TV Guide - programming guide for TVs and DVRs

[HD Library]

By Richard Fisher

I have two units that use this feature, the Panasonic DMRE85H DVD Player/Recorder/DVR and a Sony DHG-HDD250 HDTV cable/OTA receiver DVR.

TV Guide uses the Tribune TV programming database used by many others. The data is transmitted very slowly via your local PBS stations. The unit must be turned off in the wee hours of the night to download the data. Both offer an auto turn off feature to insure your programming gets downloaded regularly with the Sony setup to turn off at 1:00AM (this can be changed in the menu).

Both are a bear to get setup. You need to input your zip code, tell it if you are on cable or air, turn it off and wait 24 hours. Then it will ask you which cable system you are on and provide a couple of channels as reference point to determine if you have selected the right system. Upon making your selection you will be greeted with all the channels that will have listings but there are no listings. Turn it off and wait 24 hours. This time you will have the listings too.

Next step is to put it all in order and unfortunately it must be done one channel at a time. There are no sorting features to make this easy like put the freakin channels in order based on channel number. ARGH! This is not something you have to do but if you plan to use this feature it sure will make your life easier when looking up a channel. That said there are numerous features for finding a program by title or category. If you choose to get it all in order be prepared to spend an hour or two if you are on cable (mine was 88 channels for the Panny and a whopping 218 for the Sony).

While doing this you will note you can turn the channel on or off. This determines how far in advance your schedule will be up to 2 weeks. The more channels you have turned on the shorter the schedule.

There were many similarities and in most cases seemed like a carbon copy but in the end it was not.

For the DMRE85H the TV guide listings are also the channel preset. If you turn a channel off it will not be included in your surfing requiring you punch in the channel number. TV Guide is the channel preset. To top it off if TV Guide failed to include a channel that you like to watch or surf to you will have to manually add it. There is a 24 hour advance key to help you search the listings. Two 30 minute periods are shown at a time.


For the DHG-HDD250 the TV guide listings are only for the listings and do not affect channel selection. This unit has a separate memory for that function so if there are missing channels for the listings you still get them. Three 30 minute periods are shown. While I have yet to read the manual there is no obvious way to advance the schedule 24 hours so you have to click through each 90 minute period. Digital cable channels are presented in their raw channel configuration and will not be even remotely close to what you have been tuning to. For me these were 96-x and 101-x through 103-x. A cable card is required to properly map the digital channels.

The most aggravating event to date is just two days ago the upstairs Panny locked up on one channel and would not operate the TV Guide. I cycled the AC power to the unit. That fixed the TV Guide and allowed us to change channels again but ALL of the programming was dumped and it had reverted to

[HDTV News]

Apparently the problems were caused by the TV Guide feature. If your product has this feature you may need a cable card to prevent future weirdness even if you don't subscribe to premium channels or services.

UNPREDICTABLE BEHAVIOUR. The haunting began nearly a month into my tests. At 1 a.m., the set suddenly and loudly fired up -- a disconcerting thing since it was set up in my bedroom. Worse, it refused to turn off, responding neither to the remote nor the off switch on the TV. With no choice, I unplugged the set, then plugged it back in. Nearly an hour later, though, the set burst into life again.

DISASTER STRIKES AGAIN. It was not to be. The TV Guide data -- which by then had not updated for a couple of weeks -- yet again failed to download overnight. And after a lull of a week, the set began turning itself on again. An LG executive pointed out that most buyers of this set would simply install a Cablecard and use the built-in recorder, rather than plug in a DirecTV-TiVo and dish personal video recorder, as I had done. But given that the set has connections for additional equipment, that should not have been a problem.

As a last-ditch effort to get the set working, I moved it out of the bedroom. Then I had a Comcast technician install a Cablecard to decode premium programming without the box. Voila! The TV Guide downloaded, and I could again use the digital video recording function.

http://www.businessweek.com/technology/ ... _tc081.htm