TV Guide Channel Emulation Working!

[tin]

I wonder if this cable co was one of the first to move to the PC based one, they seem to have a very well configured PG.

[AriX]

I wonder if this cable co was one of the first to move to the PC based one, they seem to have a very well configured PG.

I don't think anyone was moving to Windows NT yet in March. Could be wrong, but I'm 99% sure...

[tin]

Edit 9: On the listings, F caused the text MR=0 SBS=1 Sport=1 to appear at the bottom of the top half of the screen. Doing some fiddling around with G caused some images to appear in the top half and switch it to interlace mode, causing F to display the above, as well as Cycle=Y CycleFreq=1 AftrOrd ClockCmd=1. I was able to go through a few images (and some black top halves) by going back and forth between F and G. N causes the top half to go black. Shift-S pauses the listings, S causes them to being scrolling again.

Found some more simialar to this, now that the listings work. For best results press G to cycle through the images, press F to see the text, press Y to cycle through the colour palette until you can read the text nicely, and press / repeatedly until you get to Viewmode 2. Then things are easy to read when you press:-

F for the aforementioned diagnostic that I am not sure what its for
H to cycle through the CLU/PI (channel related but not yet sure what exactly that stands for)
J to cycle through the TS (timeslot) once you selected a PI.

This information reveals a lot about how data is organised behind the scenes - the CLU, timeslot and CLU_POS are all fundamental building blocks of the schedule data in the atari code.

CLU potentially is the order the channel will be shown in the list. The Clu_pos1 is to do with the julian date. Chan is this cable system's channel number for that channel, The source refers to the 6 (or less) digit channel reference that is looked up to provide the listings. The CallLtrs are what the channel will be displayed as in the list - this allows for variations of the same channel over different regions. Looks like the cable operator could have messages here - this particular operator had plenty of them, It seems if you display a long message in this way it crashes the code.

TS is a timeslot from 1 to 48 denoting the 30 min slot the program is in. Timeslot 1 appears to be 3:00am. Again Clu_Pos1, Channel number, Source and Callltrs are shown, timeslot, the title of the program, and the time

[LocalH]

Slight correction - April 1, 1999, not March 31. Here I was tearing my mind apart trying to determine why I couldn't get anything to work with March 31, 1999 =P

[swest77]

More nice finds guys.

Need a favor: would someone so inclined kindly provide a zip of the unpacked versions of all the crunched/packed files from the 100% virgin version of the diskette? As far as I can see, that means the following files:

PP40 - ESQ
PP40 - C/SEL
PP20 - CURDAY.DAT
PP20 - NXTDAY.DAT
PP20 - PWI1
PP20 - PWI2
PP20 - PWI3
PP20 - PWI4
PP20 - PWI5
PP20 - BANNER/TVGBANNR.UV
PP20 - BRUSHES/TVGAT.UV
PP20 - BRUSHES/TVGDTH16.UV
PP20 - LOGOS/ENEWS.UV
PP20 - LOGOS/INSIDER.UV
PP20 - LOGOS/MOVIEP.UV
PP20 - LOGOS/TVGSPORT.UV
PP20 - LOGOS/WEATHER.UV

Also, another observation to add to the pile. When I reverted to the virgin version of the diskette to test the cached listings, I ended up having to do the ! stuff again on the diagnostics screen to get ad editing abilities back. I think someone here said you had to press it twice (instead of once as with the Atari ROM). I must have not done it right because it didn't work for me at first. Then I noticed ! was changing TEXT: and that, in the end, it's TEXT:L that enables local ad/ad attribute editing. (Have added this factoid to the wiki.) So, anyway, it's not a particular number of ! keypresses, it's TEXT:L.

Anyway, looks like this guide came from my part of the country. Time-Warner MSO serving the cities of Torrance, Hawthorne, Gardena, El Segundo, Lawndale. As for why this machine (diskette) went out of service early, I can offer a hint there: they began public beta trials of the NT infrastructure early with participating cable systems. Maybe this system was one of them. Otherwise, my guess is that the cable system went full scrambled (there are references to not needing converters in the cached listings). Sometimes, when cable companies made box rentals compulsory, they would dump Prevue Guide on account of everyone now having a box-based IPG. (All the modern analog boxes of that era had them, at least. Not just the digital ones.)

[LocalH]

Sure, I'll try to package them up in the next few minutes. Out of all of those, the only two that should be different from the original image are curday.dat and nxtday.dat - the other PP20 files are just graphics, and the executables are of course never changed in our current situation (after all, we don't have anyone pushing updates to us )

tin: Easier way to get a readable set of diagnostics - Shift-A to bring up the text ads (and thus the palette), then / to ViewMode 2. Much easier than cycling through the palette.

Edit: Alright, the files are attached. The .UV files are now just standard IFF ILBMs, and all files are untouched after depacking.

[AriX]

Also, another observation to add to the pile. When I reverted to the virgin version of the diskette to test the cached listings, I ended up having to do the ! stuff again on the diagnostics screen to get ad editing abilities back. I think someone here said you had to press it twice (instead of once as with the Atari ROM). I must have not done it right because it didn't work for me at first. Then I noticed ! was changing TEXT: and that, in the end, it's TEXT:L that enables local ad/ad attribute editing. (Have added this factoid to the wiki.) So, anyway, it's not a particular number of ! keypresses, it's TEXT:L.

It should boot by default into TEXT:N, meaning you would have to ! twice to get to L. For me at least, it boots into TEXT:N every time, not just when I revert to the original ADF.

Anyway, looks like this guide came from my part of the country. Time-Warner MSO serving the cities of Torrance, Hawthorne, Gardena, El Segundo, Lawndale. As for why this machine (diskette) went out of service early, I can offer a hint there: they began public beta trials of the NT infrastructure early with participating cable systems. Maybe this system was one of them. Otherwise, my guess is that the cable system went full scrambled (there are references to not needing converters in the cached listings). Sometimes, when cable companies made box rentals compulsory, they would dump Prevue Guide on account of everyone now having a box-based IPG. (All the modern analog boxes of that era had them, at least. Not just the digital ones.)

Interesting... Did they run the new full 16:9 stuff in the trials even while the old Amigas were still using 4:3 content? Was it an entirely unrelated feed? For trailers and such, at least)

[swest77]

Sure, I'll try to package them up in the next few minutes. Out of all of those, the only two that should be different from the original image are curday.dat and nxtday.dat - the other PP20 files are just graphics, and the executables are of course never changed in our current situation (after all, we don't have anyone pushing updates to us )

Thanks kindly! Any reason why you included non-virgin copies of curday.dat and nxtday.dat, though? Not that I'm worried you "did anything" to them; just thinking about the possibility of any cached data having been flushed by PG from them if they're from a "used" ADF.

Incidentally, those 6 or less digit "channel references" mentioned (e.g. NBC019 or NICW01) are literally the "GUIDs"/"UUIDs" of each service. Just as Tin said, the software is capable of slapping any channel name or number on them. But ultimately the satellite feed's nature was to spew listings by GUID and then tell each installation individually not only which GUIDs to cache, but what channel numbers and channel labels to display their content with.

@Ari - Yes, during the beta period, the vertically windowed MPEG feed ran on another transponder, separately from the horizontally-windowed analog feed for the Amigas. Basically two different incompatible Prevue Guide systems/infrastructures overlapping in time.

[AriX]

Thanks kindly! Any reason why you included non-virgin copies of curday.dat and nxtday.dat, though? Not that I'm worried you "did anything" to them; just thinking about the possibility of any cached data having been flushed by PG from them if they're from a "used" ADF.

No, he's saying that the only data that could have possibly changed on a modified ADF is those two files, and that all the others would be the same... He's just asking you why you want the other files in addition to those two, since the other ones are all the same.

@Ari - Yes, during the beta period, the vertically windowed MPEG feed ran on another transponder, separately from the horizontally-windowed analog feed for the Amigas. Basically two different incompatible Prevue Guide systems/infrastructures overlapping in time.

Cool Do you think that before the TV Guide rebrand, the NT platform they were working on was Prevue branded? Would be cool to have that prototype software :O

By the way, anyone have any insight into what exactly TV Guide Around Town and Prevue Around Town were, and how they played unique ones in different locations?

[LocalH]

Thanks kindly! Any reason why you included non-virgin copies of curday.dat and nxtday.dat, though? Not that I'm worried you "did anything" to them; just thinking about the possibility of any cached data having been flushed by PG from them if they're from a "used" ADF.

No, he's saying that the only data that could have possibly changed on a modified ADF is those two files, and that all the others would be the same... He's just asking you why you want the other files in addition to those two, since the other ones are all the same.

Exactly. I worded that wrong - all of those files in the ZIP are "virgin". Although I wasn't really asking why he wanted the others - they are uncompressed ILBMs now, rather than PowerPacked.