EPG now on Freeview

I did a Store Channels on my ex-ITV Digital box this morning, and there was a new channel called TText TV Guide.

It's very slow, so I don't know if they're just testing, but it's in full working order. It's from Teletext by the way, and it's 24 hours.

It's been on there for a couple of weeks at least now (from Crystal Palace at least)

And it's not new in itself - the same TV guide has been available for ages - it's just been split out from the main Teletext service and put on a different multiplex to free up capacity for expansion of the main Teletext content.

All these EPG's are still falling short of what we were promised though. A proper EPG should be accessible via a button on the remote, with EPG data sent out, and an application within the box interprets and displays it. Features like the boxes 'remind me' function if it has one should all be accessible through this EPG. It should basically be just an extention of the existing DVB now/next information and be just as integrated into the box and easily and quickly accessible as that facility is.

All I'm seeing passing as EPGs so far are channel numbers which display listings through MHEG - which is exactly what On Digital had. None of these are proper EPGs, they are just TV guides which through the way they are implemented are often impractically slow. That is what we need to see changing, not embrace it further with things like 'Ttext TV Guide' - that's just doing the same job as the NTL channel used to (albeit with a nicer interface).

This Teletext venture is separate from the planned EPG though (either 4 or 7 days, depending who you believe)

Freeview plan a four day EPG for early next year, possibly extending to seven days. Box manufacturers will make software that will download the data to the box (allowing for a 'TV Guide' button) and it will also be accessible from an MHEG channel.

More boxes are expected to intergrate hard drives to allow recording of TV channels, like 'SKY +' but without the ridiculous subscription costs. There are plans for a Freeview specification next year which all boxes will have to comply to. This will include the EPG software with 'remind me', 'auto record' features etc.

Personally, I think a four day EPG isn't good enough. It should be eight days at least, allowing me to see what is on at the same time next week.

Would this be the same one they were planning for early this year? And in a similar vein to On Digital's promised ' EPG' which just turned out to be a TV guide on their information service? I'd like to see some hard proof that they are actually in the process of developing this.

Yes it's certainly being developed, but I can't give you hard proof unfortunately. It was tested for a few days nationwide in the early summer, and a week or two ago it was testing in Wales. But they were apparentally having problems with it so the tests have stopped while they investigate.

The EPG was originally due to have started towards the end of this year, but 24 hours only, with a seven day version following in the new year. It now looks like a four or seven day version will be running sometime in the new year, but may now be delayed due to the above mentioned problems until, well at a guess, spring 2004.

Actually I can give you some "proof" from about the EPG launching in January from the DTG website.

http://www.dtg.org.uk/news/uknews/-freeview_boosts.htm

They also recently tested a four day EPG in Wales. The data was there, only nobody had the boxes to interpret it.