Guide+ in Ireland ?

dealgan

Hi Folks,
Am looking at a philips hdrw720 dvd/hdd recorder. One big feature is the guide+, but on guideplus it doesnt list Ireland but does mention that UK bskyb customers can use eurosport channel to get the guide+ info.

Anyone know if this works with sky Ireland or not ?
If it does, can anyone recommend a good dvd/hdd recorder that uses it ?

Thanks,
Declan

kenmc

AFAIK the Philips HDRW720 is the only one of the Philips (and possibly all makes) that uses Guide plus. On my NTL I can get BBC1 and 2, CH4 and UTV, by telling it that I live in Belfast. I think it comes in on CH4 or UTV, can't remember which.
I believe that you should be able to convince it that you are in the UK, and get your guide+ info from eurosport, but am not 100% sure.
Tis a superb thing, totally revolutionizes the way you watch TV. When I go to someone elses house I automatically look to pause tv while I get coffee, or to rewind a bit I missed. And the guide makes it great to see whats on other channels and to record stuff in advance.

dealgan

The guide+ sounds like a great thing, but I;ve read soemwhere (cant remember where) that there are problmes/issues getting the guide+ info on satellite ?

Mabye thats the freeview they are talking about ?

Any ideas ?

kenmc

the guide+ info could well be stripped out when passing through the scart from the satellite. I know it comes in through teletext, but is secret data in the teletext, so it doesn't interfer with regular TT. it may get stripped out as rubbish by the sat decoder, and not passed through. i'd say the gemstar board strips the data straight out of the RF, can't do that if it's on scart.
K

Kane

I bought the Sharp DV-HR400H recently from PowerCity (€350) which also has the Guide Plus+ system. I can confirm that the Guide Plus EPG can work in Ireland - although it is not perfect.

http://www.powercity.ie/test.asp?par=10-17-R400H

I have NTL Digital with the normal NTL Terrestial also. The EPG works on virtually all the terrestial and digital channels except TV3, TG4 and a few of the "+1" channels.

In order to get it working for me I set Guide Plus+ up as follows:
1) Say you live in Northern Ireland (put in a northern post code)
2) Input #1 is NTL Digital (I said I had NTL cable from Langley). This allows the DVD Recorder to switch channels on the NTL box.
3) Input #2 is Sky Digital (from Northern Ireland). This puts RTE1+2 on the Program Guide - even though I don't have a Sky box!!

As with a normal video recorder with NTL digital, if you are taping a Digital Channel (e.g. BBC3) you can only watch terrestial channels.

Not as good as Sky+, but still a really good purchase.

Satfinder

I've got Guideplus to work with a Philips DVDR5350H HDD recorder and a free-to-air satellite TV receiver (it should also work with a Sky box). It's a bit fiddly to set up (unlike Sky+) and only covers a subset of the channels in the Sky EPG, but does not require a Sky+ subscription. The Guideplus pages show little ads for this and that on the left hand side of the screen, which is presumably how the service is funded.

How to get it up and running:

1) Tune in British Eurosport on your set top box.
2) Check that you can receive teletext on the above (the guideplus data is buried in the teletext stream from Eurosport).

Note that you don't have to be able to see the _picture_ from Eurosport so it doesn't matter if it's not part of your Sky subscription.

3) Connect the STB to your HDD recorder using a SCART cable (but you've already done this, right?)

(If the procedure here fails, and your set-top box has a second SCART socket [one for TV, one for VCR], try again plugging in to the second socket)

4) Go to the Guideplus setup page on your HDDR.

5) Tell it you are in the UK - it's too dumb to know you are lying.

6) Give it a Northern Ireland postcode - I used BT7 1NN.

7) Tell it you're a satellite customer.

8) Tell it the name of your STB (your mileage with this may vary - I had to lie and tell it I had an STB from another manufacturer to get this to work). It then tries to do a channel change on your STB by faking the signals from the STB remote control.

Get past this step ok and you're in business.

9) When you finish the setup procedure, put the HDDR in standby for a few hours (the guideplus documentation suggests this has to be overnight but it seems to work at any time), with the sat receiver tuned to Eurosport.

When you power up again, you'll have the EPG. The last step is to tell it which channels on your STB corresponds to which channels in the Guideplus EPG. I think this is not needed on a Sky box, because the EPG seems to copy Sky's channel numbering.

It took me a few passes at the above before it worked right, and you have to remember to leave the HDDR in standby and the STB tuned to Eurosport for a few hours every so often (I'm not sure how often just yet). And you have to make sure that the channel change thingamijig (sorry about the technical jargon) is positioned in front of the remote control sensor on your STB or else it'll cheerfully record the wrong channel for you on the timer.

If you set up timed recordings using Videoplus numbers, the system is smart enough to read the name of the programme from the EPG, so getting it to work is worth the effort even if you never use Guideplus as such.

And (at least with my model of HDDR), Videoplus will not change channels on your STB for you unless you at least _try_ to set up Guideplus.

I'd be curious to know whether anyone with cable or MMDS can read the EPG data from Eurosport. No reason I can think of that this shouldn't work, since the service provider is probably pulling the signal off satellite in the first place. It probably WON'T work with UTV over cable for a related reason - the ITV teletext signal presumably doesn't include Guideplus data over satellite (else why tell us to use Eurosport?) and the cable operator is most likely snagging the satellite signal rather than the terrestrial one.

Is anyone getting it via ITV/UTV?

I'd imagine the above or something similar should work with any recorder (not just the DVDR5350H) that features Guideplus.

Conclusion: if you are shopping for a HDD recorder and have Sky OR a free-to-air satellite receiver with a dish pointed at 28 degrees E (i.e., where all the Sky dishes are pointed), add Guide+ to your shopping list of features. It's not perfect but it's a lot better than no EPG, and is a viable alternative to Sky+.

Denethor

Has anyone managed to get a Technomate Satellite Receiver working with Guide Plus+? Not listed on the Guide plus website

ireland1italy0

Hoping to resurrect this, but is it possible to get this working on pure and simple basic old fashioned ntl/upc analogue cable? Assuming not, as I can't figure out just how....

genie

Just want to say many thanks to the posters on this thread for helping me. I bought a Sony DVD Recorder and the manual might as well have been in Swahili for all I could follow in it!

Just one question; if I put in a London post code instead of the Northern Ireland one, will that mean I get BBC1 and 2 London and ITV1 England instead of the NI variants?

Thanks a million!

lahinch9

Anyone have any idea if you cant recieve text on eurosport ? tried several time to get this going on Eurosport CH 410


Cheers

byte

Does standard text work on any other channel (try one of the RTÉ channels for Aertel)

If not, then you'll need to unlug your box from electricity for a moment, and plug it back in. I assume it's a Skybox you have; this problem does occasionally happen with Skyboxes, where they decide to totally ignore teletext streams.

lahinch9

Yes, Text works for channels that i can see for instance ITV (CH103). Tried a cold reboot of the SKY box but it doesent seem to pull text, the mesage on screen is "to subscribe toEurosport UK ......." whe i select text, it asks me to press tv first then press text on sky remote, when i do this it says no text available..


Any thoughts, about to give up !

lahinch9

Funny thing happened, ity just started recieving the guideplus yesterday. I have no idea what I did differently, fingers crossed it will keep going without further tinkering. I have to to say the guide is really handy and takes the effort out of recording.

Thanks for the help and guidance (Pun intented!)

banchang

Sorry to resurrect, but need help.

I had been using eurosport ch 423 on UPC digital successfully to get Guideplus+ EPG up to about 2 months ago, but I cant seem to get it now.

I have Sony HXD970 DVR, & the setup appears to be correct, & it goes to fetch the EPG at night, but the listings are not coming through. I have tried ITV & eurosport 2 also without success.

Any ideas ?

genie

I use Eurosport UK which is Channel 410 on Sky.

07Lapierre

banchang wrote: »

Sorry to resurrect, but need help.

I had been using eurosport ch 423 on UPC digital successfully to get Guideplus+ EPG up to about 2 months ago, but I cant seem to get it now.

I have Sony HXD970 DVR, & the setup appears to be correct, & it goes to fetch the EPG at night, but the listings are not coming through. I have tried ITV & eurosport 2 also without success.

Any ideas ?

Same here! Everything was working fine up to a few weeks ago. Then it just stopped recevieng any info. I checked the settings and its as if Eurosport (channel 423 on NTL) is no longer sending the data.

No info on the quideplus website either...:rolleyes:

Paul Kiernan

genie wrote: »

I use Eurosport UK which is Channel 410 on Sky.

Does this still work for you? I was using this on my Sony HXD870 but it stopped working a long time ago. I didn't have a subscription to Eurosport but it used to still pick up the listings - then it suddenly stopped:(.

genie

Paul Kiernan wrote: »

Does this still work for you? I was using this on my Sony HXD870 but it stopped working a long time ago. I didn't have a subscription to Eurosport but it used to still pick up the listings - then it suddenly stopped:(.

Yes, it does. I'm using an ordinary Sky box to receive free to air channels so I don't have a subscription to Eurosport either. It updates around 4am and 2:30pm. There was a thread on Digital Spy a while back, maybe you could have a look there. Sorry, I can't be of more help.

kelsca

Paul Kiernan wrote: »

Does this still work for you? I was using this on my Sony HXD870 but it stopped working a long time ago. I didn't have a subscription to Eurosport but it used to still pick up the listings - then it suddenly stopped:(.

I use Guide plus on sky box-no sub- eurosport 410
I also have a HXD870
I have noticed from time to time it stops downloading epg info.
The solution that works for me is to unplug the sky box for a few hours
and then when I reconnect it all works again for a few weeks.

ednwireland

i have apioneer hdd recorder which picks up guid+i noticed the sky box just needs rebooting every time it stops picking up listings then it works again