I have two RCA TVs, for years, with Guide Plus. About two weeks ago,
the Guide Plus on the 25" started to act flaky, not showing program
detail. I went through the "99999" reset deal, etc. Then we had a
black out for about 2 hours. Battery backups faded away.

After that the 27" TV started to act weird. I got a message that there
was no signal and to contact cable operator. Despite this message, the
Guide Plus info displayed correctly.

In the meantime, I emailed Tiome Warner Cable to see if they had
dropped the Guide Plus signal. They informed me that Gemstar had full
responsibility.

Both TVs eventually stopped all Guide Plus program displays,
indicating could get a signal.

Yesterday, both TVs came back with correct Guide Plus displays,
without my intervention.

Questions:
1. What is the nature of the Guide Plus signal? Frequency, where does
it come from, etc.
2. Who is responsible for fixing problems that must be truly Guide
Plus related, and how do you contact them? The cable provider says
"Gemstar." The Gemstar web site doesn't acknowledge that they could
have a problem, they refer you to TV manufacturers. The TV
manufacturer can only walk you through the Guide Plus signal check out
steps.
"Catch 22"?

JoeK

[This followup was posted to sci.electronics.repair and a copy was sent
to the cited author.]

In article . com,
says...
1. What is the nature of the Guide Plus signal? Frequency, where does
it come from, etc.
The data is transmitted during the VBI part of the video signal on one
or more TV channels. The TV (or other device) scans channels, looking
for the frequency.

Some details he
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guide_Plus

Since it's in the VBI, it's possible for it to be lost if your cable
company converts or otherwise alters the signal. It's not unusual these
days for even local channels to be digitized for ADS (analog-digital
simuilcast, where digital tuners will pick up a digital copy instead of
the analog), and then reconverted back to analog for transmission to
analog tuners. Some cable systems are dropping extended basic analog
channels, and maybe even ALL analog channels (Chicago seems to be the
first big experiment.)

2. Who is responsible for fixing problems that must be truly Guide
Plus related, and how do you contact them? The cable provider says
"Gemstar." The Gemstar web site doesn't acknowledge that they could
have a problem, they refer you to TV manufacturers. The TV
manufacturer can only walk you through the Guide Plus signal check out
steps.

The original channel may have had a problem, or it stopped broadcasting
the data and your TV eventually found another channel.

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On 12 Apr 2007 06:36:59 -0700, "joekool1" wrote:

I have two RCA TVs, for years, with Guide Plus. About two weeks ago,
the Guide Plus on the 25" started to act flaky, not showing program
detail. I went through the "99999" reset deal, etc. Then we had a
black out for about 2 hours. Battery backups faded away.

After that the 27" TV started to act weird. I got a message that there
was no signal and to contact cable operator. Despite this message, the
Guide Plus info displayed correctly.

In the meantime, I emailed Tiome Warner Cable to see if they had
dropped the Guide Plus signal. They informed me that Gemstar had full
responsibility.

Both TVs eventually stopped all Guide Plus program displays,
indicating could get a signal.

Yesterday, both TVs came back with correct Guide Plus displays,
without my intervention.

Questions:
1. What is the nature of the Guide Plus signal? Frequency, where does
it come from, etc.
2. Who is responsible for fixing problems that must be truly Guide
Plus related, and how do you contact them? The cable provider says
"Gemstar." The Gemstar web site doesn't acknowledge that they could
have a problem, they refer you to TV manufacturers. The TV
manufacturer can only walk you through the Guide Plus signal check out
steps.
"Catch 22"?

JoeK


Gemstar contracts with PBS member stations to broadcast Guide Plus
data. Gemstar owns the equipment, and when it fails they send out
another unit to be swapped in place of the deader.

As another poster mentioned, it is possible that the cable company is
stripping out the VBI data for some reason. Many video processors
have the option of deleting specific VBI lines.
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