The 'where do you get your tv listings' question comes up on this board from time to time and there's never really a satisfactory answer. There are no longer any dead tree guides that offer full coverage, onscreen cable guides are only good for about 48 hours and you have to be in front of your tv to access them, and not everybody has Tivo.

I finally have an adequate solution. You need a PDA or smart phone [Palm or PocketPC]. You have to download and install some software on your desktop, sign up for a free zap2it account and pick your channel lineup. The rest is fairly easy.

I've gone through several tv guides on my Palm PDA. The first was a freeware program that was moderately functional but ugly and difficult to navigate. For a couple of years I used SSTV which displayed grid style listings and had very rudimentary search capability. Then the company that provided the listings went belly up and I had to find a replacement. I finally found a great little shareware app called Pocket TV Browser. It uses zap2it as a listing provider and XMLTV to grab the listings in a format that can be converted to Palm database format.

The program is pretty sweet because you can do full text searches on the database. You can search on show titles, actors or subject matter and any program description that includes your keywords will pop up in your results. The listings are way more explicit than the old Evolve listings with SSTV that I had to pay for. And you can download 14 days at a time instead of Evolve's 7 days.

But a couple of things are lacking in PTVB's listings. They give you episode titles and regular cast but not guest cast. They indicate repeat episodes but not the original airdate. It turns out that that info is in the XML listings but it gets lost before it gets into .pdb format on my Palm. Now some guy has written a tweaker program that finds the missing info and puts it in the right place. My tv guide now tells me the episode #, episode guest cast, original airdate and often writer and director.

For example, today's episode of GREEN ACRES on TVLand was "Eb Elopes", (Ep#72), originally aired on 10-25-1967, written by Jay Sommers & Dick Chevillat and directed by Richard L. Bare. The guest cast includes Guy Raymond, Frank Kreig and Tobie Dulien. If I click on 'Guy Raymond', I find out that he also guested on today's GUNSMOKE episode "The Well". This is great for doing more thorough actor searches on your tv listings. The movie listings are also more complete with producer credits. The tweaker program has a GUI interface that lets you select what extra detail you want to include.

Not so many years ago, TV Guide magazine used to provide this information. Maybe not the original airdate but certainly the guest cast. Now TV Guide barely covers primetime listings in any detail. If you don't carry a WiFi enabled laptop around with you, this is the best way to keep on top of tv listings when you are away from your tv. You can prune out the channels you don't want [e.g. home shopping networks, pay-per-view channels] and you can save your favorite programs for quick searches. Click a button to add shows to your calendar with or without alarm.

Here's what you need to get started:

Pocket TV Browser: http://www.doublebit.com/ptvb/
XMLTV: http://sourceforge.net/projects/xmltv
Zap2it: http://labs.zap2it.com
TVTweak: http://feebdack.com/tvtweak

:o

How do you define 'problem'?!

I work at a TV station whose viewership depended largely on the weekly TV magazine that came with the Sunday New York Times. Some time last year, the Times stopped publishing it and now these viewers have no means to find out what's on the station except for the limited primetime listings in the daily editions of the Times, or to use the onscreen cable guide, which many of them haven't figured out how to use. When they call my channel, I tell them to check our website which publishes an up-to-date schedule, but most of these viewers, who came of age in the era of manual typewriters (and fountain pens!), don't have computers. And it's highly doubtful they're gonna get a computer--or a palm device--any time soon.

So I wonder how the lack of access to program listings via print source has affected the ratings of stations like Turner Classic Movies, Fox Movie Channel, PBS and channels that show old movies and highbrow cultural offerings. What kinds of conversations are unfolding in the executive suites of those stations? "Hey, our ratings are lower ever since the cable systems stopped publishing guides. We need to do something about it."

I renewed my subscription to TV Guide once the Times stopped publishing its weekly guide, only because it gives me SOMETHING to go by, however limited. There are a few channels I've gotten in the habit of checking the onscreen guide for daily, but there are so many channels now that, without a thing in front of me--in print--to scan and look over, even just a list of stations and their designated Cablevision channels, I miss a lot. I just don't have the patience to sit and scan the onscreen listings of all the movie channels. And I don't know anymore what channel numbers some of the extra movie channels are on. I mean, if I see something in TV Guide that I want to tape and it's listed on More Max, I have to do some work to find out what channel More Max is on my system.

As for getting a palm thing? I just can't make that leap yet. (I don't even have--or want--a cell phone.)

Considering technology is supposed to make our lives easier, I find it ironic that it takes more time and effort to scan TV listings online or on your cable box than it does to run your finger down a TV Guide.

I've cultivated the habit of using the cable remote each morning to check the day's offerings on the movie channels I get (which at this point consist of Turner Classics and Fox Movies) so I don't miss much there.

As far as TV series go, it's more hit or miss. E.g., I only found out by chance (mindless channel surfing) that the season finale of THE SARAH SILVERMAN SHOW is airing tonight rather than in its usual Thursday evening slot.

TV Guide is just sad these days. For years, since the early '70s, it was a weekly thing for me to head to the newsstand for comics and the Guide. Since its format change, well, to quote Oscar Madison, "Now, it's garbage."

It's a problem for me, or was, when TV Guide started to suck. I used to get a customized version through my cable company that was okay, but much less complete than the guide that TV Guide bought out and replaced [Total TV, I think it was called]. Then they dropped the customized version and replaced it with the old digest size TV Guide. I gave up on them after that.

PTVB requires a little bit of setup but once you have all the pieces in place, it's great. I just sync my PDA every few days to get my listings updated. My PDA was already an essential appendage so it's no hardship to use it for this purpose. If you don't have a PDA or don't sync it, then obviously, this isn't a good solution. Though you can use PTVB on your desktop through it's Virtual Pocket PC interface.

Brian makes an interesting point about viewers who are not computer literate. I hadn't really thought about the viewership of channels like TCM that probably have an average viewer age over 50. My sister is over 50 and she is learning to use a computer, reluctantly, and with frequent curse ridden calls to me for help when she gets stuck. My mom on the other hand won't go near a computer, has no interest in learning anything about it, and relies on her kids to retrieve photos from email attachments and print them out for her. There's definitely a hole in the market for someone to exploit if they can figure out a way to produce tv listings for a non-technical audience.

My grandfather doesn't know how to use a computer and, these days, doesn't have much use for TV listings. In the evening, he just sits in his easy chair, turns on Turner Classic Movies or Encore Westerns, and watches whatever is airing--and he's perfectly content. How's that for an easy solution? I guess the amount of one's satisfaction really just depends on what your needs are.