On Thursday, August 24, 2017 at 9:35:10 PM UTC-4, wrote:
On Fri, 25 Aug 2017 00:50:12 +0100, "James Wilkinson Sword"
wrote:

Er no. It comes through the same signal as your TV programs. Satellite or aerial. What kind of antiquated **** do you have over there? In the UK we even had it through satellite in the early 90s, before digital was invented!

There is a program guide channel but it is not stored and accessible
to the DVR timer. There were simply too many formats for the
manufactures to support that.
It is clear you never had an unbundled DVR like the replay, which
predated the ones you get from cable/sat companies for over a decade,
The replay was really the best but it was so good it got sued out of
existence. There were things like automatic commercial skip and
internet show sharing that really ****ed of the broadcasters.

Your country is a piece of ****. In the UK, Sky TV has an EPG through the satellite. Freeview/Freesat has it through the aerial/satellite. The only reason for connecting through the phoneline is to upload viewing data, which sensible people prevent, as it's spying on us.


Having a guide channel is not very useful for a DVR if it
is not updating the software.
Bear in mind, the old DVR we were talking about was not bundled with
any other service. Cable and Satellite companies did not have them in
1999. (on either side of the Atlantic)

+1

Absolutely correct. And it's still the case today. I have a Tivo,
it requires an internet connection to download the program schedules
that it uses. Previous generations, going back to the 90s used the
phone line for the same purpose. It would make a call every night
to download the latest schedules. Like you say, back then, the cable
company did not offer a DVR. And now that they do, I'm still saving
$13 a month by using a Tivo and the Tivo DVR is far superior to what
the cable company offers.