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152-526: The American cable and satellite television network Pop was originally launched in 1981 as a barker channel service providing a display of localized channel and program listings for cable television providers. Later on, the service, branded Prevue Channel or Prevue Guide and later as Prevue, began to broadcast interstitial segments alongside the on-screen guide, which included entertainment news and promotions for upcoming programs. After Prevue's parent company, United Video Satellite Group , acquired

304-504: A regional sports network for sports rights conflicts, though as dedicated HD channels have launched for the RSNs and new carriage agreements with the channel precluded EAS or RSN overflow use, this use was negated). In 2011, TV Guide Network dramatically overhauled its programming, abandoning most of its original shows (with the exception of original specials and red carpet coverage) and switching its focus to reruns of programming primarily from

456-520: A website providing local television listings, audio/video interviews and weather forecasts. Another website, PrevueNet, was also launched to provide more history and useful information for the Prevue Channel, as well as for Sneak Prevue , UVTV, and superstations WGN / Chicago and WPIX / New York City . The new navy blue grid version of the Prevue Channel software was as crash-prone as previous ones. Flashing red Amiga " guru meditation " errors (with

608-492: A "crawl ad" (appearing within a horizontally scrolling ticker at the bottom of the screen). If no advertisements were configured as "crawl ads," the bottom ticker would not be shown on-screen. The on-screen appearances of both the Jr. and Sr. versions of the EPG software differed only slightly, due primarily to differences in text font and extended ASCII graphic glyph character rendering between

760-519: A 2x3 grid of pixels, with each block pixel effectively controlled by one of the lower 6 bits.) IBM introduced eight-bit extended ASCII codes on the original IBM PC and later produced variations for different languages and cultures. IBM called such character sets code pages and assigned numbers to both those they themselves invented as well as many invented and used by other manufacturers. Accordingly, character sets are very often indicated by their IBM code page number. In ASCII-compatible code pages,

912-435: A PPV order), and could now be placed between channels in the grid. The old, synthesized interstitial music that had been used since 1988 was also replaced with a more modern piece called "Opening Act," from the defunct James & Aster music library. By late 1993, Prevue Guide was rebranded as " Prevue Channel ," and an updated channel logo was unveiled to match. Beginning in early 1994 and up until its first couple of years as

1064-667: A Zephyrus Electronics Ltd. model 101 rev. C demodulator ISA card for the WGN data stream, and a Great Valley Products Zorro II A2000 HC+8 Series II card (used only for 2 MB of Fast RAM with SCSI disabled). The 101C fed demodulated listings data at 2400 baud from a DE9 RS232 serial connector on its backpanel to the Amiga's stock DB25 RS232 serial port via a short cable. The 101C also featured connection terminals for contact closure triggering of external cable system video playback equipment. Beginning in late March 1993, Prevue Networks overhauled

1216-480: A cable company technician brought up its administrative menus to adjust settings, view diagnostics information, or hunt-and-peck new local text advertisements into the menus' built-in text editor. The Atari-based EPG Jr. units were encased in blue rack enclosures containing custom-made outboard electronics, such as the Zephyrus Electronics Ltd. UV-D-2 demodulator board, which delivered data decoded from

1368-571: A combination of languages such as English and French (though French computers usually use code page 850 ), but not, for example, in English and Greek (which required code page 737 ). Apple Computer introduced their own eight-bit extended ASCII codes in Mac OS , such as Mac OS Roman . The Apple LaserWriter also introduced the Postscript character set . Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) developed

1520-405: A dedicated analog circuit-switched service. Other advantages include better voice quality and integration to a Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) network providing cheap or unlimited nationwide and international calling. In many cases, digital cable telephone service is separate from cable modem service being offered by many cable companies and does not rely on Internet Protocol (IP) traffic or

1672-411: A dedicated channel, covered the entire screen and provided four hours of listings for each system's entire channel lineup, one half-hour period at a time. Because of this, listings for programs currently airing would often be several minutes from being shown. Additionally, because the EPG software generated only video, cable operators commonly resorted to filling the EPG channel's audio feed with music from

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1824-407: A general entertainment format with reruns of dramas and sitcoms . In 2013, CBS Corporation acquired of a 50% stake in the network, and the network was renamed TVGN. At the same time, as its original purpose grew obsolete because of the integrated program guides offered by digital television platforms, the network began to downplay and phase out its program listings service; as of June 2014, none of

1976-436: A given location, cable distribution lines must be available on the local utility poles or underground utility lines. Coaxial cable brings the signal to the customer's building through a service drop , an overhead or underground cable. If the subscriber's building does not have a cable service drop, the cable company will install one. The standard cable used in the U.S. is RG-6 , which has a 75 ohm impedance , and connects with

2128-543: A high elevation. At the outset, cable systems only served smaller communities without television stations of their own, and which could not easily receive signals from stations in cities because of distance or hilly terrain. In Canada, however, communities with their own signals were fertile cable markets, as viewers wanted to receive American signals. Rarely, as in the college town of Alfred, New York , U.S. cable systems retransmitted Canadian channels. Although early ( VHF ) television receivers could receive 12 channels (2–13),

2280-466: A higher rate. At the local headend, the feed signals from the individual television channels are received by dish antennas from communication satellites . Additional local channels, such as local broadcast television stations, educational channels from local colleges, and community access channels devoted to local governments ( PEG channels) are usually included on the cable service. Commercial advertisements for local business are also inserted in

2432-416: A local FM radio station, or with programming from a cable television-oriented audio service provider such as Cable Radio Network . By 1985 and under the newly formed Trakker, Inc. unit of United Video Satellite Group, two versions of the EPG were offered: EPG Jr., a 16 KB EPROM version which ran on various Atari models including the 130XE and 600XL , and EPG Sr., a 3½ bootable diskette version for

2584-405: A local VHF television station broadcast. Local broadcast channels were not usable for signals deemed to be a priority, but technology allowed low-priority signals to be placed on such channels by synchronizing their blanking intervals . TVs were unable to reconcile these blanking intervals and the slight changes due to travel through a medium, causing ghosting . The bandwidth of the amplifiers also

2736-463: A microwave-based system, may be used instead. Coaxial cables are capable of bi-directional carriage of signals as well as the transmission of large amounts of data . Cable television signals use only a portion of the bandwidth available over coaxial lines. This leaves plenty of space available for other digital services such as cable internet , cable telephony and wireless services, using both unlicensed and licensed spectra. Broadband internet access

2888-401: A new, modernized yellow grid began replacing the navy blue grid that had presented channel listings to viewers for the past six years. The old navy blue grid was completely phased out by early January 2000. With the arrival of TV Guide Channel's yellow grid (referred to as "Hollywood" internally), all remaining vestiges of Prevue Channel had been eliminated: its Amiga-based hardware infrastructure

3040-503: A promotion for a channel that the cable provider carried – displaying that channel's logo and supplementary information on the opposing sides in the upper half). The satellite feed's national scheduling grid was never meant to be seen by cable subscribers. On occasion, however, when a cable system's local Prevue Guide software crashed , causing it to display the Amiga Guru Meditation error message, subscribers would be exposed to

3192-553: A rarity, found in an ever-dwindling number of markets. Analog television sets are accommodated, their tuners mostly obsolete and dependent entirely on the set-top box. Cable television is mostly available in North America , Europe , Australia , Asia and South America . Cable television has had little success in Africa , as it is not cost-effective to lay cables in sparsely populated areas. Multichannel multipoint distribution service ,

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3344-452: A receiver box. The cable company will provide set-top boxes based on the level of service a customer purchases, from basic set-top boxes with a standard-definition picture connected through the standard coaxial connection on the TV, to high-definition wireless digital video recorder (DVR) receivers connected via HDMI or component . Older analog television sets are cable ready and can receive

3496-421: A segment known as Prevue Weather ). These inserts were available to cable operators for an additional fee and appeared after each four-hour listings cycle. By the early 1990s, United Video began encouraging cable systems still using either the full- or split-screen versions of the Amiga 1000-based EPG Sr. to upgrade to the Amiga 2000-based Prevue Guide. Active support for the Amiga 1000-based EPG Sr. installations

3648-489: A select program airing that night), TV Guide Sportsview (which maintained the same format as Prevue Sports , making the segment more similar in format to the listings section's sports guide than the color column of that name in the magazine), and TV Guide Insider (a segment featuring behind-the-scenes interviews). On October 5, 1999, Gemstar International Group Ltd. purchased United Video Satellite Group. Finally, throughout December of that year on cable systems nationwide,

3800-422: A separate grid towards the end of the listings cycle. Following the announcement, Mediacom announced that it would be dropping the network; Time Warner Cable also dropped the network from its Texas systems. On July 1, 2010, TV Guide Network's scrolling grid was given an extensive facelift; the grid was shrunk to the bottom one-quarter of the screen, the channel listings were reduced from two lines to one (with

3952-732: A series of signal amplifiers and line extenders. These devices carry the signal to customers via passive RF devices called taps. The very first cable networks were operated locally, notably in 1936 by Rediffusion in London in the United Kingdom and the same year in Berlin in Germany, notably for the Olympic Games , and from 1948 onwards in the United States and Switzerland. This type of local cable network

4104-417: A special telephone interface at the customer's premises that converts the analog signals from the customer's in-home wiring into a digital signal, which is then sent on the local loop (replacing the analog last mile , or plain old telephone service (POTS) to the company's switching center, where it is connected to the public switched telephone network ( PSTN ). The biggest obstacle to cable telephone service

4256-401: A spin-off barker channel that was exclusively used to promote programming on a provider's pay-per-view services; it displayed full-screen promos (augmented by graphics displaying scheduling and ordering information) and a schedule of upcoming films and events airing on each pay-per-view channel based on either airtime or genre. The channel was also driven by Amiga 2000 hardware, and its software

4408-581: A thing of the past. The yellow grid also eliminated the optional red and light blue background colors that local cable operators were previously able to assign to various channels of their choices. In their place, universal, program genre-based background colors were introduced. Sporting events appeared with green backgrounds, and movies on all networks were given red backgrounds. Pay-per-view events additionally appeared with purple backgrounds. The light grey backgrounds which had formerly appeared in channel- and program genre-based summaries were also eliminated, with

4560-463: A time, returning to an idle state immediately afterward; this meant that any control sequences had to be only one character long, and thus a large number of codes needed to be reserved for such controls. They were typewriter-derived impact printers , and could only print a fixed set of glyphs, which were cast into a metal type element or elements; this also encouraged a minimum set of glyphs. Seven-bit ASCII improved over prior five- and six-bit codes. Of

4712-605: A type F connector . The cable company's portion of the wiring usually ends at a distribution box on the building exterior, and built-in cable wiring in the walls usually distributes the signal to jacks in different rooms to which televisions are connected. Multiple cables to different rooms are split off the incoming cable with a small device called a splitter . There are two standards for cable television; older analog cable, and newer digital cable which can carry data signals used by digital television receivers such as high-definition television (HDTV) equipment. All cable companies in

History of Pop (American TV channel) - Misplaced Pages Continue

4864-489: A video inlay of a local news station instead of banner ads, with its overall on-screen presentation otherwise matching that of Optimum's. Other cable providers that did not carry TV Guide Channel carried a similar television listings channel provided by entertainment and listings website Zap2It . DirecTV did not begin carrying the TV Guide Channel until 2004, and began carrying it in an entirely full-screen format (without

5016-508: Is a repertoire of character encodings that include (most of) the original 96 ASCII character set, plus up to 128 additional characters. There is no formal definition of "extended ASCII", and even use of the term is sometimes criticized, because it can be mistakenly interpreted to mean that the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) had updated its ANSI X3.4-1986 standard to include more characters, or that

5168-422: Is achieved over coaxial cable by using cable modems to convert the network data into a type of digital signal that can be transferred over coaxial cable. One problem with some cable systems is the older amplifiers placed along the cable routes are unidirectional thus in order to allow for uploading of data the customer would need to use an analog telephone modem to provide for the upstream connection. This limited

5320-514: Is barely large enough for US English use and lacks many glyphs common in typesetting , and far too small for universal use. Many more letters and symbols are desirable, useful, or required to directly represent letters of alphabets other than English, more kinds of punctuation and spacing, more mathematical operators and symbols (× ÷ ⋅ ≠ ≥ ≈ π etc.), some unique symbols used by some programming languages, ideograms , logograms , box-drawing characters, etc. The biggest problem for computer users around

5472-422: Is specified. The meaning of each extended code point can be different in every encoding. In order to correctly interpret and display text data (sequences of characters) that includes extended codes, hardware and software that reads or receives the text must use the specific extended ASCII encoding that applies to it. Applying the wrong encoding causes irrational substitution of many or all extended characters in

5624-533: Is still not enough to cover all purposes, all languages, or even all European languages, so the emergence of many proprietary and national ASCII-derived 8-bit character sets was inevitable. Translating between these sets ( transcoding ) is complex (especially if a character is not in both sets); and was often not done, producing mojibake (semi-readable resulting text, often users learned how to manually decode it). There were eventually attempts at cooperation or coordination by national and international standards bodies in

5776-551: Is that the 32 character positions 80 16 to 9F 16 , which correspond to the ASCII control characters with the high-order bit 'set', are reserved by ISO for control use and unused for printable characters (they are also reserved in Unicode ). This convention was almost universally ignored by other extended ASCII sets. Microsoft intended to use ISO 8859 standards in Windows, but soon replaced

5928-482: Is the need for nearly 100% reliable service for emergency calls. One of the standards available for digital cable telephony, PacketCable , seems to be the most promising and able to work with the quality of service (QOS) demands of traditional analog plain old telephone service (POTS) service. The biggest advantage to digital cable telephone service is similar to the advantage of digital cable, namely that data can be compressed, resulting in much less bandwidth used than

6080-603: Is used in the US for cable television and originally stood for community antenna television , from cable television's origins in 1948; in areas where over-the-air TV reception was limited by distance from transmitters or mountainous terrain, large community antennas were constructed, and cable was run from them to individual homes. In 1968, 6.4% of Americans had cable television. The number increased to 7.5% in 1978. By 1988, 52.8% of all households were using cable. The number further increased to 62.4% in 1994. To receive cable television at

6232-556: Is visually similar in its presentation to the channel's pre-2015 listings grid) as well as into digital video recorders like TiVo eliminated the need for a dedicated television listings channel by providing the same information in a speedier manner, and often in much more detail and with greater flexibility. Even so, the channels that were listed in the grid, long after many providers began offering digital cable service, were usually limited to those within their expanded basic tier, with only select channels on its digital service appearing in

History of Pop (American TV channel) - Misplaced Pages Continue

6384-505: The Amiga 1000 . Raw program listings data for national cable networks, as well as for regional and local broadcast stations , were fed en masse from a mainframe based in Tulsa , Oklahoma to each EPG installation via a 2400 baud data stream on an audio subcarrier of WGN by United Video (which was also the satellite distributor of the WGN national superstation feed). On some installations of

6536-488: The DVB-C , DVB-C2 stream to IP for distribution of TV over IP network in the home. Many cable companies offer internet access through DOCSIS . In the most common system, multiple television channels (as many as 500, although this varies depending on the provider's available channel capacity) are distributed to subscriber residences through a coaxial cable , which comes from a trunkline supported on utility poles originating at

6688-736: The Multinational Character Set , which had fewer characters but more letter and diacritic combinations. It was supported by the VT220 and later DEC computer terminals . This later became the basis for other character sets such as the Lotus International Character Set (LICS), ECMA-94 and ISO 8859-1 . In 1987, the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) published a set of standards for eight-bit ASCII extensions, ISO 8859. The most popular of these

6840-432: The backspace control between them) to produce accented letters. Users were not comfortable with any of these compromises and they were often poorly supported. When computers and peripherals standardized on eight-bit bytes in the 1970s, it became obvious that computers and software could handle text that uses 256-character sets at almost no additional cost in programming, and no additional cost for storage. (Assuming that

6992-611: The high band 7–13 of North American television frequencies . Some operators as in Cornwall, Ontario , used a dual distribution network with Channels 2–13 on each of the two cables. During the 1980s, United States regulations not unlike public, educational, and government access (PEG) created the beginning of cable-originated live television programming. As cable penetration increased, numerous cable-only TV stations were launched, many with their own news bureaus that could provide more immediate and more localized content than that provided by

7144-515: The " TV Guide Network ". According to its press release , the move was intended to reflect "the continued evolution of the Channel from primarily a utility service to a more fully-developed television guidance and entertainment network with a continued commitment to high quality programming." On May 2, 2008, Gemstar-TV Guide was acquired by Macrovision (now TiVo Corporation ) for $ 2.8 billion. Macrovision, which purchased Gemstar-TV Guide mostly to boost

7296-426: The "yellow grid" appeared shortly after the beginning of the TV Guide Channel era, when the Amiga platform was fully abandoned). To support Prevue Guide's new, satellite-delivered video and audio, each Amiga 2000 featured a UV Corp. UVGEN video/ genlock card for the satellite feed's video and a Zephyrus Electronics Ltd model 100 rev. C demodulator/switching ISA card for manipulating the feed's audio. Also included were

7448-542: The 1990s and 2000s, along with select 1980s series and films. In January 2012, upon Lionsgate's acquisition of film studio Summit Entertainment , it was announced that the channel was up for sale. That year, CBS Corporation considered buying the network. In March 2013, CBS and Lionsgate entered into a 50/50 joint venture to operate the network, to coincide with the former firm's intention to buy One Equity Partners' share of its other TV Guide interests. The deal, worth $ 100 million, closed on March 26, 2013. In January 2013, it

7600-504: The 1999 rebrand to TV Guide Channel, before moving it exclusively to the grids in 2004, where it remained after the magazine switched to national listings the following year). Rather than purchasing TV Guide Channel carriage rights, some services such as Optimum and Bright House Networks created their own scrolling listings grids, with Optimum's occasionally being interrupted by full-screen commercials, and otherwise featuring banner ads accompanied by music. Bright House's version featured

7752-699: The 2 =128 codes, 33 were used for controls, and 95 carefully selected printable characters (94 glyphs and one space), which include the English alphabet (uppercase and lowercase), digits, and 31 punctuation marks and symbols: all of the symbols on a standard US typewriter plus a few selected for programming tasks. Some popular peripherals only implemented a 64-printing-character subset: Teletype Model 33 could not transmit "a" through "z" or five less-common symbols ("`", "{", "|", "}", and "~"). and when they received such characters they instead printed "A" through "Z" (forced all caps ) and five other mostly-similar symbols ("@", "[", "\", "]", and "^"). The ASCII character set

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7904-507: The Amiga 2000's native video compositing capabilities. All video (and associated audio) content was provided live by Prevue Networks via a special analog C-band satellite backhaul feed from Tulsa. This feed contained a national satellite listings grid in the bottom half of its picture (strictly as a courtesy for the era's C-band dish owners), with the top half of its picture divided horizontally in two, both halves showing promos for unrelated telecasts on different networks (sound for each half

8056-698: The Beautiful soon also joined the TVGN lineup, along with eventual same-week repeats of Survivor and The Amazing Race , and repeats of CBS event programming such as the Grammy Awards . CBS Television Distribution 's syndicated newsmagazine Entertainment Tonight began to package and produce all of TVGN's red carpet coverage as a cable extension of that program, though the network's existing programming agreements with competing program/website PopSugar continue to be maintained. A high-definition simulcast feed of

8208-409: The EPG, a flashing dot next to the on-screen clock would indicate proper reception of this data. By cherry-picking data from this master feed for only the networks that its cable system actually carried, each EPG installation was able to generate a continuous visual display of program listings customized to its local cable system's unique channel lineup (data describing the unique channel lineup each EPG

8360-555: The IPG service. At the beginning of January 2009, the print edition of TV Guide quietly removed its listings for TV Guide Network (and several other broadcast and cable networks) over what the magazine's management described as "space concerns". In actuality, the two entities had been forced apart by their new, individual owners, with promotions for the network ending in the magazine, and vice versa. TV Guide magazine journalists also no longer appeared on TV Guide Network. The top-line "plug" for

8512-473: The Internet. Traditional cable television providers and traditional telecommunication companies increasingly compete in providing voice, video and data services to residences. The combination of television, telephone and Internet access is commonly called triple play , regardless of whether CATV or telcos offer it. More than 400,000 television service subscribers. Extended ASCII Extended ASCII

8664-538: The Prevue Guide software, this time to modernize its appearance. Still operating on the same Amiga 2000 hardware, the old grid's black background with white text separated by colored lines gave way to a new, embossed-looking navy blue grid featuring 90 minutes of scheduling information for each channel. Arrow symbols were added to listings for programs whose start or end times stretched beyond that timeframe, and for viewer convenience, local cable operators could now configure

8816-462: The Prevue Networks satellite feed entirely with up to nine minutes of local, video-based advertising per hour. Few cable systems utilized this feature, however, owing to the need to produce special versions of their local advertisements wherein, as with the satellite feed itself, all action occurred only within the top half of the video frame. Other features of Prevue Guide that were unavailable in

8968-475: The Stars alumnus (and former N*SYNC member) Joey Fatone during awards coverage. On July 29, 2009, TV Guide announced that Rinna and Fatone had been replaced by the hosts of the channel's entertainment news program Hollywood 411 , Chris Harrison (host of The Bachelor ) and Carrie Ann Inaba (who serves as a judge on Dancing with the Stars ). Also with the transition from Prevue Channel to TV Guide Channel,

9120-465: The TV Guide Channel, the network licensed production music (first at one-minute lengths, later at 15- and 30-second lengths) from several music libraries for use as interstitial music. The vast majority of these music tracks were licensed from the Killer Tracks and FirstCom production music libraries, both of which are subsidiaries of Universal Music Publishing Group . In 1996, the Prevue Channel logo

9272-786: The TV Guide channel era were decommissioned, possibly due to TVGN's obsolescence as a barker channel. On March 12, 2019, CBS acquired Lionsgate's 50% stake in Pop, thus making Pop a part of CBS Cable Networks. On December 4, 2019, CBS eventually merged with Viacom to create the combined company named ViacomCBS (now called Paramount Global ), which Pop now became a part of the latter's existing networks unit . On TV Guide Network until July 1, 2010, and currently in Gemstar-TV Guide's set top box-integrated EPG service TV Guide Interactive, program genres are indicated on-screen by color: On TVGN itself, during

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9424-485: The United States have switched to or are in the course of switching to digital cable television since it was first introduced in the late 1990s. Most cable companies require a set-top box ( cable converter box ) or a slot on one's TV set for conditional access module cards to view their cable channels, even on newer televisions with digital cable QAM tuners, because most digital cable channels are now encrypted, or scrambled , to reduce cable service theft . A cable from

9576-544: The WGN data stream to the Atari's 13 pin SIO port (the EPG Jr. software's EPROM was interfaced to the Atari's ROM cartridge port). By the late 1980s, a software upgrade "option" was offered by United Video for the Amiga 1000-based EPG Sr. This updated version featured a program listings grid identical in appearance to that of the original EPG Sr. version, but confined it to the lower half of

9728-494: The aforementioned red, green, and purple color-coding now applying to those summaries as well. Cable MSOs also gained the option to insert their logos alongside the TV Guide Channel logo at the beginning of every listings scroll. Other functions of the Amiga-based system, such as inserting messages within or after the listings scrolls and local weather forecasts, were carried over to the new system as well. Despite its elimination as

9880-404: The basic selection. By subscribing to additional tiers, customers could get specialty channels, movie channels, and foreign channels. Large cable companies used addressable descramblers to limit access to premium channels for customers not subscribing to higher tiers, however the above magazines often published workarounds for that technology as well. During the 1990s, the pressure to accommodate

10032-518: The bottom listings grid) in 2005. This was also the case with Dish Network , which aired the network in full-screen format to avoid duplication of its set top receiver-integrated IPG, also provided by Gemstar-TV Guide (another satellite provider, Primestar , had also carried the channel with the grid included, until it merged with DirecTV in 1999 shortly after the rebrand to TV Guide Channel). On April 30, 2007, Gemstar-TV Guide announced that beginning on June 4, 2007, TV Guide Channel would be rebranded as

10184-559: The branding for the cable channel, the Prevue brand continued to exist in Canada in the form of various Prevue Interactive services – most of which were simply rebranded versions of TV Guide Interactive products – as well as on the channel's pay-per-view barker service Sneak Prevue. A few years after Prevue Channel completed its transition to TV Guide Channel, the programming it featured changed drastically. Full-length shows were added, moving away from

10336-563: The cable box itself, these midband channels were used for early incarnations of pay TV , e.g. The Z Channel (Los Angeles) and HBO but transmitted in the clear i.e. not scrambled as standard TV sets of the period could not pick up the signal nor could the average consumer de-tune the normal stations to be able to receive it. Once tuners that could receive select mid-band and super-band channels began to be incorporated into standard television sets, broadcasters were forced to either install scrambling circuitry or move these signals further out of

10488-429: The cable company's local distribution facility, called the headend . Many channels can be transmitted through one coaxial cable by a technique called frequency division multiplexing . At the headend, each television channel is translated to a different frequency . By giving each channel a different frequency slot on the cable, the separate television signals do not interfere with each other. At an outdoor cable box on

10640-515: The cable to send data from the customer box to the cable headend, for advanced features such as requesting pay-per-view shows or movies, cable internet access , and cable telephone service . The downstream channels occupy a band of frequencies from approximately 50 MHz to 1 GHz, while the upstream channels occupy frequencies of 5 to 42 MHz. Subscribers pay with a monthly fee. Subscribers can choose from several levels of service, with premium packages including more channels but costing

10792-675: The case of no local CBS or ABC station being available – rebroadcast the programming from a nearby affiliate but fill in with its own news and other community programming to suit its own locale. Many live local programs with local interests were subsequently created all over the United States in most major television markets in the early 1980s. This evolved into today's many cable-only broadcasts of diverse programming, including cable-only produced television movies and miniseries . Cable specialty channels , starting with channels oriented to show movies and large sporting or performance events, diversified further, and narrowcasting became common. By

10944-416: The change, the non-scrolling grid (which was the same height as the restyled scrolling grid) continued to be used for primetime programming for a time. Later that month on July 24, TV Guide Network introduced a new non-scrolling grid used for primetime programming, which was later dropped with providers using the scrolling grid during the time period. On August 3, 2010, the scrolling grid was changed again, with

11096-512: The channel from their basic service (where it was carried at minimum on a "limited basic" programming tier, alongside local broadcast stations and public, educational, and government access channels) to their digital tiers. This also resulted in the phase-out of its use as a default Emergency Alert System conduit for transmitting warning information applicable to the provider's local service areas (some providers also previously used TV Guide Network's channel space for an alternate or overflow feed of

11248-400: The channel number now being placed to the right of the channel ID code), the color-coding for programs of specific genres (such as children's shows, movies and sports) was removed, synopses for films were dropped and much like with the featured included in the Amiga 2000-generated grid, a four-second pause for the grid's scrolling function was added after each listed row of four channels. Despite

11400-498: The chosen channel into the TV set on Channel 2, 3 or 4. Initially, UHF broadcast stations were at a disadvantage because the standard TV sets in use at the time were unable to receive their channels. With the passage of the All-Channel Receiver Act in 1964, all new television sets were required to include a UHF tuner, nonetheless, it would still take a few years for UHF stations to become competitive. Before being added to

11552-413: The company's large existing inventory of Zephyrus ISA demodulator cards, only their motherboards were used, in custom-designed cases with riser card and backplane modifications. During this era, the cable MSO-owned satellite service PrimeStar carried the Prevue Channel, since unlike rivals DirecTV and Dish Network, it did not have an interactive program guide built into their receivers. Originally using

11704-662: The day's games and tournaments), Prevue TV , Prevue News and Weather (featuring national and international news headlines, and local weather forecasts) and Prevue Revue . Each segment lasted only a couple of minutes, but were shown twice every hour in a wheel format akin to the format then-used by Headline News . During Prevue Sports segments listings would shift down, allowing more space for video content. On June 11, 1998, News Corporation sold TV Guide to Prevue Networks parent United Video Satellite Group for $ 800 million and 60 million shares of stock worth an additional $ 1.2 billion (this followed an earlier merger attempt between

11856-442: The decade, on February 9, 1998, Prevue Channel's look and programming was entirely revamped. Alongside a new graphical look from design firm Pittard Sullivan, new short-form "shows" were introduced to replace Prevue Tonight , FamilyVue and Intervue . These included Prevue This , Prevue Family (which like FamilyVue , focused on family-oriented programming), Prevue Sports (focusing on sports events and also included schedules for

12008-638: The decades. All modern operating systems use Unicode which supports thousands of characters. However, extended ASCII remains important in the history of computing , and supporting multiple extended ASCII character sets required software to be written in ways that made it much easier to support the UTF-8 encoding method later on. ASCII was designed in the 1960s for teleprinters and telegraphy , and some computing. Early teleprinters were electromechanical, having no microprocessor and just enough electromechanical memory to function. They fully processed one character at

12160-428: The display of video with accompanying sound in the top half of the screen, primarily promos for upcoming television shows, films and special events. These videos appeared in either the left or right halves of the top portion of the screen, coupled with supplementary information concerning the advertised program in the opposing halves (program title, channel, air date and time). Making the video integration possible were

12312-654: The earlier full- and split-screen EPG Sr. versions were colorized listings backgrounds and program-by-program channel summaries. Between its already colored grid lines, which alternated blue, green, yellow and red with each half-hour listings cycle, each cable operator could choose to enable either red or light blue (rather than black) background colors for multiple channels of their choice. These backgrounds were usually used to highlight premium channels and pay-per-view services. Additionally, program-by-program channel summaries with light grey backgrounds, for up to four channels of each cable operator's choice, could be included within

12464-482: The entertainment magazine TV Guide in 1998 (UVSG would in turn, be acquired by Gemstar the following year), the service was relaunched as TV Guide Channel (later TV Guide Network), which now featured full-length programs dealing with the entertainment industry, including news magazines and reality shows , along with red carpet coverage from major award shows. Following the acquisition of TV Guide Network by Lionsgate in 2009, its programming began to shift towards

12616-415: The fact that the descrambling circuitry was for a time present in these tuners, depriving the cable operator of much of their revenue, such cable-ready tuners are rarely used now – requiring a return to the set-top boxes used from the 1970s onward. The digital television transition in the United States has put all signals, broadcast and cable, into digital form, rendering analog cable television service

12768-447: The grid also occurred, and support was added for the display of locally inserted provider logos and graphical advertisements within it. Starting in 2004, light blue backgrounds began to appear on listings for children's programming, complementing the red, green and purple background colors already applied to listings for films, sporting events, and pay-per-view programming respectively. Because of Gemstar-TV Guide's dominant position within

12920-602: The grid's scrolling action to momentarily pause for up to four seconds after each screenful of listings. Additionally, local cable operators could enable light grey sports and movie summaries within the grid. Appearing between each listings cycle, these showed all films and sporting events airing on any channel during the next 90 minutes. The light grey program-by-program summaries for individual channels, red and light blue channel highlighting, and graphical "Prevue Weather" forecasts that were previously available to cable systems as optional grid features and inserts remained available in

13072-454: The growing array of offerings resulted in digital transmission that made more efficient use of the VHF signal capacity; fibre optics was common to carry signals into areas near the home, where coax could carry higher frequencies over the short remaining distance. Although for a time in the 1980s and 1990s, television receivers and VCRs were equipped to receive the mid-band and super-band channels. Due to

13224-450: The headend, the electrical signal is translated into an optical signal and sent through the fiber. The fiber trunkline goes to several distribution hubs , from which multiple fibers fan out to carry the signal to boxes called optical nodes in local communities. At the optical node, the optical signal is translated back into an electrical signal and carried by coaxial cable distribution lines on utility poles, from which cables branch out to

13376-456: The jack in the wall is attached to the input of the box, and an output cable from the box is attached to the television, usually the RF-IN or composite input on older TVs. Since the set-top box only decodes the single channel that is being watched, each television in the house requires a separate box. Some unencrypted channels, usually traditional over-the-air broadcast networks, can be displayed without

13528-437: The late 1980s, cable-only signals outnumbered broadcast signals on cable systems, some of which by this time had expanded beyond 35 channels. By the mid-1980s in Canada, cable operators were allowed by the regulators to enter into distribution contracts with cable networks on their own. By the 1990s, tiers became common, with customers able to subscribe to different tiers to obtain different selections of additional channels above

13680-576: The late 1990s, but manufacturer-proprietary sets remained the most popular by far, primarily because the international standards excluded characters popular in or peculiar to specific cultures. Various proprietary modifications and extensions of ASCII appeared on non- EBCDIC mainframe computers and minicomputers , especially in universities. Hewlett-Packard started to add European characters to their extended 7-bit / 8-bit ASCII character set HP Roman Extension around 1978/1979 for use with their workstations, terminals and printers. This later evolved into

13832-414: The lead-up to Halloween , horror movie titles featured spiderwebs in their schemes, and holiday movie titles listed during December were shaded in blue and snow-covered. Similar important shows and/or premieres have had other special graphical schemes added to their grid cells. Due to a restructuring of TV Guide Network's scrolling grid on July 1, 2010, that saw the grid being shrunk to the lower third of

13984-644: The listings grid, as well as in the supplementary scheduling information overlaid accompanying promo videos in the top half of the screen. During the mid-1990s, Prevue Networks also expanded beyond its Prevue Channel operation. In 1996, Prevue Networks introduced its first set top terminal-integrated digital IPG , Prevue Interactive, designed for the General Instruments DCT 1000. It was launched as part of Tele-Communications, Inc. (TCI)'s first digital cable service offerings. In 1997, Prevue Networks and United Video Satellite Group also launched Prevue Online,

14136-520: The lower 128 characters maintained their standard ASCII values, and different pages (or sets of characters) could be made available in the upper 128 characters. DOS computers built for the North American market, for example, used code page 437 , which included accented characters needed for French, German, and a few other European languages, as well as some graphical line-drawing characters. The larger character set made it possible to create documents in

14288-423: The maximum number of channels that could be broadcast in one city was 7: channels 2, 4, either 5 or 6, 7, 9, 11 and 13, as receivers at the time were unable to receive strong (local) signals on adjacent channels without distortion. (There were frequency gaps between 4 and 5, and between 6 and 7, which allowed both to be used in the same city). As equipment improved, all twelve channels could be utilized, except where

14440-429: The name even after the sister channel's rebrand to Pop in 2014. Cable television A cable channel (sometimes known as a cable network ) is a television network available via cable television. Many of the same channels are distributed through satellite television . Alternative terms include non-broadcast channel or programming service , the latter being mainly used in legal contexts. The abbreviation CATV

14592-420: The nature of the service's scrolling listings grid began to change. During broadcasts of the channel's original primetime series as well as during red carpet awards ceremony coverage, programming started appearing almost entirely full-screen, with a translucent, non-scrolling, two-line version of the channel's regular listings grid occupying only the extreme bottom of the frame. Semi-regular stylistic redesigns of

14744-448: The nearest network newscast. Such stations may use similar on-air branding as that used by the nearby broadcast network affiliate, but the fact that these stations do not broadcast over the air and are not regulated by the FCC, their call signs are meaningless. These stations evolved partially into today's over-the-air digital subchannels, where a main broadcast TV station e.g. NBC 37* would – in

14896-591: The network (broadcasting in the 1080i format) was also launched that year; it was added to various providers through the renewals of TVGN's existing carriage contracts. The high definition feed only carries the channel's entertainment programming, with no overlays or hardware used to provide listings information. The final agreements with providers which specified that the channel carries a listings scroll ended in June 2014. On September 18, 2014, CBS and Lionsgate announced that TVGN would be relaunched as Pop in early 2015, with

15048-613: The network began its life as a simple electronic program guide (EPG) software application sold to cable system operators throughout the United States and Canada . Known simply as the Electronic Program Guide , the software was designed to be run within the headend facility of each participating cable system on a single, custom-modified consumer-grade computer supplied by United Video. Its scrolling program listings grid, which cable system operators broadcast to subscribers on

15200-403: The network did, however, remain intact on the websites of internet-based listings providers using TV Guide's EPG listings. TV Guide Network's program listings returned to TV Guide magazine in June 2010, with its logo prominently placed within the grids. On January 5, 2009, Lionsgate announced its intent to purchase TV Guide Network and TV Guide Online for $ 255 million in cash. Lionsgate closed

15352-435: The network's announcer from 1989 to 1993), were also delivered via this satellite feed. For commercials, as well as overnight and early morning infomercials , the top half of the feed's video frame would be completely filled out, with local cable system Prevue Guide installations letting it show through in full in a pillarboxed anamorphic widescreen format (some direct response ads that were compartmentalized to one area of

15504-455: The network's carriage contracts require the display of the listings, and they were excluded entirely from its high-definition simulcast. In 2015, the network was rebranded as Pop. In March 2019, CBS acquired Lionsgate's 50% stake in the network; which in turn the network has been managed by ViacomCBS (now Paramount Global ) in December that year. Launched in 1981 by United Video Satellite Group,

15656-411: The network's programming without the grid; by late 2011, 75% of the systems carrying the channel were showing its programming full-screen. By January 2013, that number increased to 83%, and it was expected that by the following year, 90% of households will be viewing the network in full-screen mode, without the grid listings. Some cable systems that abandoned use of the grid on TV Guide Network began moving

15808-408: The old analog cable without a set-top box. To receive digital cable channels on an analog television set, even unencrypted ones, requires a different type of box, a digital television adapter supplied by the cable company or purchased by the subscriber. Another new distribution method that takes advantage of the low cost high quality DVB distribution to residential areas, uses TV gateways to convert

15960-418: The other promo (usually with text promoting the program's next airtime and cable channel). During periods where both of the satellite feed's simultaneous promos were for cable networks not carried by a local cable system, the local Prevue Guide software blocked out both, filling the entire top half of the screen with a local text or graphical advertisement instead (either an ad for a local or national business, or

16112-431: The pausing function being applied to each channel, and size of the listing rows returning to two lines (in some areas, the grid with remained three lines, thus cutting off half of the second listing). On October 17, 2010, the color of the scrolling grid was changed to black the listing rows reverting to one line (although some cable systems still used the previous grid as late as 2014). By May 2009, 35% of households carried

16264-504: The programming at the headend (the individual channels, which are distributed nationally, also have their own nationally oriented commercials). Modern cable systems are large, with a single network and headend often serving an entire metropolitan area . Most systems use hybrid fiber-coaxial (HFC) distribution; this means the trunklines that carry the signal from the headend to local neighborhoods are optical fiber to provide greater bandwidth and also extra capacity for future expansion. At

16416-451: The programming without cost. Later, the cable operators began to carry FM radio stations, and encouraged subscribers to connect their FM stereo sets to cable. Before stereo and bilingual TV sound became common, Pay-TV channel sound was added to the FM stereo cable line-ups. About this time, operators expanded beyond the 12-channel dial to use the midband and superband VHF channels adjacent to

16568-643: The provider's preference). Light grey backgrounds were additionally used for channel- and program genre-based listings summaries, when enabled by local cable operators. Beginning with the introduction of the yellow grid in 1999, all such coloring was discarded in favor of program genre-based coloring which affected all channels and summaries. Listings for movies featured red backgrounds, pay-per-view events bore purple backgrounds, and sporting events featured green backgrounds. Starting in 2004, light blue backgrounds were additionally applied to listings for children's programming. In 1991, Prevue Networks launched Sneak Prevue ,

16720-476: The range of reception for early cable-ready TVs and VCRs. However, once consumer sets had the ability to receive all 181 FCC allocated channels, premium broadcasters were left with no choice but to scramble. The descrambling circuitry was often published in electronics hobby magazines such as Popular Science and Popular Electronics allowing anybody with anything more than a rudimentary knowledge of broadcast electronics to be able to build their own and receive

16872-405: The raw satellite feed's dual promo windows and national satellite listings grid showing through from behind them) remained a frequent sight on many cable systems throughout the United States and Canada. While Prevue Networks' software engineers released regular patches to correct bugs, it simultaneously became clear that an entirely new hardware platform would soon be needed. New Amiga 2000 hardware

17024-513: The rebranding later announced to occur on January 14 of that year. with its focus shifting toward programming about pop culture fandom. The network would carry 400 hours of original programming following the rebrand, including a reality show starring New Kids on the Block and the Canadian co-production Schitt's Creek . Pop was made available on AT&T U-verse on March 1, 2016. On November 19, 2015, it

17176-562: The replaced characters, work-arounds were devised such as C three-character sequences "??<" and "??>" to represent "{" and "}". Languages with dissimilar basic alphabets could use transliteration, such as replacing all the Latin letters with the closest match Cyrillic letters (resulting in odd but somewhat readable text when English was printed in Cyrillic or vice versa). Schemes were also devised so that two letters could be overprinted (often with

17328-399: The same Amiga-based setup as cable headends used, by 1997 it had changed to Prevue Jr. , a Windows NT -based setup that lacked actual scrolling capabilities; by this time, five different Prevue variants were broadcast on PrimeStar to coincide with an expansion of PrimeStar's lineup. This setup remained in place until PrimeStar was acquired by DirecTV and shut down in 2000. Towards the end of

17480-456: The same manners as before. Closed captioning , MPAA movie rating and VCR Plus+ logos were additionally introduced by this version of the software, and unlike in prior versions, large graphical Prevue Guide logos appeared within its grid, between listings cycles. Cable operators also retained the option of inserting scroll ads into the grid, although typically these were for promotional or informational purposes (i.e. information on how to place

17632-406: The satellite feed's full video frame, letting them see not only the two disparate promos simultaneously running in its upper half, but perhaps more confusingly, the satellite transponder -oriented national listings grid in its lower half. Commercials – often for psychic hotlines – and featurettes produced by Prevue Networks, such as Prevue Tonight , that were voiced by Larry Hoefling (who served as

17784-529: The screen, grey began to be used as the color code for all programming with genre-based color-coding being relegated exclusively to the TV Guide Interactive IPG service. On the TVGN channel, in its various iterations, the following colors have been used for the listings grid: Between the late 1980s and 1999, local cable operators could configure listings for certain channels to appear with alternate background colors (either red or light blue, depending

17936-502: The screen. In this new split-screen configuration, which was the forerunner to Prevue Guide, the upper half of the screen displayed static or animated graphical advertisements and logos created locally by each cable system operator. Up to 64 such ads were supported by the software, which ranged from ads for local and national businesses to promotions for cable channels carried by the local system. Locally created text-based advertisements were still supported, however, they now also appeared in

18088-501: The scrolling grid. Appearing between each four-hour listings cycle, the names of channels (rather than times) would scroll up and slide into the grid's header bar one at a time (similar to the time bar that scrolled into the header at the start of each listings cycle), each followed by up to four hours worth of program-by-program listings for that channel alone. Prevue Guide could also display graphical weather icons, accompanied by local weather conditions, within its scrolling grid (as part of

18240-418: The signals are typically encrypted on modern digital cable systems, and the set-top box must be activated by an activation code sent by the cable company before it will function, which is only sent after the subscriber signs up. If the subscriber fails to pay their bill, the cable company can send a signal to deactivate the subscriber's box, preventing reception. There are also usually upstream channels on

18392-403: The subscriber's residence, the company's service drop cable is connected to cables distributing the signal to different rooms in the building. At each television, the subscriber's television or a set-top box provided by the cable company translates the desired channel back to its original frequency ( baseband ), and it is displayed onscreen. Due to widespread cable theft in earlier analog systems,

18544-413: The television listings market, listings for TV Guide Channel's own original programming began to appear on the topmost lines of most television listings websites to which the company provided listings data, regardless of which channel number any given cable system carried it on. This also became the case with the print version of TV Guide (which had first begun including the channel in its log listings upon

18696-653: The term identifies a single unambiguous encoding, neither of which is the case. The ISO standard ISO 8859 was the first international standard to formalise a (limited) expansion of the ASCII character set: of the many language variants it encoded, ISO 8859-1 ("ISO Latin 1") – which supports most Western European languages – is best known in the West. There are many other extended ASCII encodings (more than 220 DOS and Windows codepages ). EBCDIC ("the other" major character code) likewise developed many extended variants (more than 186 EBCDIC codepages) over

18848-433: The text. Software can use a fixed encoding selection, or it can select from a palette of encodings by defaulting, checking the computer's nation and language settings, reading a declaration in the text, analyzing the text , asking the user, letting the user select or override, and/or defaulting to last selection. When text is transferred between computers that use different operating systems, software, and encodings, applying

19000-462: The top half of the screen – support for showing them within the listings grid as scrolling ads, or beneath it as crawling banner ads, had been removed. Although most cable systems kept the original, full-screen EPG in operation well into the early 1990s, some systems with large numbers of subscribers opted for this upgraded version of EPG Sr. in order to exploit the revenue potential of its graphical local advertising capabilities. The Atari-based EPG Jr.

19152-568: The transaction on March 2, 2009. The following April, Lionsgate announced plans to revamp the network into a more entertainment-oriented channel, including plans to discontinue the bottom-screen scrolling program listings grid that has been a part of the channel since its inception in late 1981; this was partly because internet-based TV listings websites, mobile applications and the on-screen interactive program guides (IPGs) built directly into most modern cable and satellite set-top terminals (such as TV Guide's own IPG software, TV Guide Interactive, which

19304-457: The two companies in 1996 that eventually fell apart). At midnight on February 1, 1999, the Prevue Channel was officially renamed " TV Guide Channel ," and new graphics, again from Pittard Sullivan, were implemented. With the rebranding, the hourly segments featured on the channel were revamped, with some being retitled after features in TV Guide magazine – including TV Guide Close-Up (which profiled

19456-534: The typical model of showing television previews and other information. Starting in 2005, Joan Rivers and her daughter Melissa Rivers began providing coverage for televised awards ceremonies such as the Emmy Awards and the Academy Awards . In 2007, the mother-daughter duo were unceremoniously dropped by TV Guide Channel in favor of actress/host Lisa Rinna . Later, in 2007, Rinna was joined by fellow Dancing with

19608-438: The underlying Atari and Amiga platforms. Because neither version of the EPG software was capable of silent remote administration for its locally customizable features, cable company employees were required to visit their headend facilities in order to make all necessary adjustments to the software in person. Consequently, EPG channel viewers would often see its otherwise continuous listings interrupted without warning each time

19760-581: The unused 8th bit of each byte was not reused in some way, such as error checking, Boolean fields, or packing 8 characters into 7 bytes.) This would allow ASCII to be used unchanged and provide 128 more characters. Many manufacturers devised 8-bit character sets consisting of ASCII plus up to 128 of the unused codes: encodings which covered all the more used Western European (and Latin American) languages, such as Danish, Dutch, French, German, Portuguese, Spanish, Swedish and more could be made. 128 additional characters

19912-420: The unused C1 control characters with additional characters, making the proprietary Windows-1252 character set, which is sometimes mislabeled as ANSI . The added characters included "curly" quotation marks and other typographical elements like em dash , the euro sign , and letters missing from French and Finnish. This became the most-used extended ASCII in the world, and often is used on the web even when 8859-1

20064-532: The upstream speed to 31.2 Kbp/s and prevented the always-on convenience broadband internet typically provides. Many large cable systems have upgraded or are upgrading their equipment to allow for bi-directional signals, thus allowing for greater upload speed and always-on convenience, though these upgrades are expensive. In North America , Australia and Europe , many cable operators have already introduced cable telephone service, which operates just like existing fixed line operators. This service involves installing

20216-426: The value of its lucrative VCR Plus+ and electronic program guide patents , later stated that it was considering a sale of both TV Guide Network and the TV Guide print edition's namesake to other parties. On December 18 of that year, Macrovision announced that it had found a willing party for TV Guide Network in private equity firm One Equity Partners . The transaction included tvguide.com, with Macrovision retaining

20368-481: The video frame featured contact information in the opposing feed that was blocked out, in addition to that provided in the advertisement). The satellite feed also carried a third audio channel containing Prevue Guide theme music in an infinite loop. Local Prevue Guide installations would switch to this audio source during the display of local top-screen advertising, and when they crashed. Prevue Guide could additionally signal cable system video playback equipment to override

20520-601: The weeks prior to the Emmys, shows that have been nominated were also highlighted in gold. The same gold highlighting could be seen during the lead-up to the Academy Awards to denote past Oscar-winning movies. Titles for other special programs used various types of graphical treatment within the grid cells; for example, programs aired as part of the Discovery Channel 's Shark Week event had a bubbly water graphical scheme; during

20672-548: The widely used regular 8-bit character sets HP Roman-8 and HP Roman-9 (as well as a number of variants). Atari and Commodore home computers added many graphic symbols to their non-standard ASCII (Respectively, ATASCII and PETSCII , based on the original ASCII standard of 1963). The TRS-80 character set for the TRS-80 home computer added 64 semigraphics characters (0x80 through 0xBF) that implemented low-resolution block graphics. (Each block-graphic character displayed as

20824-711: The world was other alphabets. ASCII's English alphabet almost accommodates European languages, if accented letters are replaced by non-accented letters or two-character approximations such as ss for ß . Modified variants of 7-bit ASCII appeared promptly, trading some lesser-used symbols for highly desired symbols or letters, such as replacing "#" with "£" on UK Teletypes, "\" with "¥" in Japan or "₩" in Korea, etc. At least 29 variant sets resulted. 12 code points were modified by at least one modified set, leaving only 82 "invariant" codes . Programming languages however had assigned meaning to many of

20976-477: The wrong encoding can be commonplace. Because the full English alphabet and the most-used characters in English are included in the seven-bit code points of ASCII, which are common to all encodings (even most proprietary encodings), English-language text is less damaged by interpreting it with the wrong encoding, but text in other languages can display as mojibake (complete nonsense). Because many Internet standards use ISO 8859-1, and because Microsoft Windows (using

21128-554: Was ISO 8859-1 (also called "ISO Latin 1") which contains characters sufficient for the most common Western European languages. Other standards in the 8859 group included ISO 8859-2 for Eastern European languages using the Latin script and ISO 8859-5 for languages using the Cyrillic script , and others. One notable way in which the ISO standards differ from some vendor-specific extended ASCII

21280-527: Was announced that Impact Wrestling , the flagship show of what was then known as TNA Wrestling , would move from Destination America to Pop beginning January 5, 2016. That series departed Pop at the start of 2019 for the Pursuit Channel after Pop declined to continue airing it. In 2015, as part of Pop's transition from a barker channel to a pay TV channel, the purpose-built, Windows NT/2000 PCs employing custom-designed graphics/sound expansion cards from

21432-535: Was announced that TV Guide Network would be renamed TVGN . The name change and new logo, which de-emphasizes the channel's ties to TV Guide magazine took effect on April 15, 2013. The immediate effect of the purchase by CBS saw the summer series Big Brother: After Dark move from Showtime 2 to TVGN, along with same-day repeats of The Young and the Restless moving to the network from Soapnet , which ceased operations in December 2013. Fellow CBS soap The Bold and

21584-528: Was as crash-prone as the Prevue Guide software itself. TV Guide Network ceased operations of Sneak Prevue in 2002. TV Guide Network (Latin America) launched in 1995 as Prevue (Latin America) , providing schedules for Spanish-language channels in the United States. On February 1, 1999, the channel was rebranded as TV Guide El Canal . In 2004, TV Guide El Canal rebranded to TV Guide Channel (Latino) . In 2009, TV Guide Channel became TV Guide Network , which retained

21736-402: Was decommissioned, and purpose-built, Windows NT/2000 PCs employing custom-designed graphics/sound expansion cards were installed. With this new infrastructure additionally came the ability for local cable companies to perform silent remote administration of all their installations' locally customizable features, making live, on-screen guide maintenance interruptions by cable system technicians

21888-407: Was discontinued in 1993. Like the Amiga 1000-based EPG Sr., Prevue Guide also ran from bootable 3½" diskettes, and its locally customizable features remained configurable only from the local keyboard, subjecting viewers to the same on-screen maintenance-related interruptions by local cable company employees as before (silent remote administration of locally customizable features would not be added until

22040-455: Was given a new eye-like design, and two years later, the classic Dodger -style typeface its logo had incorporated since 1988 was replaced with an italicized lower-case Univers , though Sneak Prevue continued to use the original logo font until it shut down in 2002. In 1997, Prevue Channel became the first electronic program guide to show formalized TV ratings symbols for Canada and the United States, which appeared alongside program titles within

22192-427: Was limited, meaning frequencies over 250 MHz were difficult to transmit to distant portions of the coaxial network, and UHF channels could not be used at all. To expand beyond 12 channels, non-standard midband channels had to be used, located between the FM band and Channel 7, or superband beyond Channel 13 up to about 300 MHz; these channels initially were only accessible using separate tuner boxes that sent

22344-559: Was mainly used to relay terrestrial channels in geographical areas poorly served by terrestrial television signals. Cable television began in the United States as a commercial business in 1950s. The early systems simply received weak ( broadcast ) channels, amplified them, and sent them over unshielded wires to the subscribers, limited to a community or to adjacent communities. The receiving antenna would be taller than any individual subscriber could afford, thus bringing in stronger signals; in hilly or mountainous terrain it would be placed at

22496-496: Was never afforded this split-screen upgrade and fell out of favor during the late 1980s as cable systems migrated to the full- or split-screen Amiga 1000-based EPG Sr., and later to the Amiga 2000-based Prevue Guide. However, the EPG Jr. remained in service as late as 2005 on a few small cable systems, as well as on a number of private cable systems operated by various hotel chains and certain housing and apartment complexes. On April 1, 1988, United Video Holdings' Trakker, Inc. unit

22648-461: Was no longer being manufactured due to its manufacturer Commodore filing for bankruptcy in 1994, and Prevue Networks began resorting to cannibalizing parts from second-hand dealers of used Amiga hardware in order to continue supplying and maintaining operational units. During periods where Amiga 2000 hardware availability proved insufficient, newer models such as the Amiga 3000 were used instead. However, as those models' stock cases would not accept

22800-518: Was provided in monoaural on the feed's respective left and right audio channels). Within each cable system's headend facility, meanwhile, the Amiga 2000-powered Prevue Guide software overlaid the bottom half of the satellite feed's video frame with its own, locally generated listings grid. It also continuously chose which of the two simultaneously available promos in the top half of the satellite feed's picture to let local cable subscribers see, patching its audio through to them while visually blocking out

22952-530: Was renamed Prevue Networks, Inc. The split-screen version of the EPG Sr. software was further updated and renamed " Prevue Guide ". Prevue Guide launched on Tulsa Cable Television channel 13, which replaced a 24/7 weather teletext channel with KIH27 simulcast. Now running on the Amiga 2000 , it displayed a split-screen listings grid visually identical to the upgraded EPG Sr.'s, but also supported – along with up to 128 locally inserted top-screen graphical advertisements –

23104-460: Was to display also arrived via this master feed). Both the EPG Jr. and EPG Sr. allowed cable operators to further customize their operation locally. Among other functions, the listings grid's scrolling speed could be changed and local text-based advertisements could be inserted. Each text-based advertisement could be configured to display as either a "scroll ad" (appearing within the vertically scrolling listings grid between its half-hour cycles) or as

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