Hi All,

Many cable systems offer a service called Digital Music Express or DMX, a
service offering 30 channels of CD quality music over your cable
connection.  Formats range from symphony to rap and include most genres in
between.  You'll find DMX's web site at:

http://www.dmxmusic.com

I'm mentioning the site here because of one particular feature they have
online.  Typically DMX comes with something called the DJ Remote which
allows you to read a display of information about the current song, such
as artist, composer, and record company catalog number.  This same
feature, which is updated in real time as near as I can tell, can be found
under the What's On DMX link on the page.

They offer two methods of finding out what's on but from my
experimentation, the search by channel option is much easier to use.  If
you follow that link, you will be taken to a page that uses frames but the
frame titles are very informative.  The first takes you to a list of
channels where you can learn more about exactly what each format includes
plus find links to other web sites that fit the format.

The key to finding out what's playing is to follow the channel search.
You'll have two option lists to use to do your search.  The first allows
you to set the channel and the second to choose from the last five or ten
songs.  Submit your search and you'll be taken to a page that lists what's
been playing.  The nice thing is that if you set a bookmark to this
listing and return to it later, you'll be viewing an updated list of songs
that have played.  I have created a bookmark file that has links to the
first 30 channels (all that are available over a cable system) at

http://www.teleport.com/~kford/dmx-channels.html

which will take you directly to listings for what's playing.  You can
access what they call a detailed record if you follow the links from a
search results page.  It contains the same information but adds a start
time for the song.  This page is a bit odd in that it reports several text
entry fields which contain the information you are reading but it is very
usable.

If you visit the channel search pages with a browser like Internet
Explorer or Netscape, be aware that there will be a list of channels down
the left side of the screen.  This is one of the two frames available from
the point where you start the search.  It would be handy if Graphical
Browsers would allow you to tailor where frames were displayed i.e. show
all frames in horizontal order.  Does anyone know if style sheets will
allow you to alter where a frame is displayed?  That might be a solution
to the problem when frames are used to create multiple vertical columns on
a page.

DMX's web site has much more to offer such as information on a residential
service delivered by satellite that offers more than 90 channels of
music.  Give it a browse and happy listening.

---

Kelly Ford
[log in to unmask]
See my home page at http://www.teleport.com/~kford/index.html