Guide Plus
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Guide Plus+ (in Europe), TV Guide On Screen and Guide Plus+ Gold (in Northern America) or G-Guide (in Japan) is an interactive electronic programme guide (EPG) system that is used in consumer electronics products, such as television sets, DVD recorders, personal video recorders, and other digital television devices. It offers interactive on-screen programme listings that enable viewers to navigate, sort, select, and schedule television programming for viewing and recording. The differing names are only for marketing purposes -- the entire system is owned by Gemstar TV Guide.
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[edit] How it works
It launched in the United States and Japan in the mid-1990s, and is now being deployed throughout Europe. It is available in Canada, France, Germany, Spain, the UK, Austria, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Belgium, and Italy.
The updated programme listings are provided to users free-of-charge, regardless of whether they receive their television signal from an over-the-air (OTA) broadcast or via cable TV or Satellite TV. The service is supported by advertising.
The original analog TV service uses the vertical blanking interval (VBI) of host television stations that datacast the service, similar to the way closed captioning and teletext are broadcast. This takes 24 hours to download on initial setup because the required data is sent at a low bitrate.
[edit] Digital television
The new service, launched in the United States in 2006, is entirely digital, using the ATSC digital television standard. While this will significantly improve the service, older systems are no longer be able to download listings as of the Digital Television Transition which occurred on June 12, 2009.
It should be noted that the Program and System Information Protocol (PSIP) within the ATSC standard already allows for each station to send out its own EPG information, and in the U.S. the FCC in fact requires stations to do so for OTA (but not cable, unless they are rebroadcasting an OTA station that provides the PSIP data). However, actual implementation is rather spotty, and usually very minimal -- stations often don't have full descriptions (or even correct information) on the current show, much less the next 3 hours required of them, or the 16 days worth of guide information that can be transmitted. Additionally, ATSC tuners are not required to even show the EPG, only the very limited information for the current show on the current channel.
While the TV Guide service also requires software in the TV or other device, and licensing fees or royalties to be paid to Gemstar TV Guide, it also offers a more complete solution for broadcast television, more like digital satellite or digital cable.
[edit] Supported products
The following brands have compatible products:
- JVC
- Matsushita (Panasonic)
- Mitsubishi
- Philips
- Thomson (RCA, GE, and ProScan)
- Samsung
- Sharp
- Sony
- Pioneer
- Daewoo
- LG Group
- Toshiba
Gemstar also produced EPG computer software bundled with analog NTSC TV tuner cards made by ATI Technologies, particularly the TV Wonder and All-in-Wonder lines. ATI switched to rival TitanTV for its digital ATSC cards, however.[citation needed]
Late 2008/Jan. 2009 -> Changes were made to the listing server that sets the correct/current URL in the Registry for Gemstar's Guide Plus to get new updates. This lead many incorrectly speculate that the service was discontinued due to the digital transition. With the listing server down or URL changed if you do a clean install or have to re-install Guide Plus, you will have to manually edit the registry with the correct URL where the new program guide updates can be found. Take note ATI no longer supports this product, and no new URL was given by Macrovision. You will find the correct instructions listed in the latter portion of this thread on Rage3d site to edit the correct registry settings: http://www.rage3d.com/board/showthread.php?t=33939093
Note, no change is required if you are still able to receive current downloads of the program guide. The manual registry editing is ONLY required on a system that has not had Guide Plus previously installed (such as after a clean install), if Guide Plus had to be uninstalled (and the registry entries for it were also deleted), or if the program was not being used in the time period when the updating server made its last change and updated the downloading URL.
