I am losing patience with Model Railroader Magazine.
When I first subscribed to video plus I was unable to view videos other than the weekly special. Some time later this problem went away.
Now when I try to watch a video I get about a minutes worth and then it cuts off and I am told to subscribe to video plus if I want to see the balance of the video. You see enough to get interested and then they slam the door in your face. I’ve tried IE 10 and Firefox with no luck.
JUST FOT THE RECORD MY SUBSCRIPTION IS GOOD UNTIL FEBRUARY 2015.
I’ve made excuses for MRM in the past when others complained but no more. If they don’t straighten this out pretty d**n quick I’m asking for my money back.
That has happened to me several times when I’ve gone straight to Video Plus,without first signing in on the MR website. Once I sign in everything is hunky dory again.
That’s been my experience as well. I tried accessing Video Plus through the email they sent, and was told I wasn’t a subscriber. Accessed through the links above this page, and it’s fine.
I wish I had the same experience as you, but I have the problem even when signing in on the MR web site.
When I click on a video the length is like 59 seconds.
It seems for some mysterious reason some can be affected with a problem while others aren’t. Back when I first signed up and couldn’t play the videos I was one of the few who had trouble while the majority had no problems. At that time I was able to see the videos by using Firefox and later also with IE.
Another member asked my help for the same problem but what worked for me didn’t for him.
I always access MRVP through the Video menu above after I’m here on the forums. It’s always worked for me, from day 1, never had a problem.
Yesterday though I did have to first click on My Account and then go back to MRVP, as it didn;t see me signed in, even though I was signed in on the forum - however that was because I did a reset of IE because I was experiencing slow page loads elsewhere - turned out to be a Yahoo plugin, once disabled, everything returned to normal, but by then I had already wiped the cookies and everything.
Try this: click start, run, and type in iexplore -extoff. This disables all add-ons, see if the web site works. If it does, you’ve got some add-on loaded that is interfering. Only way to figure out which one is process of elimination, start IE normally then Manage Add-Ons, and disable everything, then enable them one by one and checking to see if the problem returns.
I had a similar problem on Wednesday morning(IIRC) and got the link about my subscription - That went away about 15 minutes later, but most of the video content was gone. By that afternoon it all seemed to be fine. I suspect a server issue or maintenance was being performed on the web site.
All in all, I have had few issues with the service.One really needs a high speed connection and a viewing device with fast video performance. The first week or two when the service started there was a number of issues, but MR worked them out.
Are you still having problems? I would call MR or you Internet Provider to get this resolved…
A guy at the local club I recently joined has had nothing but problems with the video plus service…said it was a waste of money…so therefor I did not waste my money on it either…especially when as a magazine subscriber I used to be able to view all the previous video`s for FREE.
I access it through the link on the top left of the screen when I am logged into the main MR page. The only problem I have ever had with it is that it is a little laggy. The other day I deleted my cookies and forgot to log in and had the same experience that you stated. It let me watch about a third of the video and then it said to subscribe, then I logged back into the site and it worked fine. Hope you figure it out, it isn’t too bad.
My problem is gone but there is no rhyme or reason why.
I went to the update my account page which took me to the trains,com sign in page web site. After looking it over I wanted to go back to MR so I clicked on MR magazine in the upper left hand corner and after that I was recognized as having an account…
It seems what works for one person doesn’t necessarily work for another.
Iv’e had the problem too. Just yesterday I got an email saying to re-up right now at the same price for charter members. Well I am good until April first as I remember and they need to fix these glitches before anyone to start telling me to re-subscribe. I know MR is trying to get it right but don’t sell the product until it is always viewable properly. If you buy a new car or in our case a new MR engine it is expected to run with out problems. Anyway I hope they fix the glitch. Doug
That’s actually very difficult, if not outright impossible, to do. Computers aren’t cars. Its more like…having to buy a single part to be used in every car in the world and hoping it fits into every car and works, without having the ability to design or even the knowledge of how every single car in the world is put together. There’s literally hundreds of billions of potential hardware and software combinations. You can ballpark it and aim for the most common, but you’re still going to have tons of people that fell through for one reason or another. That’s one of the reasons Apple was so successful with the Mac and iphone. It limited hardware configurations to an extremely small set and limited software configurations to a smaller and more predictable range. Therefore, it’s easier to develop software to run on those systems because you have a much better, documented, and verifiable environment that your applications are going to be running in. Flip it over to Android and half of the reviews are “app didn’t work” because the sheer number of hardware configurations is staggering by comparison.
As a computer professional, I have to say Lion is right on. Everyone loves to say there’s nothing wrong with their computer or their ISP, because OTHER sites work just fine. I’ve accessed the forums and NRVP from multiple computers in multiple locations - and it usually works. But for example, when I was in Milwaukee the other week, even the forums were hideously slow - because the hotel internet was that bad. Despite a speed test of nearly 2Mb down (fast or fater than many DSL connections), there was noticeable delay when clicking on a forum message until I was able to click for a reply, or even after clicking reply until I was able to finally type my message text.
Some ISPs cache or proxy video streams - this is often noticeable on Youtube, and cuases videos to only load part way and never finish.
Nearly full hard drives, or drives that have not been defragmented in a long time (if you have a regualr spinny hard disk) can have huge effects on loading anything large, while may not have the same issue with a small object like a text forum message.
Then there are the vaguaries of the internet, depending on how the packets are routed from your ISP to the destination and back. There have been many many times when some peopel can;t get to a specific site but others have no problems whatsoever. Most of this is out of the control of you, your ISP, and Kalmbach’s ISP.
Then there’s all the malware and virus sacanning - I finally gave up on my old standby, AVG Free, as it was getting way too bloated and causing latency. Norton, which comes preinstalled on many commercial computers, it extremely bad. I switched to Microsoft Security Essentials and my already fast desktop (it has the latest 4 core 8 thread 3+GHZ CPU, 16GB RAM, and an SSD with SATA 3 speed) noticeably improved. My ancient laptop (Core 2 Duo, 1.6MHz, 4GB RAM) really improved with the lesser overhead of MSSE.
Bandwidth can always be an issue. Depite what your ISP might cl
No doubt what you say is a fact, but I don’t believe you can state that the trains.com web site couldn’t be at fault in some cases and I agree it is hard to say it is when the majority aren’t having a problem.
In my case trains.com lost the fact that I have a subscription whereas Model Railroader did not. The only program affected was MRVP.
All I did to get MRVP to respond was to go the trains.com sign in page. I didn’t even sign in and when I went back to the MR home page MRVP was working.
How could there be any other explanation other than trains.com had something to do with the problem. One minute I couldn’t play a video and the next after visiting the web site I could.
In that case it probably was a web site change - as I mentioned, when I clicked on MRVP, it ‘forgot’ I was logged in, even though i was logged in just fine here ont he forums. I attributed it to the fact that this was the first time I hit MRVP since I did a cleanup on my system, since wiping cookies pretty much ‘forgets’ any log in to any site - when I cliecked ont he forums the first time I had to log back in.
Perhaps had I not cleared the login information from my system, I may have seen the same thing. However, if a change was made that allows non-subscribers to see part of a video, and you log in with cached credentials from before the change - it kinda makes sense that it would act as it did. Log out, log back in - everything’s normal again.
Thus far I am sorry to say I am not a very satisfied customer for the MRVP content. The site, which has never had a problem acknowleding that I am a Trains and MR subscriber, seems unable to reliably treat me as a paying MRVP participant. Funniest of all, about a week after I signed up I received an offer to renew for another year …
How are you accessing it? Maybe there is a problem with directly linking to it, I always get to MRVP by clicking the Video menu here ont he forums and selecting MRVP. Other than that one time, it’s always worked for me.
The forums seem ok with direct linking, in fact my shortcut takes me right to the Electronic and DCC section, and it keeps me logged in for what seems like forever. Haven’t tried any sort of links to MRVP.
