Guide Questions

postrin · 10-11-2004, 06:34 PM

Hi, long time reader very few poster, but i have noticed something that brings up a good question

I'm in Houston, we found out yesterday that the Astros are playing tonight here, Tivo and directv guide is correct. How is this possible, everytime the president speaks, or something else is going on, or a show is going to run late, my guide data is completely wrong. Now If they have the ability of adjusting the guide that quickly, why are there ever any errors

Thanks for listening to me vent.

Paul

Edit: for spelling

ebonovic · 10-11-2004, 07:53 PM

Timing, and demand.

DirecTV get's their guide data from a clearing house. Either Gemstar (TV Guide) or Tribune... They then scrub that data, and send it down to us.

It is fairly automated, but it does take time.

So if all of a sudden the President decided that he wanted to speak to the country, someone at the clearing houses would have to update the data. Inform DirecTV that they need to do a adhoc download of the latest data... scrub it, then send it out.

Same for a sporting event that goes long. They would have to first identify what is running long, update the data with an unspecific end, ect....

Plus each network station provides their own data.
What if one network decides... Hey nbc has the president so we are not going to cut into Survivor... Or that game is not all that important to our viewers, we are going to not show the end.. We are gonig to start our programming on time...

And why their are errors... .Just like you had to edit your posts... Garbage In, Garbage Out... Humans are still entering the data....

jamosc · 10-13-2004, 02:48 AM

ebonovic brings up a good point and you should also know that just like in your TVGuide magazine, there is a bit a delay in what is actually expected to show and what actually shows. If there is less than a three day notice about a change in schedule it is likely that your recorder will have incorrect guide information. There are definitely exceptions to this but if you know there has been a recent change to a schedule and it isn't showing in the guide, you are better off scheduling a manual recording that supercedes any previously planned recordings.

clherv · 03-02-2006, 01:52 PM

A long, long time ago I read in the forum how to visit a web page to see the same database listing as Tivo would use (in easy to read format).

I lost that URL, and so today did a search, and found this thread.

Anybody know the URL for which I am looking?

Kent

classicsat · 03-02-2006, 03:22 PM

Zap2it.com for one.