Prevue Guide Forums

kwest93 wrote:i remember when the music channels were info only. the only way you could listen to it was to watch nothing but a black screen. and it used to be called DMX.

Do you mean Digital Music (E)Xpress? The one that looks like a jukebox that is digital? I see that commercial in YouTube before! I see one comment in YouTube saying that:

ParanormalRob wrote:Also, the DMX was an early form of digital cable. I miss the old analog days.

Still jmkord has that video on it here.

also sega channel was early form of digital cable.

JoeTheDragon wrote:also sega channel was early form of digital cable.

Not exactly... The Sega Channel was an interesting example of using a one-way data transmission over cable, and perhaps an early example of interactive television. But it wasn't an example of digital cable, which is when the channels themselves are encoded digitally instead of being sent analog. The Sega Channel was digital data transmitted through analog channels. (Just like the Prevue/EPG satellite data feed.)

AriX wrote:

JoeTheDragon wrote:also sega channel was early form of digital cable.

Not exactly... The Sega Channel was an interesting example of using a one-way data transmission over cable, and perhaps an early example of interactive television. But it wasn't an example of digital cable, which is when the channels themselves are encoded digitally instead of being sent analog. The Sega Channel was digital data transmitted through analog channels. (Just like the Prevue/EPG satellite data feed.)

well it did lead to the clean up of the cable signal.

Now what did they do for the analog cable box some of the later ones had a on screen guide, Music Choice, dial in ppv, some kind of 2 way PPV ordering over the cable line.

JoeTheDragon wrote:Now what did they do for the analog cable box some of the later ones had a on screen guide, Music Choice, dial in ppv, some kind of 2 way PPV ordering over the cable line.

Well, the modern digital cable boxes are digital in two ways: the guide/VOD/PPV/etc. are powered by digital microprocessors and graphics and communicate with the cable company and the Internet digitally, and the actual decoding of the video is powered by a chip that specializes in decoding digital video. I would guess that the "analog" cable boxes that you are talking about had a digital guide (and connected back to the cable headend digitally like current boxes), but simply received analog video instead of digital video.

(Here in the U.S., digital video generally means video encoded in MPEG-2 and analog video generally means NTSC. Though MPEG-4/H.264 may be catching on more on the digital side. The advantage of a digital feed vs. analog is that it takes up much less bandwidth/"spectrum" and is capable of things like surround sound and HD.)

AriX

When my Cable System switched from the Zenith converter boxes to the Motorola DCT (2000 series), boxes we still had to call a phone number associated with a particular PPV channel. It took my Cable System about a couple years before getting Impulse Pay-Per-View (IPPV). Was there any other Motorola DCT boxes that still relied analog technology?

JFR_SneakPrevue98 wrote:AriX

When my Cable System switched from the Zenith converter boxes to the Motorola DCT (2000 series), boxes we still had to call a phone number associated with a particular PPV channel. It took my Cable System about a couple years before getting Impulse Pay-Per-View (IPPV). Was there any other Motorola DCT boxes that still relied analog technology?

General Instruments. or GI. did.

kwest93 wrote:

JFR_SneakPrevue98 wrote:AriX

When my Cable System switched from the Zenith converter boxes to the Motorola DCT (2000 series), boxes we still had to call a phone number associated with a particular PPV channel. It took my Cable System about a couple years before getting Impulse Pay-Per-View (IPPV). Was there any other Motorola DCT boxes that still relied analog technology?

General Instruments. or GI. did.

GI/General Instrument is the same thing as Motorola; Motorola acquired GI in 1997 (but probably took a few years to switch the branding to Motorola). JFR_SneakPrevue98, that's interesting - I would guess that this was simply your cable system not using the latest technology, rather than the cable box not using the latest technology. But I don't know very much about that.

AriX wrote:

kwest93 wrote:

JFR_SneakPrevue98 wrote:AriX

When my Cable System switched from the Zenith converter boxes to the Motorola DCT (2000 series), boxes we still had to call a phone number associated with a particular PPV channel. It took my Cable System about a couple years before getting Impulse Pay-Per-View (IPPV). Was there any other Motorola DCT boxes that still relied analog technology?

General Instruments. or GI. did.

GI/General Instrument is the same thing as Motorola; Motorola acquired GI in 1997 (but probably took a few years to switch the branding to Motorola). JFR_SneakPrevue98, that's interesting - I would guess that this was simply your cable system not using the latest technology, rather than the cable box not using the latest technology. But I don't know very much about that.

Well my Cable System was usually slow for getting the latest cable related technology. It took about 3 years or so to get WWE's SVOD channel added to Charter On Demand and I think it was around either WrestleMania 24 or the 25th Anniversary of WrestleMania. This past Thursday we just got online scheduling for recording a TV Show via the Internet for Motorola DVRs. As you can tell Charter for the Northern Michigan region gets almost everything last. Charter employees up here in Northern Michigan are having problems with TiVO.

JFR_SneakPrevue98 wrote: Well my Cable System was usually slow for getting the latest cable related technology. It took about 3 years or so to get WWE's SVOD channel added to Charter On Demand and I think it was around either WrestleMania 24 or the 25th Anniversary of WrestleMania. This past Thursday we just got online scheduling for recording a TV Show via the Internet for Motorola DVRs. As you can tell Charter for the Northern Michigan region gets almost everything last. Charter employees up here in Northern Michigan are having problems with TiVO.

Don't be too sure about that. We have Charter here in NW GA and we are still waiting for SDV to be rolled out. We still have 68 analog channels. We also do not have the full selection of HD channels either. We haven't had any channel additions in over a year.

I feel your pain though....

Thanks,
Steven