High-Tech Gadgets Make It Easier To Find Out What’s On TV
Moe: “How do you find the new TV season?”
Joe: “With difficulty!”
Bad joke, huh? Well, it’s no laughing matter to forage through the frontier of 40 new prime-time series, plus returning shows cast hither and yon (nearly 60 percent of the networks’ fall schedule consists of either new or returning programs in a new time period). Adding to the quagmire are dozens of syndicated and cable shows.
In short, what to watch and where to find it is harder to keep up with than the tax code.
But high-tech help is here. In fact, new schedule-display and organizing gadgetry do everything but watch the TV for you.
For instance, a product called StarSight puts right up there on your TV screen color-coded schedule grids for the next seven days, program descriptions, and even what you’re watching right this minute and how many minutes of it remain to be watched (instant orientation for channel surfers!).
It all happens with the press of this button or that on the StarSight remote, a souped-up clicker that also controls your television and VCR which, with almost breathtaking simplicity, it can program to record upcoming broadcasts.
The StarSight technology will be integrated into certain models of TV, VCR and other video products. Otherwise, you need the stand-alone set-top box, which handily downloads current data every night while you sleep. Purchasing the box will set you back about $100. An annual StarSight subscription is about $50. (Call StarSight at 800-596-7827.)
StarSight’s competition in the onscreen-listings game is VideoGuide, available at about the same one-time and subscription charges.
VideoGuide can’t boast all the what’s-on-TV info as its rival, and its remote control, while lightweight and elegant, offers fewer functions.
But for viewers willing to pony up twice the basic subscription fee, VideoGuide does offer a dandy option: text-based feeds of news, business, sports and local weather (much of it provided by The Associated Press).
While StarSight transmits its information to subscribers daily by hitching a ride on your local PBS station’s broadcast signal, VideoGuide piggybacks on a wireless pager network, which enables continuous updating.
As VideoGuide puts it, you’ll not only know what’s on, you’ll know what’s up. (Call VideoGuide at 800-848-4331.) There are other newfangled allies in this game of TV hide-and-seek, and they bring your personal computer into the act.
The GIST is a TV-oriented Internet Web site that includes a personalized online television viewing guide. When you register online, you choose your preferences from a menu of program types, networks and air-times. After that, whenever you log on you’ll be presented with an updated, customized agenda.
For the price, you can’t beat it: The GIST, designed to be advertiser-supported, is free to its users (the Web address: www.theGIST.com).