Prevue Guide Forums

Hello, world! Kinda funny how I found this community... who knew one stray Google search would lead me into something both myself and my boyfriend have interest in. (I was originally searching for why TWC had a Diagnostic channel on channel 1990 on the new Navigator OS push they sent to our cable boxen... and then found the TV Guide article had popped up in Wikipedia discussing the olden days of Prevue's diagnostic menus on-air, and then... here I am.)

So, my stupid question for any of the old (private/etc) cable operators here:
1: What's one of the best ways to set up an extremely small scale cable TV network?
Say, 10 channels or so. I've considered rolling a small IPTV network for experimentation but knowing my Zack, he'd want to see an old school coax network to play around with. I'd like to try a concept like OMGIMON.TV with their "let's let the users decide" and run YouTube videos on certain channels and so on.

2: What's a good way to bridge PC applications into the mix?
That is, if I were to get the small-scale network up, be able to run the Weatherstar 4000 emulator for a Weather Channel and then experiment with getting Prevue running as an EPG for the good ol' days on separate channels.

I'll probably get beaten down for this, and my experience comes from quite a number of years ago (= old technology), and I'm certainly not a cable operator, but I'll say it anyway

If it's going to be extremely small scale, and I assume cheap, I would just get modulated output from the devices and connect them all together. You'll probably need some combination of loop through cables, for those devices that have an in and an out, 2-into-1 connectors for devices that don't, and maybe some signal boosters to keep the signals from the start of the chain strong at the end of it. Variable power ones are the best as you can tweak to the optimum level without blowing stuff away with a massive signal.

I have done this before with 6 satellite recievers, a VCR and an Amiga to pretty decent effect (for the time and budget). You'll need to play around with what channel they output on so they don't interfere with each other - which TBH is an easy thing in the UK, and maybe not so easy in the US (I don't really know)

This also means that anyone who wants to connect to your mini-catv system is bound to have equipment that can do it - a TV that can do analogue.

For the PCs etc, use a video card that can do TV out, preferably on s-video - again more trial and error required with screen modes etc to get the optimum picutre out of it, and a modulator to turn the signal into modulated RF. Join that to your chain. Of course you can use modulators for those other devices where it's impossible to get the right channel, or the quality is too low. If you're using a real Amiga for prevue guide there's the added bonus that modulators are pretty standard things . I guess pro modulators for analogue are cheap on ebay these days as I guess there'll be a lot of places scrapping them off.

Of course, none of this will allow on demand stuff. If you want to do that analogue, I think it would get pretty complicated, although it could be emulated with several PCs doing on-demand on several channels - each user has their own channel. However I guess IP/digital is the only way to go but that would cost $$.

HTH, and of course, let us know how you go!!

As far as running an actual Amiga for the guide goes, a few tips:

1) You'll have to wait until we fully reverse engineer the data format, because despite the fact that the Amiga clock is changed, the software somehow keeps track of what time it is. I left my A2000 running for a few hours, and when I rebooted it, the guide restarted from the point where I rebooted (although when I exited ESQ and checked the date, it said it was "14:04:23", and I reset the Amiga clock to 4/1/99 14:00:00 on every boot). There's a lot we don't know yet, and until we figure it out (and software is set up to feed the Amiga with the right data), there isn't much practical use in trying to use this thing as it was originally intended.

2) It will require a PC that has a serial port, and the default setup requires 2400 baud (there is an option that we don't know was actually used, to make the software accept 9600 baud), so keep that in mind. It doesn't necessarily require MS-DOS, however since most newer computers don't even have a serial port makes me think that you'd need at least a machine that is a few years old.

3) I've never set up a local cable system, although it is an idea that I've had since I've had this software. Regardless of what you set up for the actual video distribution, I would guess that you'd need custom software to generate the necessary guide data for your local "cable system". Once again, we'll need to reverse engineer the full data format to do so, and as of now tin seems to be the master at doing that. Once we know more about the format, I'll be more than happy to help get you set up on the Amiga side of things, in terms of making it work.

For the record, I just rebooted my A2000 yet again, and it clearly stated that the system clock was reset to 4/1/99, 14:00:00, and yet when listings appeared, it still said it was almost 7pm. They definitely made sure that a simple reboot would restart the listings from where they were at, despite the system clock setting. I immediately dumped out of ESQ and the system clock says it's "Thursday 01-Apr-99 14:02:39". Seems like there's a big disconnect between the system clock and the Prevue clock, and there must be something that tells the software to read from the system clock instead. Maybe we're lucky that the disk we got checks the system time first before assuming anything.

Edit: For the record, it seems so far that the only file needed to be backed up to save local text ads is df0:local.ads. i'm going to save it on my hard drive and restore from my modified "virgin" disk, then copy it back and see if the time resets.

Edit 2: Ok, what the hell. I copied local.ads to my hard drive, restored from my master disk, then copied local.ads back. When I booted, I still got 7pm as the current time, but the ads were still there. Perhaps something in the software relies on memory not being cleared? Time to power-cycle and test.

Edit 3: Ok, we seriously have to figure this out. After a power cycle, I still see that it says 7:15pm, even though the actual system time is 2:02pm. Even after restoring everything but local.ads from my "virgin" modified master - and the only difference between the actual virgin master and my modified "virgin" disk is the startup-sequence to softkick 2.04, since I'm backing up local.ads onto my hard drive. I even checked by saving my modified startup-sequence and restoring from my actual virgin master, and powered the Amiga down inbetween restoring the disk and copying the files, and rebooting with it. Even after doing this, it still said it was 7:33pm. Until we figure this out, I'm not booting this on my A2000 again because I might not see the cached listings again if I do. I don't understand why it still keeps up with the clock, even after I dump out and check the clock, and after I restore all the files that would matter. Dumping out of ESQ shows a time of 14:03:00 which is nowhere near 7:33pm. The reason I might not see the listings again is because it's almost 7am here, and I need a few hours sleep, and I'd only have like 5 hours before it becomes "midnight" on "4/1/99".

LocalH wrote:2) It will require a PC that has a serial port, and the default setup requires 2400 baud (there is an option that we don't know was actually used, to make the software accept 9600 baud), so keep that in mind. It doesn't necessarily require MS-DOS, however since most newer computers don't even have a serial port makes me think that you'd need at least a machine that is a few years old.

LocalH wrote:For the record, I just rebooted my A2000 yet again, and it clearly stated that the system clock was reset to 4/1/99, 14:00:00, and yet when listings appeared, it still said it was almost 7pm. They definitely made sure that a simple reboot would restart the listings from where they were at, despite the system clock setting. I immediately dumped out of ESQ and the system clock says it's "Thursday 01-Apr-99 14:02:39". Seems like there's a big disconnect between the system clock and the Prevue clock, and there must be something that tells the software to read from the system clock instead. Maybe we're lucky that the disk we got checks the system time first before assuming anything.

It's probably just bizarre erratic behavior. They likely didn't care too much what the times did, since the satellite data would be hooked up over serial and it would constantly get accurate times fed in.