Just for giggles :) Prevue Guide now emulated!

Discuss the reverse engineering and emulation (as opposed to simulation) of any sort of Prevue hardware, including Atari-based and Amiga-based EPG channels and the Amiga-based Prevue/TV Guide channels.
AriX
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Re: Just for giggles :) Prevue Guide now emulated!

Post by AriX »

woddfellow2 wrote:I was un-PowerPacking images in the TVGC ADF and viewing them in feh, and I found this image:

(Brushes/TVGAT.UV)
Yep. TVGAT stands for TV Guide Around Town. We had a brief discussion about it starting here: viewtopic.php?f=2&t=29&start=70#p336 (I still really don't understand how it worked, unless they played one for every city and all other cable companies just skipped it and played the other side or local ads)
Basically, this was used as a background in the top left or top right of the screen for the text overlay when they were playing a TV Guide Around Town segment.
20CenturyFan
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Re: Just for giggles :) Prevue Guide now emulated!

Post by 20CenturyFan »

I'd hate to bump an old thread, but I have something interesting that I just put together. I took a screen shot of the 1994 "Prevue Channel" banner logo from Youtube, reduced the colors, hand touched it in paint, saved it as PNG, and used a program called XnView to convert it to IFF for WinUAE. Then I proceeded to DeluxePaint (I cannot seem to find PersonalPaint in my version of WB, but this works fine) and inserted the palette for the original TV Guide banner. After saving it (only a few KB), I copied it to my Prevue disk and it is like 1994 all over again. I wanted to share this with you guys to see what you thought.

(Its as a zip file so it will be easily downloadable)
Attachments
TVGBANNR.zip
(1.21 KiB) Downloaded 753 times
tin
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Re: Just for giggles :) Prevue Guide now emulated!

Post by tin »

Personal paint is (unbelievably) still a commercial product that's sold (admittedly probably only ever bundled with Amiga Forever) so that may explain why it's not findable. I'd again (always plugging) recommend buying a copy of Amiga Forever anyway - it gives you a pre-set-up workbench environment which is a joy to use. Personal Paint is also quite a number of leagues better than DPaint as it was continuously developed for some time after EA abandoned the Amiga market.
woddfellow2
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Re: Just for giggles :) Prevue Guide now emulated!

Post by woddfellow2 »

I have created a custom branding package:
Image
Image

This includes a banner logo, 2 Logos graphics, a curday.dat with recommended meta entry and PRV002 notices, and even tagging area backgrounds in PNG format in the "Brushes" directory in case anyone wants to convert them to IFF/ILBM.

prevue-throwback.tar.gz (gzipped tarball, 26K)
—xoddf2 | wlair.us.to
kwest93
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Re: Just for giggles :) Prevue Guide now emulated!

Post by kwest93 »

woddfellow2 wrote:I have created a custom branding package:
Image
Image

This includes a banner logo, 2 Logos graphics, a curday.dat with recommended meta entry and PRV002 notices, and even tagging area backgrounds in PNG format in the "Brushes" directory in case anyone wants to convert them to IFF/ILBM.

prevue-throwback.tar.gz (gzipped tarball, 26K)
this should have been our anniversary ADF.
AriX
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Re: Just for giggles :) Prevue Guide now emulated!

Post by AriX »

Nice, that's awesome!

I really hope to get back to my sender stuff & reverse engineering in the coming weeks.
woddfellow2
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Re: Just for giggles :) Prevue Guide now emulated!

Post by woddfellow2 »

New Prevue Throwback graphics: http://ompldr.org/vZHYyaQ
—xoddf2 | wlair.us.to
AriX
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Re: Just for giggles :) Prevue Guide now emulated!

Post by AriX »

woddfellow2 wrote:New Prevue Throwback graphics: http://ompldr.org/vZHYyaQ
Cool :)
RiverNix123
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Re: Just for giggles :) Prevue Guide now emulated!

Post by RiverNix123 »

To open ADF Files without Workbench, use the shell extension called ADFView. http://www.viksoe.dk/adfview/
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PajamaDarkness
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Re: Just for giggles :) Prevue Guide now emulated!

Post by PajamaDarkness »

tin wrote:I grabbed the logo from swest's videos that he uploaded to megaupload - they are the right resolution and of good quality.

I then put them into GIMP and cut out to the right size 320x240 for ENEWS and 640x160 for TVGBANNER and saved as .png

Then transferred them over to the emulated Amiga's HD. In each case I opened the original UV file first (which changes the screenmode to the right pixels/depth), then opened the new GIMP .png file, and declined to change screenmode when it asks.

For the TVGBANNR one I also needed to save the palette from the original TVGBANNER.UV and once the new image was loaded, reload the palette, and remap the image to the available colours.

Then I grabbed the image as a brush (again watching out that it was the right size), and saved the brush as ILBM format, but with the extension .UV, and copied them over the top of the images on the original .ADF
I'm very confused, what program do I use on Workbench 3.1 to open the UV and PNG, and to export brushes to ILBM?
PajamaFrix
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