Prevue Guide Forums

I figured I'd just make a new topic about this considering its controversy. Obviously there are many different concepts on how the top half of Prevue functioned. My theory is that if you pay attention to the left and right sides and what types of clips are played for each, you may notice that one side has dominantly Pay-Per-View related promos and the other has trailers dominantly for TV shows and movies. It seemed like in the days of Prevue Guide their was a dominance of PPV on the right side, but when Prevue Channel came about for some odd reason it switched to the left side. You can clearly see my theory in action on clips with crashes:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T-QfN3b0Vps
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=67xAn8eu-HQ

I think that both sides were controlled by the central video feed from their HQ and that Prevue scanned the local listings using what was playing on each side to find and match up a program, movie or PPV event airing on a specific channel and time within the month. For example say their was a trailer for "The Hangover" playing on the right side and a PPV promo for "WWE Summerslam" on the left. Prevue would look for both programs in the local listings. Lets say it was able to find "The Hangover" on channel X playing at Y:YY. It would then switch to the appropriate audio feed and overlay the showtime info for the movie (and vice versa for PPV).

Of course this is just my theory...What do you guys think about this?

Bolt96 wrote:I figured I'd just make a new topic about this considering its controversy.

Controversy? Really? I wasn't aware that there was any disagreement.

Bolt96 wrote:Obviously there are many different concepts on how the top half of Prevue functioned. My theory is that if you pay attention to the left and right sides and what types of clips are played for each, you may notice that one side has dominantly Pay-Per-View related promos and the other has trailers dominantly for TV shows and movies. It seemed like in the days of Prevue Guide their was a dominance of PPV on the right side, but when Prevue Channel came about for some odd reason it switched to the left side. You can clearly see my theory in action on clips with crashes:

Maybe... I think this is more coincidence than anything, and I'm not sure it really matters. I just looked, and I found plenty of examples where both sides were used interchangeably. I think more than anything, this may have been a result of Prevue's programming loop, which in the earlier days may have been fairly short (10-15 minutes?) and only changed every few days.

Bolt96 wrote:I think that both sides were controlled by the central video feed from their HQ and that Prevue scanned the local listings using what was playing on each side to find and match up a program, movie or PPV event airing on a specific channel and time within the month. For example say their was a trailer for "The Hangover" playing on the right side and a PPV promo for "WWE Summerslam" on the left. Prevue would look for both programs in the local listings. Lets say it was able to find "The Hangover" on channel X playing at Y:YY. It would then switch to the appropriate audio feed and overlay the showtime info for the movie (and vice versa for PPV).

That is exactly how it worked - no one is questioning this. The only thing we don't know at this point are the specific technical details of how the messages were relayed to the local machines of what is on which side and when the promos will be displayed.

AriX wrote: Controversy? Really? I wasn't aware that there was any disagreement.

I suppose I was referring to this old thread viewtopic.php?f=2&t=179&start=20 but I think I might have slightly misinterpreted what was being debated there lol.

AriX wrote:That is exactly how it worked - no one is questioning this. The only thing we don't know at this point are the specific technical details of how the messages were relayed to the local machines of what is on which side and when the promos will be displayed.

Got'cha. Good to know were all on the same page with that one. I do wonder what would've happened if neither trailers respective network was available on a cable system...

Bolt96 wrote:I suppose I was referring to this old thread viewtopic.php?f=2&t=179&start=20 but I think I might have slightly misinterpreted what was being debated there lol.

Haha, got it.

Bolt96 wrote:Got'cha. Good to know were all on the same page with that one. I do wonder what would've happened if neither trailers respective network was available on a cable system...

Then it goes to local ad

It is possible that one side or the other contained more "mainstream" channels that were much more likely to be on a given system. For example, HBO and CNN are going to be everywhere, but back in the day they may not have had Cartoon Network or Flix. I bet they tried the best they could to make sure there was a promo playing that would be applicable to every system if needed.

mixdup wrote:It is possible that one side or the other contained more "mainstream" channels that were much more likely to be on a given system. For example, HBO and CNN are going to be everywhere, but back in the day they may not have had Cartoon Network or Flix. I bet they tried the best they could to make sure there was a promo playing that would be applicable to every system if needed.

I agree that they probably tried to cover as many systems as possible when they played promos, but I doubt that it corresponded to one side or the other.

Was the top half of Prevue on a running loop each month with PPV Movie/Event promos on one side and Movie/TV Show promos on the other side? I am just asking.

JFR_SneakPrevue98 wrote:Was the top half of Prevue on a running loop each month with PPV Movie/Event promos on one side and Movie/TV Show promos on the other side? I am just asking.

I've said this several times already, but I don't believe Prevue intentionally differentiated between the two sides of the screen. But I could be wrong.