One question one may have is 'what is the Prevue Guide?'

The Prevue Guide Channel a cable-exclusive television that was founded by the United Video Satellite Group in 1988 as a spinoff of their ‘Electronic Program Guide’ channel, which operated in the same way. It featured a scrolling program guide that ran off an Amiga 500, upgrading to the 2000 in 1993, then switched to Windows following the Prevue Channel’s rebrand to the TV Guide Channel.

Many remember Prevue for its music, programming, and/or software. Many also have trouble with figuring out how to properly set it up, so I wrote a tutorial.

How did people suddenly get interested in such an obscure piece of television history? How did we get to where we are now?

The story seems to have started around 2009, when a programmer of the iOS app 'Workflow' (now known under Shortcuts) Ari Weinstein discovered a manual for operating an old Prevue machine. Fascinated, leading to him researching how it worked and creation of the Prevue Guide Forum and Wiki, which housed many of the finds and reverse-engineering he and the community would figure out or discover. In 2018, a Prevue Guide Discord server was formed and would aid to more and more discoveries, such as the software and hardware for the Windows TV Guide software (known as Hollywood) and much more.

Why not?