Interesting Tidbits

Discuss the awesomeness of the Prevue Channel, Prevue Interactive, Prevue Networks/United Video Satellite Group, TV Guide Inc., etc. right here.
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AriX
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Interesting Tidbits

Post by AriX »

Hey guys,

Sorry I haven't been able to keep up with stuff on here recently. Hope to get caught up on those new LaserDiscs sometime soon and try to make sure we can get high-quality versions.

Saw a few interesting things today; I stumbled on two UVSG corporate documents that are very interesting to read:
http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/ ... 000001.txt
http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/ ... 000004.txt

The first document is particularly interesting, but the second one also notes the following, which I believe answers some questions for us:
"The increase in Sneak subscribers resulted primarily from the formation of Sneak Prevue LLC in September 1996, a new consolidated subsidiary of the Company into which were combined Sneak Prevue and The Barker, a similar product to Sneak Prevue which was previously offered by StarNet."

Additionally, the first document briefly discusses UVSG's patents, and I believe that U.S. patent 5255269 actually describes some aspects of the method that they used to encode the EPG/Prevue CTRL and DATA feeds as audio for satellite transmission. The first version of this, broadcast over C-band, was called "FM Squared." The second, introduced in 1991, was broadcast over Ku-band and dubbed "FM Cubed" (they actually trademarked this).

The patent obviously corresponds to the Prevue system, stating "FIG 2 is a rudimentary block diagram showing the use of the principles of this invention for the simultaneous transmission of digital audio, digital computer data, and digital control data simultaneously using a single frequency modulated carrier." Unfortunately specific frequencies are not mentioned.
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