[jtudor]

If a station makes a change to it's programming, when or how often does the guide update?

One of my local stations has been promoting a local program that will run this Friday 1/27 at 8 pm. It is a series called Carolina Camera that they produce and run every month or two.

I have scheduled my DVR to record the series and it normally does without a problem.

Because I was cleaning up my to do list from series which have ended, I just happened to notice a few days ago that this program is not scheduled to record on Friday. It is not listed in the Guide, the regular CBS program is listed instead.

I emailed the station about this because the program guide on thier website (From titan tv) was also not correct. They have fixed the Guide on theri website, but the DTV guide has not been corrected yet.

I know I can set it to record manually, but if I hadn't been cleaning up my list I would not have known in advance of the error.

Anyway, if they send the information in to whomever they send schedule information to, will the DTV guide update, and how long should it take for hte updated information to show up?

 

[dpeters11]

Once Tribune makes the updates, things generally get updated pretty quickly. It's not a once a day type of thing.

 

[Richierich]

Anyway, if they send the information in to whomever they send schedule information to, will the DTV guide update, and how long should it take for hte updated information to show up?

The station sends their Guide Data to Zap2It which is Owned by the Tribune Services and Zap2It Updates their Database and then sends it to Directv so it shouldn't take more than a couple of days for Directv to reflect the Updated Changes.

 

[ThomasM]

If you are really nosy how often the guide data is updated, reset your receiver TWICE within 30 minutes. This will completely flush the guide cache stored on the hard drive.

After the unit restarts, you will have 4-6 hours of guide data but with abbreviated show descriptions/information. This data is sent out at high speed so customers just activating their receiver will have some guide data. It is only stored by the receiver during the reset process while "receiving data from satellite" is shown to the viewer. Once the receiver is back online, it tunes in a slow speed data stream sending out guide data.

As the slow speed guide data updates the various memory "slots", additional shows will be listed. If you park the guide just after the initial shows are downloaded, you will actually see the shows and info pop into existence right before your eyes! In addition, shows airing in real time will acquire complete show description info as this is transmitted in the "slow" data stream.

This info is always being transmitted. If the show listing and description is already there, it is written over. The farther out (towards 14 days) you go, the less often the data is resent which is why it takes 24-48 hrs for ALL the data to be sent at least once.

Program guide info is put online by DirecTV in 24 hour blocks beginning at 0 hours GMT. This is currently 7PM ET, 6PM CT, 5PM MT and 4PM PT. If you check your guide to see the last day of information (usually about 12-13 days out), it will end at the time listed above. Past that time, all slots will say "to be announced". Interestingly enough, DirecTV does not add new guide data over the weekend (probably because the employees that do this are off). As a result, you will not see any new guide data "days" added until Monday when three days of new data is suddenly added to the end of the guide.

When a channel makes schedule changes and submits the change to Tribune Media Services, the info is passed on to DirecTV which places the new info in the data stream. Once this occurs, the new data is displayed very rapidly.

Unfortunately, sometimes the data is never updated. Many times I have seen a blurb on my local station advising me to tune in to a local special that evening but the guide data never reflects the change.

 

[Xsabresx]

Unless it is Nickelodeon. They send guide info and then a few hours later they spin a wheel and wherever it lands is what they show. Might match the guide but chances are it wont.

 

[ThomasM]

Unless it is Nickelodeon. They send guide info and then a few hours later they spin a wheel and wherever it lands is what they show. Might match the guide but chances are it wont.

That's what "manual record" was invented for!! Of course, you don't know what you are going to get but you know what time it was on...

 

[Richierich]

Thanks ThomasM for that Great Post and that Wonderful Information.

 

[Stuart Sweet]

I've seen guide data updates within 15 minutes. And sometimes, I've seen it where it doesn't update for several hours.

 

[TDK1044]

Once, just for fun, I called D* and asked the CSR to explain to me the process that the Guide uses in order to update. This resulted in one of the funniest times of my life.

I ended up saying to her "so the chalice with the palace is the brew that is true"....at which point she stated "That's correct, Sir"

 

[ThomasM]

I've seen guide data updates within 15 minutes. And sometimes, I've seen it where it doesn't update for several hours.

As I said, it all depends on:

1. When DirecTV places the updated information into the slow speed guide data stream.

2. Where the particular timeslot is in the guide data stream "queue". The farther in the future the change is, the less often that information is transmitted in the data stream.

It's pretty clever how the whole thing works.

Years ago I was involved with an add-on device called VideoGuide which was a set top box that just provided an interactive program guide to over the air and cable subscribers which was very similar to the present DirecTV guide. It automatically changed the channel and started a VCR via IR commands when a customer flagged a show to be recorded. The thing got it's guide data over the air from a radio paging system (remember BEEPERS?) overnight when few people were "paged". I was the technical manager of the paging system that sent out the guide data so I became quite knowledgeable in program guide information transmission since there were plenty of technical issues needing fixing.

When interactive program guides were offered by satellite and cable companies, VideoGuide went out of business but to this day I'm still an interactive program guide "junkie".

 

[jtudor]

Thanks for all the helpful information. I don't know if my local station ever transmitted the change, they did get it changed on thier own website, but the DTV guide never changed. I did a manual record of the show, but I would bet a lot of folks missed it because they never noticed it was not in the guide and so their series record would have failed.