIndividual devices, particularly much older televisions, just require extra optimisation to get them working.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"TVNZ]()
TVNZ chief digital officer Rob Hutchinson.<\/p>\n
Hutchinson defended the level of testing that TVNZ and its suppliers had done before the new app\u2019s release. He said TVNZ had done a lot of testing on some 50 devices.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe best way to put it is when hundreds of thousands of people show up, which they do every day, and they log in and start watching their content, issues can be seen for the first time that were invisible when 20 testing televisions were looking at the same content.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe testing was of very high quality. It was across so many different devices of different years and different manufacturers.\u201d<\/p>\n
Are you still having issues and problems with the new TVNZ+ app? Please tell us your experience – email shayne.currie@nzme.co.nz<\/p>\n
He said TVNZ was \u201cseeing audiences pretty much back to where we would expect them to be\u201d and there was no need for \u201cmake-good\u201d arrangements with advertisers, or compensation conversations with suppliers or other parties.<\/p>\n
Football World Cup<\/p>\n
![\"TVNZ]()
TVNZ has the exclusive New Zealand screen rights for this year’s Football World Cup.<\/p>\n
With the Football World Cup closing in rapidly \u2013 it starts on June 12 (NZT) \u2013 TVNZ needs to ensure its platform is as stable as possible.<\/p>\n
The state broadcaster has the rights to the tournament, and the new app allows it to introduce pay-TV. <\/p>\n
While TVNZ will screen 22 of the 104 games live and free, it will charge a $44.95 tournament fee for viewers who want access to live coverage of all 104 games. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re completely on track with our Football World Cup coverage and with the technology supporting broadcasting it,\u201d Hutchinson said. \u201cEverything is tested. Everything is working.\u201d<\/p>\n
He said he was proud of the way TVNZ and its suppliers had rapidly resolved issues over the past two weeks, with hot fixes.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe rate at which we\u2019ve resolved issues and gotten the solution out there has been really, really fast.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur supplier is actually in country working with us and has done an incredible job at turning around fixes and resolving issues, often in minutes, not hours. <\/p>\n
\u201cOne of the reasons the issues have been going down so rapidly is how good they are at turning around fixes in short periods of time.\u201d<\/p>\n
Have you tried turning it off and on?<\/p>\n
![\"Some]()
Some TVNZ customers have been left angry and frustrated over the broadcaster’s glitchy new TVNZ+ app.<\/p>\n
For those people still having issues, Hutchinson said there could be a simple fix if they hadn\u2019t already tried.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe first thing I would say is turn off … and restart the television. <\/p>\n
\u201cSee if there\u2019s an update to the TVNZ+ app. Install that. Make sure you\u2019ve got your phone or your computer near you, because when you go to log in, you\u2019re going to be sent a code. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s really easy to type that code into the TV. It\u2019s made it much easier for so many people. <\/p>\n
\u201cThere is a high likelihood we\u2019ve done an update for you. <\/p>\n
\u201cSo please just try the classic \u2013 I\u2019m giving you IT advice now, but turn off the television, restart it, update the TVNZ+ app and then type in the passcode.\u201d<\/p>\n
He said that with any technology, there would always be some underlying issues from time to time. <\/p>\n
\u201cJust to be clear, the old platform had issues \u2013 it had a standard error rate, as every streaming platform in the world does. <\/p>\n
\u201cBut do we expect the vast majority of our audience to have a good experience? <\/p>\n
\u201cYes, we do.\u201d<\/p>\n
Editor-at-Large Shayne Currie is one of New Zealand\u2019s most experienced senior journalists and media leaders. He has held executive and senior editorial roles at NZME including Managing Editor, NZ Herald Editor and Herald on Sunday Editor and has a small shareholding in NZME.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"But an upbeat TVNZ chief digital officer Rob Hutchinson told Media Insider on Thursday last week that the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":410116,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[694,2724,5195,9516,30142,10542,156,5904,5213,2936,211022,1073,117,111,139,69,90,3111,3333,223,437,6445,1316,1533,377],"class_list":["post-410115","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-announces","tag-app","tag-be","tag-broadcaster","tag-bugs","tag-cup","tag-entertainment","tag-final","tag-football","tag-insider","tag-ironed","tag-media","tag-new","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-on","tag-out","tag-price","tag-the","tag-tv","tag-tvnz","tag-when","tag-will","tag-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/410115","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=410115"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/410115\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/410116"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=410115"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=410115"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=410115"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}