Database management system and method for electronic program guide and television channel lineup organization

• US 20020186296A1
• Filed: 05/28/2002
• Published: 12/12/2002
• Est. Priority Date: 06/30/2000
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Thomson Licensing SAS (Vantiva SA)
• Original Assignee: Metabyte Networks Incorporated (Metabyte, Inc.)
• Inventors: Godbole, Santosh, Ismail, Labeeb, Larin, Oleg, Gogoi, Amar, Mustafa, Yunis
• Granted Patent: US 8,087,051 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 348/39
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/26283 for associating distribution time parameters to content, e.g. to generate electronic program guide data
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/4532 involving end-user characteristics, e.g. viewer profile, preferences monitoring of user activities for profile generation for accessing a video database G06F16/739; user profiles in network data switching protocols H04L67/306; processing of user preferences or user profiles in wireless networks H04W8/18
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/454 Content or additional data filtering, e.g. blocking advertisements
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/466 Learning process for intelligent management, e.g. learning user preferences for recommending movies services using the results of monitoring in broadcast systems H04H60/61
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/4823 using a channel name
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 7/163 by receiver means only

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.

Claims

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.

2. The method according to claim 1, which comprises downloading the external channel lineup information from an external electronic program guide formatted in standard EPG data structure, and formatting and indexing the internal channel lineup information for use in an internal preference determination engine (PDE).

3. The method according to claim 1, which comprises structuring the internal channel lineup information by indexing individual available channels to a channel identifier (chID) and a channel name index (chName-index).

4. The method according to claim 3, wherein the internal channel lineup information further comprises a time field and a flag field indicating a time until which or after which the respective channel is valid.

5. The method according to claim 3, wherein the internal channel lineup information comprises a first list indexing the external channel lineup received from the external program guide, a second, hierarchically lower list indexing a subscription channel lineup, and a third, hierarchically lowest list indexing a list of most-watched channels and subscription channels.

6. The method according to claim 1, wherein the updating step comprises processing a channel lineup change algorithm in which each channel available in an updated external channel lineup is searched in the internal channel lineup and, if a given channel identifier is not found, the respective channel is added to the internal channel lineup.

7. The method according to claim 6, which further comprises removing channel identifiers of those channels from the internal channel lineup which no longer appear in the updated external channel lineup.

8. The method according to claim 6, wherein the channel lineup change algorithm is configured to add new service items of an updated external channel lineup, to close and remove closed service items from the internal channel lineup, and to reallocate a given service to a different channel in the internal channel lineup.

9. The method according to claim 6, wherein the channel lineup change algorithm is programmed to avoid duplicate entries in the internal channel lineup and to avoid removing given entries from the internal channel lineup, by indexing the entries with a reference counter indicating multiple entry of a given service.

10. A system for managing channel lineup information in a digital television system, comprising:

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.

11. The system according to claim 10, wherein said update agent is programmed to process a service-to-channel change management algorithm.

12. In combination with a preference determination engine in a television broadcast system, the management system according to claim 10 and a database containing program information and viewing history of at least one user of the television system.