[cwoody222]

Well...there's another screen shot in the Best Buy ad today. It looks a little clearer in person.


Here's what you can see:

At the top there are "tabs" for: Channel Guide, Find Shows, Replay Guide and Manual Record.


The Channel Guide looks just like the onscreen guide. The choices in the "pop up" menu of shows is:

Description

Record this show

Record all episodes

Exit


One thing I noticed...it shows what's on TV RIGHT NOW. Um...what good is it going to be to program for those shows via the web?


Some other things got me thinkin':


I'm ASSUMING that their Channel Guide info will be UP TO DATE - ie: moreso than the often-not-updated ReplayTV onscreen guide. Therefore: what will happen when changes to schedules allow you to program two things at the same time.


Ie: tonight my RelayTV shows World Series on Fox. It's wrong. But say I have anoter recording set up at that time. Will MyReplayTV.com have the correct lineup for Fox? What if I select to record a show there that conflicts w/ the other show?


Seems to me without the two listings being 100% completely in tune all the time, confusion is bound to arise.


And what about - say MyReplayTV "downloads" my Simpons 8pm Fox recording onto my box. But...the box's Channel Guide still shows World Series.


I'll have a guaranteed recording for a show that is on but that the Replay box can't find in it's listings. Will it try to record or just ignore it? Even if it tries to record it'll be funny that Replay will record but won't be able to find it on a "Find All Episodes". Will I therefore be able to set up a conflicting recording? (since there won't be conflicts according to the Channel Guide)


Don't get me wrong...I'm still thrilled to see this feature...just interested how things like this might be handled...

 

[FreezeFrame]

If one assumed the web data was more accurate(well at least more timely), then one could send down a "schedule patch" if a new recording required it. Sounds like the ChannelGuide schedule is not currently "patched" in this manner. Is it true that a Days worth of ChannelGuide, once downloaded, is not modified ever? Even if there are changes known on the server end?


Perhaps another way to accomplish the same thing is to do it on the web end of things. Presumably the web site could find out if a show has changed and is different between the web and the downloaded ChannelGuide. Then mark the show in the web ChannelGuide, to indicate this fact. Either don't allow show based records and/or suggest VCR style records instead.


Well this doesn't completely solve these types of problems, but it would further limit the possibility. It seems that someone at home can always mess up your network based recording requests. Then again perhaps those could be turned off so that the only recording is done via the network. Hmm, that could be useful in some contexts...


[This message has been edited by FreezeFrame (edited 10-30-2000).]