VCR Getting titles from Reciever?

[MrAkai]

Okay, here's the deal, most of my HT setup consists of older hi-end gear that I've built up through the years (like my JCS S-VHS decks/etc) so when it comes to VCR technology, the last one I bought was in about 1995 :)

Anyways, my girlfriends 10 year old VHS deck finally gave up the ghost and we replaced it with a new $100 sony from best buy.

I was using it to run something she had on her 501 to tape the other day and noticed that when I hit "record" the on-screen display showed the channel name in the upper-right corner and the show title across the middle of the screen.

Is this some new thing I have missed because I haven't had to replace my decks in so long? Is it provided by the program provider or the Dish reciever?

Thanks
-s

[Tomsoundman]

Common feature on Sony's I believe, kinda like closed captioning information. Don't know much about it, my Toshiba has it and picks up OTA stuff on program name and channel but have never tried it on Dish. Was annoying so I turned off feature.

Anyone else care to explain better?

[dishrich]

XDS (which I believe is Extended Data Service) has been around for several years now, but hasn't been used much. The feature started popping up on TV's, (& now on VCR's more) but isn't advertised much. It is basically the same type of prog info you would get off a program guide, which pops up on your screen when you are tuned to that specific program. The info is sent in the VBI along the same place where captioning is sent. This came out before prog guides (like the Gemstar free guide, Starsight, etc) became popular. And NOT all programmers supply prog info for this system, so it has not had much support from day 1, nor did all TV makers embrace it either.

With guides available from digital cable, DBS, Gemstar, etc, it's pretty much is not being used much at all.

[Tomsoundman]

Follow up:

It does work on my Dish stuff, but like dishrich said, "With guides available from digital cable, DBS, Gemstar, etc, it's pretty much is not being used much at all."