Conference ljsrv1::tv_chatter

    
    	Yes, I've always wanted a way to get a listing of all the vol-
    	leyball game listings for a week at a time.  8^)  [Sorry, Dave.]
    
    	It does sound very nice, and reasonable, especially since it
    	sounds like it provides quite a bit more substance [and less
    	crap] than "TV Guide".  But you'll be giving up the thought-
    	provoking stuff like "Cheers and Jeers" and "What Jonathan
    	Taylor-Thomas is watching when he's eating a sundae".  8^)
    
    	There are also some VCR's coming out that will have the nec-
    	essary hardware built in, but you will still have to sign up
    	for the service.
    

Notefile: UPSAR::Cable_TV
Note: 444.0
Author: METALX::SWANSON "Ozzmosis"
Topic: VideoGuide
Date: 28-DEC-1995 13:30
Replies: 8

    Has anybody got that new gadget VideoGuide yet?
    
........

    
    But there is no crossword puzzle :-)
    
    Lou

I just got one last Friday.  It's neat, but it took about three nights
worth of downloading before it started living up to everything it said it'd
do.

After the first night, it had the basic program grid for the coming week,
but no plot synopses.  It also wouldn't allow me to schedule recordings of
two successive shows (claiming a conflict, when in fact there was no time
overlap).  After the second night's download, the conflict problem went
away.  After the third night's download, I started seeing plot synopses.

Granted, I think that a lot of these problems have to do with the
particular site that transmits my schedule information (which in my case is
NYC, even though I live no where near any receivable NYC channel).

The setup (or lack thereof) certainly shows a lot more insight into
usability engineering than VCR plus.  It pretty much involves entering a
zip code and whether or not you have cable and use a cable box.  Much
smarter than that VCR plus craziness.
                                                    
The one thing that I REALLY love about this thing is that it can remember
more than 8 recording events, which I have never found to be sufficient. 
It ain't like I have more than two or three things a day to record; I'd
just like to setup the whole week's schedule and not have to mess around
with the programming every other night, and 8 events has never been enough.

This thing has solved that problem.  A customer support rep mentioned to me
that one customer had programmed 70 events with the thing.

Another thing I like is that if you tell it that a particular event should
be "regular," it will record that show only if it appears in that timeslot,
but regardless of what day it falls on.  In recording the syndicated
episodes of Seinfeld, I find that VCR solutions don't work, because I
either end up recording a non-Seinfeld on Sunday (if I say "every day"), or
miss the one on Saturday (if I say "every weekday").

The alphabetic catalog of the coming week's shows has already helped out in
my never ending pursuit of channel 61's ever changing scheduling of Babylon
5.  I only wish there was some mechanism to tell the box "if this show ever
shows up at any time on any channel, record it."

Other minor advantages are that I tend to lose remote controls less often
than I lose TV guides, so it's more available, and it generates less trash.

But, the news feature seems generally worthless, and since I'm not
interested in sports, I can't really comment on whether the sports feature
has enough content to be worthwhile for anyone else.

>    	Yes, I've always wanted a way to get a listing of all the vol-
>    	leyball game listings for a week at a time.  8^)  [Sorry, Dave.]
    
    Well you see, volleyball is a kind of a 3rd class sport as far as TV
    is concerned.   Its on whenever they don't have a more popular
    sport/game to show.
    
    This means that its never on the same channel or the same time-slot
    twice although for each league, it's usually shown SOMEWHERE each
    week.
    
    I'm a big fan of the 2-man beach tour (the AVP tour) and that means
    that if I want to watch it every week, I have to scour the TV Guide
    from cover-to-cover!!!!
    
    Imagine that your a Celtics fan and you get NO schedule of the games
    but want to see as many as you can and you can see my predicament.
    The VideoGuide solves that and this problem is one of the principle
    reasons I got it.  
    
    	db

    
    	Yeah, I've noticed the same with pool/billiards.  It's been many
    	months since I've seen pool on TV, because it's hardly ever on.
    

    How does this thing hook up?  Since it can display on screen, I assume
    it has a video input (antenna or cable feed) and an output (to the TV). 
    Correct?
    
    More important, how does it schedule the recording of a program?  How
    does it control your VCR or VCRs so that they go into record mode at
    the proper time on the proper channel?

    It's still one more thing to get in the middle of the antenna/cable to
    TV food chain.  They recommend that you insert it between the VCR and
    TV (so that messing with it doesn't mess up what you're taping or get
    overridden by the VCR's output).
    
    1. You tell it what your zipcode is.  That tells it which stations you
    can get, who your cable carrier is, and if applicable, what cable
    station mappings are.
    
    2. You tell it whether you have cable.
    
    3. You tell it whether you use a cable box. (and what channel your
    cable box outputs)
    
    4. You "show" it a couple of commands from your TV remote.  It says "I
    know that remote!" and makes a mental note to itself.  You also tell it
    whether you need to press "ENTER" after a channel number entry.
    
    5. Ditto for VCR remote
    
    6. Ditto for cable box remote, if applicable.
    
    7. Wait overnight.
    
    It has a couple of IR LEDS wired to the guide box that you stick onto
    your equipment, just above the remote control receiver.  Actually, it
    also aims its remote commands downwards from the front of the video
    guide box itself.  I have my video guide sitting on top of my cable
    box, which sits on top of my VCR.  Both are able to "see" the commands
    from the video guide without the benefit of the external LEDs.  So does
    the TV that sits next to all that stuff.
    
    Enter the guide by pressing a button on the remote.  It "inserts"
    itself into the video stream on some pre-agreed upon channel number. 
    If you're using a cable box, this probably doesn't mean changing
    channels.  If you're not, it sends a channel change remote-control
    command to the TV to get it to meet it in the predefined place. 
    Looking at the schedule grid, if you put the cursor over some current
    TV show and press the "TV" button on the remote, it sends the
    appropriate commands to either the cable box or TV to get you to that
    channel, and takes itself out of the loop.
    
    Or, you can press the "RECORD" button, to have it setup a timer event
    to record the show.  At the appropriate time (which can be
    immediately), it will send a POWER ON command to the VCR, send a
    channel change to the VCR to either change it to the appropriate
    channel (if you're not using a cable box), or send the cable box
    channel to the VCR and the program's channel number to the cable box. 
    It then sends the record command to the VCR.  At the end of the event,
    it either shuts everything off, or sends the appropriate commands to
    record the next show.
    
    Interestingly, the time is set on the VideoGuide the same way it gets
    all the other info: It receives it from the information source.  You
    don't program the date or time, so your whole damn house can run on
    "blink time" and things will still record on time.
    
    Another cute thing it does is note which channels you tend to watch the
    most, and over the next few days, it'll migrate them to the top of the
    schedule grid.

    Well guess what??? Mine died on me last night.
    
    Basically it wouldn't respond to the remote.  I suspect it MIGHT have
    something to do with a friend of mine using the TV's remote and the
    VG getting itself hosed with unrecognized IR commands (obviously
    that shouldn't happen but neither should war).
    
    But what's interesting is some of the info I got when I called the VG
    folks.   First, I must say that these guys really do have their act
    together.   Having had almost uniform awful experience with nearly
    every "technical support" call I've had to made, this experience was
    so good as to feel "refreshing".
    
    You call and you are asked to hit 1 to subscribe and 2 if you have
    a question.   Now... in my experience that means 
    
    	"hit 1 and a trained operator will come on very quickly so as not 
    	 to delay taking your money or risk having you hang up"
    
    				or
    
    	"hit 2 and you'll be put in a queue with Muzak designed to
         encourage you to hang up and when we're back from coffee
    	 break someone who knows how to spell our product's name
    	 will come on and waste your time with questions that clearly
    	 reveal they don't know anything about the product."
    
    Well, I hit "2" and before I even think I managed to release the
    "2" key a voice was there "Hi my name is ____ could you please
    give me your serial number".
    
    I thought my unit was just plain hosed.  I also thought she'd waste
    time trying to check if it was the remote but she understood the test
    I had made before I called (I verified the remote was working by
    seeing if my programmable remote could detect a signal).  She
    understood that explanation and went right to series of steps to
    check out the box.
    
    Here are some of the steps that you might want to try if you have
    problems (my problem was that it just was "dead" - no response it was
    as if the VideoGuide wasn't plugged into the video chain).
    
    1. "Power Retune" - Unplug the AC for at least 30 seconds
    
    2. "Warm Rest" - Bush both buttons simultaneously then release the
    	right button.  Then move the joystick in the following sequence
    	down - up - right - up - left - right
    
    	The screen should go blank and then come back
    
    3. Cold reset - take out one battery from the unit and remove the
    	AC for 30 seconds.   *** WARNING *** you are likely to lose
    	most of your setup information.
    
    I had to do a cold reset.  It remembered my zip-code but almost nothing
    else.  Had to reteach it the remotes and my tuning/recording
    preferences and it lost all program data.
    
    I'm still not sure my unit is working.  The VCR record test did NOT
    record for "two seconds" (as it did when I first set it up) - it
    only put it into record and immediately stopped it before the tape
    counter had even moved.
    
    ANd... my programs did NOT reload last night although I did get the
    Sports and News databases.   I suspect the program reload will happen
    tonite.  And I can't test the the VCR is working until I have a
    "program" to tell it to record of course.
    
    	db

    I just found out my friend Mike's VideoGuide died last night too!
    We both live in the Nashua NH area.
    
    Sounds like VG may have erred in something they tried to send out
    over the airwaves????
    
    Anyone else have trouble last night.  I know mine was working as
    of about 7pm and NOT working as of about 11pm.
    
    	db

This is probably better discussed in the cable_TV notesfile, but...

I'm not sure if mine died or not... It was working at some point last night, 
but I don't think I used it as late as 11:00.  I'll see if it's working
today when I get home.

I had my unit lose all downloaded data once, a couple weeks ago during the
storm.  I was watching TV when it happened, and it popped up some kind of
message about "signal lost" or something.  I guess when the pager signal
is lost, the unit clears out it's ram!  GGrrrr!  That's a dumb feature!

Anyway, it's obviously not the same problem you saw, since I didn't have to
go through anything special to get it working again.


BTW Dave, my VideoGuide alerted me to my extended subscription with a message
box that popped up.  You can't miss it.

Ken

No such outages in Connecticut.  (Here's keeping my fingers crossed.)

>No such outages in Connecticut.  (Here's keeping my fingers crossed.)

No Outage in Mass either...  My VideoGuide still has all it's data.

Ken

Hah.  Guess I spoke too soon in .12.

Connecticut's been down for most of the last two weeks.  The people at
VideoGuide keep mumbling something about converting their feed to satellite
or something.  I don't think anyone I've talked to really understands
what's happening, but from what I've gleaned from the collective excuses,
they're converting the data feed from the VideoGuide source to the
individual pager companies from landline to satellite, and it's broken.

They further suggest that it's only been a problem in their biggest markets
(NYC, Chicago, LA, and one other I forget).  By this, I assume they mean
they're converting the biggest cities first.

My alternate explanation is that they might not be paying their bills.

In any case, signal strength has been way off, and the packet rate has
dropped to a trickle.  Sometimes, a whole day will go by with no packets
whatsoever.

As of last night, the signal strength came back up, and I actually got a
whole guide's worth of information, and a dozen new news stories.  Perhaps
the problem's fixed.  Or, perhaps it's the one good day, just like the one
good day they had last week.

Oh yes, and as for the "killer signal"

Although I received one or two good days last week (which seemed like
they'd at least assure a week's worth of programming), sometime on Sunday,
some ill-defined thing happened which caused my VG to forget all its
programming information (but not its collection of news stories).  Kind of
the worst of both worlds: It wasn't receiving anything new, nor did it
remember what it'd already received.  At one point during its non-recovery,
it had the time of day advanced by about four hours, too.

The irony of this is not lost on me:  I had the normal free first month
subscription, during which time it worked flawlessly (after taking two days
to receive all the databases).  The day that my paid-for subscription
started seemed to be the same day that all these supposed problems with
their New York tower started, and it hasn't worked for three consecutive
days since.

Read into that what you will.

    re: .15  BULEAN::BANKS
    
    Oh, so you're telling us it's YOUR fault!! The proverbial
    straw-that-broke-the-camel's-back! 
    
    8-)

    Did anyone read on the VideoGuide news that GEMSTAR (the VCR+ people)
    bought VideoGuide? Hmmm...
    
    BTW Mine has had 20% of the programmes 'Not Available' since for almost
    2 weeks now.
    
    Kevin

Well, until the GEMSTAR people figure out how to kill the VideoGuide
(which they seem to have made good headway on already), I guess at least
we know they have the wherewithall to be paying their bills...

Mine has been receiving data just fine.  Maybe I should start crossing my
fingers... Or knock wood!  :')

The VCR+ people bought out Videoguide?  That doesn't sound good.
I hope it just means that videoguide will be built into TV's and VCR's in 
the future.

Ken

I've received data for most days of the previous week.  One outage for
Sunday night and all day Monday.

Of course, the data it is getting is rather sparse (days don't get
completely filled in until one or two days in advance), but at least it's
receiving reliably and the signal quality indicator is good.

re: -1

Do you ever watch the error count on your Videoguide, and see how many errors
out of how many sucessful packets there were?

This number is under the menu that you get to by "pressing" the signal
quality panel.

You'll see a line about halfway down the screen that ends in the letter U.
the number before the U is the number of errors since the counter was cleared.
The number before that is the number of packets received.

It gets cleared every week on Friday I think.  I usually have less than 200
errors, many times even less than 100, in a weeks time.

THis is usually out of 40-60 million packets I think.

Your sparse data may be due to lots of errors, even though the signal quality
is good at the time your looking at it.

Ken

The signal quality (and therefore the error rate) is lousy during the day. 
The signal quality goes way up (and the error rate drops to a couple
overnight) at night when they're transmitting the guide information.

If it was strictly due to bad packets, I'd expect the bad packet
distribution to be more or less random, meaning that after a few nights,
I'd have the grid filled in for the coming day or two.  As of this morning,
there are still some major holes in tomorrow's schedule.  This after a
nearly error free night (yes, I do watch the errors).

This really smells like missing data, rather than corrupted data.

As what I hope to be my final update on this:

I nasty-grammed VGI.COM (nicely) about the lack of service.  The next
evening, I got a full week's of programming downloaded, complete with all
related info -- no "Not Available" boxes in the whole week's lineup.  A day
later, I got a mail message from them giving me still another
semi-plausible sounding iteration on their "upgrading VGI to Pager Company
link to satellite" woes, with the assurance that all problems had finally
been fixed, once and for all, the day after my nasty-gram.

They also gave me another 60 days against my subscription by way of
apology.

I don't know if my complaining made them pay more attention to my market's
lineup (some sort of bandwidth management on their part), or if they indeed
finally fixed the broken NYC feed.

In any case, they do know something about customer relations.

    My "Not Available" boxes problem was resolved last night also. I called
    and told them that The problem seemed to be fixed and they gave me 6
    weeks added to my subscription. (sounds like I should have been more
    pissed off! 60 days!!!)
    
    Kevin

Now watch... I'll go home and find a bunch of "not available" boxes on mine! :')

Ken