TV Guide Hollywood Genlock

[AriX]

Some years ago, I found (on eBay) a genlock card that was apparently used by the "Hollywood" Windows NT-based TV Guide Channel system. Some folks in Discord are doing an investigation on TV Guide Channel hardware and asked me to share - so I'm posting here for posterity's sake.

[djelectro]

Hi everyone!

We've been having some discussion about this card on the Discord, and have identified it to be made by STB Systems (made lots of GPUs, but not many for the consumer space, bought out by 3dfx shortly after this card was made, judging by the date code on the sticker). Information on the card is scarce, having seemingly no official model number, however googling the numbers on the sticker does reveal listings for the card, including some identifying it as a "Replacement TV Guide EPG card". The card also has a chip on it that says Tulsa 1.0 (my guess is thats a ROM chip), and both USVG and 3dfx were based out of or had locations in Tulsa, OK.

We've also identified the system in the only existing picture of the TV Guide Hollywood server, being a Compaq Professional Workstation SP700 (or possibly an SP750). This is the picture we are referring to:

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We initially believed it to be a Compaq proliant, but after not being able to locate a system that matched it, I noticed that the way the blurry text under the Compaq logo looked led me to believe that it did not say proliant, but instead something much longer. I then stumbled upon a lineup of Compaq computers called their "Professional Workstations", which were rack mountable. Others on Discord then found this eBay listing https://www.ebay.com/itm/223869474512 which almost perfectly matches the picture of the TV Guide box

firefox_2020-11-09_19-09-13.png (225.69 KiB) Viewed 7247 times

As you can see, the text "Professional Workstation" fits my theory about the blurry photo not saying Proliant under the Compaq logo. The specs for the system in the listing are period correct and do fit the OS we believe ran the software, Windows NT 4.0. The only existing picture of the OS of the system shows an NT debugger, but Windows 9x icons, meaning it could not be anything other than NT4.

Thats all we have for now, but we plan on investigating the card and system further!

[AriX]

Pulled the card open (since it has 2 layers), here is the inside:

[PajamaDarkness]

An update for those who aren't in the server: We managed to get our hands on a couple of units. More details on its way whenever

[PajamaDarkness]

Yet another update: Somebody in the Discord got their hands on a unit, not only that but also got the software working on actual hardware, and while he dumped the software. It isn't fully usable yet, as it requires a specific graphics card that nobody's sure how to emulate yet, or at all. Despite this, you can still get a very limited, reminiscent of PC Prevue/Prevue Jr. by enabling 'Software Only' in setup:
(also make sure to image the units as soon as you find one, they programmed a killswitch in that deletes some data on 12-21-2020)

[Matthew Joseph]

For those who didn't join our Discord: We already have a real working TVGC unit and genlock is working with this unit!

So here's what happened: DJ Electro (one of our Discord users on our PVG Discord channel) had the hands of the TVGC Hollywood workstation, and he made it work.

Earlier, he tried the genlock first with the SNES, but it failed. Then he tried the DVD, but I suggested to not play movies, it worked. The best thing we ever seen is when he tried to use a digital OTA receiver with composite and it work very well! Even I ask to tune to channel 6.2 (of WPVI in Philly) and it showed a infomercial, but that was the case back before when analog providers would air infomercials using the TVGC workstation.

Then later we asked DJ Electro to try to run Prevue ads on USB on the DVD player or the camera, but failed.

So that's how it worked! Surely a big breakthrough on this one!

(P.S. I would invite you to join our PVG Discord since we have an extensive discussion on the Hollywood and the genlock! https://discord.gg/dPAb2HFs6U)

[woddfellow2]

Earlier, he tried the genlock first with the SNES, but it failed.

Let me guess, it choked on the 240p "double-strike" output of the Super NES?

[IowanEASFan]

One of the members in the Discord server (djelectro, to be exact) even hooked their PS3 up to their Hollywood and played Little Big Planet on it

Edit: Oh yeah, we also watched Sneak Prevue stuff before that