Prevue Guide Forums

How where the primestart Prevue guides setup?

As they have 5 of them they just 5 differnt systems or some other custom setup.

JoeTheDragon wrote:How where the primestart Prevue guides setup?

As they have 5 of them they just 5 differnt systems or some other custom setup.

I assume by "primestart" you mean Primestar, the defunct satellite TV provider that carried the Prevue Channel... But I don't quite understand what you're asking. What do you mean by "they have 5 of them"?

From http://web.archive.org/web/199705120129 ... prevue.htm:

PREVUE is the place to turn for up-to-the-minute listings for all PRIMESTAR programming, 24 hours a day. This channel provides programming schedules for the next 90 minutes. To make it easy to find the programs you want to watch, PRIMESTAR provides five separate PREVUE Channels, one for movies, another for sports, a third PRIMECinema, a fourth for Spanish programming, and PRIMEAudio by DMX, and a general PREVUE Channel that highlights most of the programming services in the PRIME Value(SM) package.

(emphasis mine)

woddfellow2 wrote:From http://web.archive.org/web/199705120129 ... prevue.htm:

PREVUE is the place to turn for up-to-the-minute listings for all PRIMESTAR programming, 24 hours a day. This channel provides programming schedules for the next 90 minutes. To make it easy to find the programs you want to watch, PRIMESTAR provides five separate PREVUE Channels, one for movies, another for sports, a third PRIMECinema, a fourth for Spanish programming, and PRIMEAudio by DMX, and a general PREVUE Channel that highlights most of the programming services in the PRIME Value(SM) package.

(emphasis mine)

Nice find. Don't know how I would have found that, but Joe, to answer your question, Primestar likely used the LaserDisc version of the guide for the 5 custom Prevue channels, somehow providing their own content through the LaserDisc player, probably through a deal with Prevue Networks (a "custom setup", as you say). The 6th "general" Prevue channel was likely a more standard, satellite-fed Prevue channel, although since Primestar was a satellite service, the standard Prevue channel probably had to be downlinked from satellite, rendered on an Amiga, and then re-uplinked so that customers could receive it through their own satellite dishes.

I thought it only differed in the rollup at the bottom, and the top content was the same from Prevue channel to Prevue channel. (foster parents had PrimeStar at the very end of its lifespan.)

usotsuki wrote:I thought it only differed in the rollup at the bottom, and the top content was the same from Prevue channel to Prevue channel. (foster parents had PrimeStar at the very end of its lifespan.)

Huh, well, there's our answer! They must just have had 6 different setups, all with the same video promotion but different channel listings.

And I suppose with what we know, that would be pretty easy to set up.

usotsuki wrote:I thought it only differed in the rollup at the bottom, and the top content was the same from Prevue channel to Prevue channel. (foster parents had PrimeStar at the very end of its lifespan.)

there are some videos on youtube showing that a tci system cover the top with sildes.

Well from what I remember, "PrimeStar" did have the same grid as the one in Mexico and Prevue Junior, where the grid doesn't scroll. I saw this when local stores where selling "PrimeStar" satellite services.

joseph_sobora wrote:Well from what I remember, "PrimeStar" did have the same grid as the one in Mexico and Prevue Junior, where the grid doesn't scroll. I saw this when local stores where selling "PrimeStar" satellite services.

Interesting! At this point, I am fairly confident that what we're calling "Prevue Junior" is in fact the LaserDisc version of the Prevue Channel. Notice how in videos like http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oYLZuIA5as the picture freezes at the end of each clip before it moves on to the next one. Question is, what platform did it run on, and why were they still selling it in 2005? (and using it in 2007?) Were they trying to repurpose all of the Amigas they had sitting around? Or was it not Amiga-based? How did it receive data if not over satellite? Why didn't it scroll?