Prevue Guide Forums

Ok, Arix, as we spoke about in IRC last night...

I got the AMIGA EPG working on real hardware last night.. Wasnt hard to do.. I was still messing around with it at 3am last night, so I didnt get a video capture of it, but I got two separate video streams (from 2 VCRs) going into my genlock,by combining them in the upper left and uuper right quadrants of the screen, using a color-quad video multiplexer box.. From there, it goes into the video input of the Genlock on the AMIGA. This works pretty good. The only thing is that my AMIGA is set up to boot with Kickstart 3.1, and I think this software was designed for 2.04. This doesnt cause any operational compatability pro0blems, but I think it does effect the look of things somewhat. For instance, the "border" of the screen (any overscan area that you dont tell the AMIGA to use for screen display area) is white by default on Kickstart 3.1, where it would be black on Kickstart 2.04.. I was able to run the software and see the scrolling EPG stuff, and using the L and R key, I can expose the 2 different video screens in the uuper right and upper left.. The / key puts up various genlock allignment scale-diagrams.. And theres alot of other keys that test various functions like ad banners that cover the entire top half of the screen, etc.. I am going to move whats on the prevue disk onto a hardisk, and set the hardisk up to load kickstart 2.04 at bootup.. It will boot/load stuff faster, and we'll have plenty of space to work with.

I also have the AMIGA serial port hooked via a nullmodem cable to my PC, ready to send EPG data into it, if you guys would like to prepare me some preparsed files to try.. Also, I have the master output of the AMIGA/genlock going into my video capture card on my PC.. so I can easily share the exact results with you guys.

Metalguy66 wrote:Ok, Arix, as we spoke about in IRC last night...

I got the AMIGA EPG working on real hardware last night.. Wasnt hard to do.. I was still messing around with it at 3am last night, so I didnt get a video capture of it, but I got two separate video streams (from 2 VCRs) going into my genlock,by combining them in the upper left and uuper right quadrants of the screen, using a color-quad video multiplexer box.. From there, it goes into the video input of the Genlock on the AMIGA. This works pretty good. The only thing is that my AMIGA is set up to boot with Kickstart 3.1, and I think this software was designed for 2.04. This doesnt cause any operational compatability pro0blems, but I think it does effect the look of things somewhat. For instance, the "border" of the screen (any overscan area that you dont tell the AMIGA to use for screen display area) is white by default on Kickstart 3.1, where it would be black on Kickstart 2.04.. I was able to run the software and see the scrolling EPG stuff, and using the L and R key, I can expose the 2 different video screens in the uuper right and upper left.. The / key puts up various genlock allignment scale-diagrams.. And theres alot of other keys that test various functions like ad banners that cover the entire top half of the screen, etc.. I am going to move whats on the prevue disk onto a hardisk, and set the hardisk up to load kickstart 2.04 at bootup.. It will boot/load stuff faster, and we'll have plenty of space to work with.

I also have the AMIGA serial port hooked via a nullmodem cable to my PC, ready to send EPG data into it, if you guys would like to prepare me some preparsed files to try.. Also, I have the master output of the AMIGA/genlock going into my video capture card on my PC.. so I can easily share the exact results with you guys.

Cool - you can see more of the keyboard functions at http://prevueguide.com/index.php/Prevue_Grid, and you should try typing "n" and see if that lets you see what's coming in through your genlock.

Anyway, we don't have a method of sending "EPG data" yet, since we do not yet completely understand the format used to send TV listings to the boxes. Here are the only Amiga serial commands we currently know of: viewtopic.php?f=5&t=64 If you do want to have listings, you'll have to modify the listings cache that resides on the floppy disk using this information: viewtopic.php?f=5&t=67

Keep us updated!

Ok.. Here it is:

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=P20F4125

Took quite some doing to get my AMIGA to "rekick" the 2.04 ROM image.. I have plenty of 2.04 ROMs, but Im not gonna disassemble my machine, remove the accelerator board, etc.. etc.. But now I made a custom boot floppy that does it.. so next will be a JAZ disk with everythign on it that just auto-boots..


Anywayze.. That .zip archive has a 2.5 minute video. You need the DivX player to play it.. VLC might play it as well, but its really good compression, and great quality considering the original uncompressed capture was over 2gigs, and it crunched it down to 17megs..

I also included some .jpg images of the setup I put together to do this..

So.... When will you guys have that EPG serial input protocol done? It'd be nice to have some program guide content to look at..

Also, I will experiment and figure out which AMIGA graphics program is best for editing whatever image format they are using for the ads..

Maybe next week, Im gonna put my logic analyzer on the serial port and start messing with options in the software, so I can figure out which line it's pulling low for the audio switching.. THen I'll hack together an audio switcher, and we'll have audio to go with whichever video panel is being displayed (hopefully)..

Oh,, one last coment about the video.. First, my capture card is not the greatest in the world.. best it could do was about 25fps.. I dont know what that became after divx encoding.. Also, I purposely captured the ENTIRE "overscan area".. Your field of view on an actual TV would be much smaller.. you wouldnt see nearly as much of the borders.. your probably seeing up to 10% extra on each edge of the picture..

Ok.. Im gonna crash.. gotta work tomorrow.. (ouch).. Hope you guys like this..

Metalguy66 wrote:So.... When will you guys have that EPG serial input protocol done? It'd be nice to have some program guide content to look at..

I think tin's busy with his job right now or something like that, I don't think he's actively working on it right now. Read around the forums a little bit... Like I said in my last post, you can put in listings by modifying the caches using this format: viewtopic.php?f=5&t=67

Or just boot up the original, "virgin" copy of the ADF and set your Amiga's system date to April 1st, 1999.

EPIC news. I have obtained at least one more copy of the software (no idea what version or from when yet, definitely Prevue Grid-era though, no List yet), and probably some real AP2000 hardware to boot. Will keep you guys updated, hopefully we'll have the ADF soon!

http://prevueguide.com/AP2000LabelsAndROM.jpg
http://prevueguide.com/AP2000UVGEN.jpg

AriX wrote:EPIC news. I have obtained at least one more copy of the software (no idea what version or from when yet, definitely Prevue Grid-era though, no List yet), and probably some real AP2000 hardware to boot. Will keep you guys updated, hopefully we'll have the ADF soon!

http://prevueguide.com/AP2000LabelsAndROM.jpg
http://prevueguide.com/AP2000UVGEN.jpg

That is very EPIC news!

AriX wrote:I have obtained at least one more copy of the software (no idea what version or from when yet, definitely Prevue Grid-era though, no List yet)

GIMME

LocalH wrote:

GIMME

Well, I posted a little too soon - I don't have it yet. I hope to actually get it pretty soon.

For now, since we don't really know what it is, let's speculate! I'm hoping it's an image of the Prevue Channel software version seen in these videos: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rLApAmSQQ5U and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D-pBiMD9aCY. Of course, I'd be perfectly happy with an older version - I'm just really hoping it's not another TV Guide Channel disk. The reason I'm thinking it might not be is because the disk is labeled "Prevue Channel System Backup" or something along those lines, and I'm hoping it was just a backup made a long time ago.

AAHHHHHH FALSE ALARM

Seems that whoever owned this machine before Jeff made a backup copy in 2004 of the same TV Guide disk we have for some reason. The contents are literally exactly the same. Oh well. I found another guy who also told me that he'd make an ADF of his Prevue disk, but that one is likely just another TV Guide version, and the guy hasn't gotten back to me in a few weeks.

Argh gutted!!!!