What you get on screen depends on what software you are using. Most software will give the ability to choose a channel to play from the available channels. If the software does recording, it will also display EPG data and let you use that to decide what gets recorded.
As rlevis says, the Sky EPG is available unencrypted using EIT on all of the Sky SD transponders. If you try to get the EPG from the HD transponders, I think you only get now/next EPG for the channels. So you need to set up the software to do EPG grabbing from one of the SD channels. The same EPG data is used for the SD and HD versions of Sky channels where there is an HD version.
However, I have just recently found that for Prime, the FreeviewHD (DVB-T) EPG data is better quality than the Sky Prime channel provides for itself. The FreeviewHD version of the EPG data comes with programid values for each programme so it is easy to tell what is a repeat and what is new. For some strange reason, Sky do not seem to put that data on the Sky version of the Prime EPG. So I have modified my EPG grabbing script to use the FreeviewHD version of Prime EPG when I record from the Sky Prime or Prime HD channels. Since I have DVB-T tuners and am already grabbing the FreeviewHD EPG from them, that is not a problem for me. But if you can only receive from DVB-S/S2, then if you want that better data you will need to find a source to download it from. They do exist. And you will need a much more complicated EPG grabbing setup.
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