was it piggybacked on analog and digital?
TV Guide On Screen (TVGOS) feeds were originally piggybacked on the vertical blanking information of host channels' analog signals. TVGOS worked out a way to piggyback feeds on digital signals, too. However, receiving devices (DVRs, TVs, cable boxes, etc.) need recent firmware in order to work with TVGOS feeds that have been piggybacked onto digital signals. The TVGOS system occasionally includes in its feeds updated versions of its firmware. If a power outage, loss of host channel, or system crash erases the updated version, the device reverts to its original firmware version. If the original version needs an analog source to update itself and there are no analog sources available, customers are stuck.
Ideally now with dtv ota dvrs should get guide info from the stations themselves, although cable is another issue.
The advantage of a centralized source is that all of the programs can be presented in a channel-by-time grid. Assembling that kind of grid from multiple stations would probably overwhelm the processing capabilities of DTVs, DVRs, cable boxes, etc., which have other processing to do.
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