Radio Times R.I.P. (DigiGuide)

Member Name: The Duke

Product:	DigiGuide
Date:	14/08/03 (160 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Cheap, Easy to use, Good features

Disadvantages: Could have more features, Pretty useless if you're not at your PC for hours per day

DigiGuide is one of those programs that at first sight doesn't seem to be too handy until you get around to using it, and once you've installed it and tried it out, you'll wonder how you ever managed without it.

So, what exactly is DigiGuide?

The best way to describe DigiGuide is an interactive TV listings program for your PC. For those of you with Sky Digital, it works in a similar manner to Sky's interactive TV EPG. It provides listings on the channels you want, and can also offer further information on many programmes.

How does it work?

You must first download the DigiGuide software from the website (http://www.digiguide.com/), and install it to your PC. This is extremely easy to do - the web site is easily navigated and loads quickly. The DigiGuide download for the current version (version 6.0) is 1.9 MB, which is around 6 minutes on an ordinary 56k modem. It's compatible with all versions of Windows from Windows 95 through to Windows XP (and includes Windows 2000/NT).

Once downloaded and run for the first time, you are asked which country's television you would like to see a list of channels from. Currently, the three main European countries are UK, Ireland and Holland. Once that's selected, you enter your TV provider e.g. Sky Digital, NTL, Freeview, Terrestrial etc. and this will then enable you to select from a relevant list of channels.

Depending on which provider you have selected, you'll be presented with a list of channels and any regional variations. On my selection, they're also labelled with the Sky Digital Channel number, and they're listed in this order. All possible channels are provided in this list irrespective of whether they're pay-per-view channels, subscription channels or free to air channels.

You select which channels you wish to keep an eye on from the list, and they appear in your personal list which you can edit. You can group channe
ls into their own sub-sections and give them names e.g. "Entertainment", "Sport" etc. for easy access, and the channels in your personal list can be listed in any order.

Some selections have their regional variations so, for example, I can select BBC1 Northern Ireland as my BBC1 channel, and UTV (Ulster Television) as my ITV channel. But I am not restricted to one, I can select more if I desire (assuming of course that I have access to these channels, which I do via Sky Digital).

What sort of features does it have?

Well, apart from the simple programme listings, there are a few nifty things which might help you. The most helpful ones would be the reminders. There are two types of reminder ? one to watch a programme and one to record a programme. If you're using these, you need to keep DigiGuide running all the time in order to take full advantage of this feature. When it's running it sits in your 'system tray' (the little area beside the clock in the bottom right of your screen). The first reminder is done via a voice and can be set to remind you once, daily, weekly or anytime the programme is found (which is handy if you're a complete fanatic of a particular programme which airs on more than one television channel).

You can customise your views to suit your preferences to a grid type display (much like Sky's EPG), a simple channel listing, or via a filter (which you set up yourself). You are also given a range of colour schemes to make DigiGuide easier on your eyes, and if you dislike the ones which come with the program, you can download more free from the DigiGuide website. I found the default colour scheme to be more than adequate though. Display wise, for the handiest view (the grid view), there are several levels of 'zoom' to help you with your programme planning and means that you can get a display suitable for you no matter what resolution your screen is running at.


Speaking of the website, this runs along as a (free) companion to the program, not only for support information and upgrades etc. but for addons, extra television programme information and all sorts of extra features and useful information. For example, if you have a TV card in your PC (which enables you to watch TV on your PC), there's an addon which integrates DigiGuide with other programs and enables you to record programmes on your PC. You can export the listings to Outlook to get email alerts, and many more extras.

The information side of the website is a bit haphazard, to be honest. Trying to find out pieces of information and cross reference it is a difficult enough task as some information is only partially given. For example, recently I tried to identify an actress who had appeared in '24' and had also been in one episode of a favourite programme of mine, 'Now & Again', but the site is short on information regarding characters and a cast list is simply a list of actor's names, there are no character names. If you were looking to use the DigiGuide information in this way, you might be better considering something like the Internet Movie Database (http://uk.imdb.com) instead which, despite its name, lists TV programmes as well. This is quite disappointing given the decent design of the rest of the website.

Every few days, DigiGuide needs your PC to be connected to the Internet so that it can download updated programme listings (which are always about a week or so ahead anyway, so it's not imperative) and any program updates that have been released. You can set this to auto update, or to ask you before auto updating, which is handy and a typical listings update is up to 300kb (or around a 1 minute download on 56k dial up).

How much does it cost?

Sadly, as you may have guessed, with a range of features mentioned above, you're probably suspecting that it's not free, and you'd be righ
t. Only just though! It's currently £7.99 for an entire year. That's not much, is it? If you buy the Radio Times every week for one year, you're probably going to pay around £50, and I bet the Radio Times doesn't actively remind you when one of your favourites is on!

If you think it's not your scene, you can try it out for free for one month. I believe it'll take much less than that to convince you how good it is!

My Final Thoughts.

I really like this program, and it's one of the few programs I've downloaded from the internet that's impressive enough for me to actually stump up the registration cost. It's quite simple to install and use, and there are extra features available for download from the website if the basic package doesn't offer what you need. To be honest, I don't watch a lot of telly, and yet I still found it easy to justify the £8 to register this program, that's how impressive I found it.

However, if you don't sit at your PC for hours every day, or if your PC is not turned on all day, then you might find this less useful than I did. There are other versions available for WAP phones, wireless handheld PCs and similar gadgets and you might prefer these more mobile solutions to the PC one. Of course, the ultimate version would be one which ran on your PDA which could double as a remote control for your TV/satellite receiver.

Summary: