Database management system and method for electronic program guide and television channel lineup organization
First Claim
1. A method of managing channel lineup information in a television system, which comprises:
- obtaining external channel lineup information from an external program guide offered by a television program provider;
generating internal channel lineup information from the external channel lineup information, the internal channel lineup information containing less information than the external channel lineup information, yet sufficient information to render the internal channel lineup information useful in an internal database management system; and
updating the internal channel lineup information upon receiving notification of a change to the external channel lineup information, by repeating the obtaining and generating steps.
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Accused Products
Abstract
Channel lineup information in a television system is efficiently managed with an internal electronic program guide manager (IEM). The IEM creates and maintains an internal electronic program guide (EPG) information database for a user program preference determination engine (PDE), which is resident in a STB, DTV or PVR. The internal EPG data are for use by software agents of the PDE only. The external EPG is used for graphical user interface display. The IEM provides other software agents with various control interfaces to enable extraction of the program information from the IE database, for maintenance and to update changes. First, external channel lineup information is received from an external program guide; from that, internal channel lineup information is generated that contains less information than the external channel lineup information, yet sufficient information to render the internal channel lineup information useful in the internal database management system; and the internal channel lineup information is updated upon receiving notification of a change to the external channel lineup information.
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Citations
12 Claims
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1. A method of managing channel lineup information in a television system, which comprises:
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obtaining external channel lineup information from an external program guide offered by a television program provider;
generating internal channel lineup information from the external channel lineup information, the internal channel lineup information containing less information than the external channel lineup information, yet sufficient information to render the internal channel lineup information useful in an internal database management system; and
updating the internal channel lineup information upon receiving notification of a change to the external channel lineup information, by repeating the obtaining and generating steps. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9)
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10. A system for managing channel lineup information in a digital television system, comprising:
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an input for receiving television program content and related external channel lineup information with channel names and data items suitable for a graphical user interface;
an internal electronic program guide processor programmed to generate from the external channel lineup information internal channel lineup information with indexed data items listing the channel lineup information with reduced data structure as compared to the external channel lineup information; and
an update agent programmed to update the internal channel lineup information upon learning of a change to the external channel lineup information. - View Dependent Claims (11, 12)
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Specification