joseph_sobora wrote:Yes, I would like to have the entire "Sneak Prevue" footage all from those years. That reminds me, I remember I found a picture of a Sneak Prevue Laserdisc that dates back to 1995 that was sold on ebay back in 2005. I posted that on my Prevue Guide Yahoo group ever since. I wish I had purchase that one, problem is that I don't own a Laserdisc Player and PayPal has been giving me hassles these days. Oh well! I hope if they do sell some more, along with the 1995-99 graphics.
Too bad! Let's hope more turn up...
tin wrote:It's difficult to know isn't it? I agree entirely that from a user POV they have ruined it. I think there is still definitely space for a non-interactive TV guide that chugs along quietly in the corner, because SO many people channel surf or don't know what to watch. So many people on youtube comment that they used to watch it for hours, so I am sure it could just sit there and play away, with the odd advert and the local inserts for local companies - as long as it wasn't intrusive. However the more recent TV guide channels aren't that quiet unobtrusive thing that PG was so I am sure it would get turned off.
I definitely think there's room for some better form of channel guidance than flipping through channels, or even flipping through 100+ channels in a guide. I like the idea of being able to watch a channel to find out what's going to be on tonight (that's not a rerun or some crap). Nothing like that exists anymore.
tin wrote:However from what I can see over here in the UK, most of your IPGs are TV-guide channel branded, and look a lot like prevue guide (obviously with fancier graphics). Isn't that a success because it lives on? What's the thing with patent trolls? I know Rovi keep trying to sue virgin media over here and losing (
http://www.broadbandtvnews.com/2009/11/ ... -epg-case/) (
http://paidcontent.co.uk/article/419-ro ... gin-media/) but what does their patent trolling in the US actually do that's bad for innovation from Rovi themselves - or is it just that they sit on the patents and aren't working on the next-big-thing?
Well, it's certainly true that the legacy of Prevue lives on - in fact, I believe the majority of cable "ASTBs" (advanced set-top boxes) in this U.S. use the i-Guide that still bears a strong resemblance (and probably a lot of code) to the original Prevue Interactive. Plus, many other guide systems, as you say, work and look very similar. However, the innovation on Rovi's side seems to have been completely stifled. The main problem with them being a patent troll is that they're more invested in their patents than their products. A few years ago, they laid off all/most remaining IPG developers from the Tulsa office that originally developed the software, and outsourced the development to Comcast, who also does not seem to know how to improve it. And they sold off the TV Guide Network because it didn't relate to any patents that could be useful to them (maybe also because it sucked). The hardware deployment, software design, and transmission for the TV Guide Network still shares the Rovi office in Tulsa despite the ownership change.
This is partially unrelated, but Rovi also has a monopoly on U.S. TV listings, and most data about what's on TV here needs to come from them at some level, which is severely annoying.
tin wrote:I agree with this as well. I get the impression this will be more due to the cableco's wanting to differentiate their services - and being controlling/greedy (that's the impression I get from over here) they don't want to pay some external company to provide a barker channel that everyone else has as well - albeit with appropriate logos. I was going to say that capacity issues towards the end of analogue probably forced the issues as well, but actually our cablecos here never made any effort to ensure all capacity was filled with the highest quality stuff, so that's probably rubbish.
Perhaps that's the case. I may well be in the minority, but I really think that better, more straightforward barker channels and guidance channels could really help to make finding out what's on TV and On Demand much easier. A lot of people around me seem to have trouble doing that.
tin wrote:However I am even more confused now as to how it died. Looking at the youtube video of what we think is the MPEG delivery system, it's really slick and evidently a bit more graphically capable. (I would also guess that it was not running on an Amiga - unless they tried something with the A4000 or maybe bastardised A1200) I am sure they would have had to kill off the laserdisc version sooner or later as the cost must have been high, and the laserdisc players must have been getting old, but it could have lived on that newer format for a long time.
As Joseph pointed out, the video we were looking at was not in fact Sneak Prevue. They did have an MPEG version of their system somewhere, but it also ran on the Amiga.
