FrankJo said:
I think that the program info is carried in the signal itself, so once it maps, i assume that the STB has the ability to read that info, and put it into its programming guide. This would work the same way as closed captioning, which it carried in the scan lines as a signal your tv can read. (they put them in the scan lines at the very top, where you can't see them because all tvs have overscan.
I say all this based on NTSC, but i'm sure that a digital signal has the ability to carry this info as well (like 5.1 audio).
Whether or not stations broadcasting digital do this is another question.
Well, not entirely. VOOM actually puts in the station call signs and program info into the channel map. I haven't seen many digital stations send program info, just one around here will include the TV rating, but not program name. I haven't seen a station put it's call sign in the data stream either.
Also the VOOM STB remaps the channels. Many stations don't send a PID to remap a channel to the analog number. So when the VOOM STB scans and say finds a signal on ch.25 it isn't going to know what that station is. Is that the ch.25 that VOOM remaps to channel 2 in the adjacent DMA, is it another ch.25 from another DMA in the other direction, is it a new ch.25 that VOOM didn't know about?
Since the stations aren't sending such data all the STB can do until it gets more information is just put ch. 25 in the guide with "no info" in the listings. How long it would take to get the information to the STB could take months as VOOM, Motorola, and Tribune gets around to adding that channels listings.
Now if you can add another DMA from the get go then the STB would know that if it sees a signal on ch.25 then it must be that ch.25 from the adjacent DMA you put in and it remaps it to ch.2 and up pops the guide data from the satellite.