Broadcasting program viewing method using electronic program guide and system thereof

• US 20030101456A1
• Filed: 11/22/2002
• Published: 05/29/2003
• Est. Priority Date: 11/23/2001
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: LG Electronics, Inc. (LG Corporation)
• Original Assignee: LG Electronics, Inc. (LG Corporation)
• Inventors: Lim, Sang-Wook, Park, Jong-Seok
• Granted Patent: US 7,665,108 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 725/55
• 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 21/4331 Caching operations, e.g. of an advertisement for later insertion during playback
• 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 21/47 End-user applications
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/47214 for content reservation or setting reminders; for requesting event notification, e.g. of sport results or stock market stock exchange data over packet-switching network H04L12/1804; push services over packet-switching network H04L12/1859; notification of incoming messages in packet switching networks H04L51/224
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/482 End-user interface for program selection broadcast systems using EPGs H04H60/72
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/8586 by using a URL processing chained hypermedia data for information retrieval G06F16/94; information retrieval from the Internet by using URLs G06F16/955; URL in broadcast information H04H20/93; Web-based protocols H04L67/02
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 7/17318 Direct or substantially direct transmission and handling of requests

Abstract

A broadcasting program viewing system using an electronic program guide and a method for the same, includes the steps of storing the EPG for guiding broadcasting programs and a tag for downloading the broadcasting programs guided to the EPG from the corresponding broadcasting program, displaying the stored EPG on the screen according to a request of a viewer and displaying the broadcasting program selected from the corresponding broadcasting station server on a screen on the basis of the tag corresponding to the selected broadcasting program when the viewer selects a specific broadcasting program from the EPG displayed on the screen and therefore, viewers can watch the preferred broadcasting programs by easily selecting them.

Claims

1. A broadcasting program viewing method using an electronic program guide (EPG), comprising the steps of:

storing the EPG for guiding broadcasting programs and a tag for downloading the broadcasting programs guided to the EPG from a broadcasting station server;

displaying the stored EPG on the screen according to a request of a viewer; and

displaying the selected broadcasting program on a screen on the basis of the tag corresponding to the selected broadcasting program when the viewer selects a specific broadcasting program from the EPG displayed on the screen.

2. The method of claim 1, further comprising a step of:

downloading the selected broadcasting program on the basis of the tag corresponding to the selected broadcasting program and storing or temporarily storing the downloaded broadcasting program.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein the tag includes a uniform resource locator (URL) for displaying the location where information related to the broadcasting program and the broadcasting program are stored.

4. The method of claim 3, wherein the information related with the broadcasting program can be an ordinal time of the broadcasting program, and broadcasting date.

5. The method of claim 1, wherein the EPG and tag can be an EPG broadcast in the past and a tag, an EPG currently broadcasting and a tag, and an EPG which will be broadcast in the future and a tag.

6. The method of claim 1, wherein the step of displaying the broadcasting program on the screen includes the steps of:

determining whether the viewer selected ‘

current viewing’

or ‘

recording viewing’

, when the broadcasting program selected by the viewer is a broadcasting program which was broadcast in the past;

displaying the broadcasting program on the screen downloading the corresponding program from the corresponding broadcasting station server on the basis of the tag of the broadcasting program selected by the viewer when the viewer selects the ‘

current viewing’

; and

downloading the corresponding program from the corresponding broadcasting station server on the basis of the tag of the broadcasting program selected by the viewer when the viewer selects the ‘

recording viewing’

, storing the downloaded broadcasting program in the storage means, and displaying the program stored in the storage means on the screen according to the request of the viewer.

7. The method of claim 6, wherein the step of displaying the broadcasting program stored in the storage means on the screen includes the steps of:

searching the stored broadcasting program when the viewer selects the ‘

recording viewing’

, and displaying the list of the searched broadcasting program; and

reading the selected broadcasting program from the storage means when the viewer selects the broadcasting program in the list displayed on the screen, and displaying the read broadcasting program on the screen.

8. The method of claim 1, wherein the step of displaying the broadcasting program on the screen includes the steps of:

setting reservation of the corresponding broadcasting station when the broadcasting program selected by the viewer is a broadcasting program which will be broadcast in the future; and

downloading the broadcasting program which is on air at real time from the corresponding broadcasting station server on the basis of the tag of the selected broadcasting program when the current time is the broadcasting time of the reserved broadcasting program, and displaying the downloaded broadcasting program on the screen.

9. A broadcasting program viewing system using an electronic program guide, comprising:

an electronic program guide (EPG)/tag providing server that provides an EPG for guiding broadcasting programs, and tags for downloading the broadcasting programs guided to the EPG; and

a data broadcast receiving apparatus for downloading the EPG and the tags from the EPG/tag providing server, transmitting the downloaded EPG to an image displaying apparatus, receiving broadcasting programs from a corresponding broadcasting station on the basis of the tags when a viewer selects the broadcasting programs, and transmitting the broadcasting programs to the image displaying apparatus.

10. The system of claim 9, wherein the data broadcast receiving apparatus further includes:

a storage unit for downloading the selected broadcasting program from the corresponding broadcasting server on the basis of the tag of the selected broadcasting program, and storing the downloaded broadcasting program.

11. The system of claim 9, wherein the tag includes a uniform resource locator (URL) for displaying the position where information related with the broadcasting program and the broadcasting program are stored.

12. The system of claim 11, wherein the information related with the broadcasting program can be an ordinal time of the broadcasting program, and broadcasting date.

13. The system of claim 9, wherein the data broadcast receiving apparatus periodically downloads the EPG and tag from the EPG/tag providing server, and stores the downloaded EPG and tag.

14. The system of claim 9, wherein the data broadcast receiving apparatus transmits the EPG and tag from the EPG/tag providing server to the image displaying apparatus according to the request of the viewer.

15. The system of claim 9, wherein the EPG/tag providing server receives an EPG broadcast in the past and a tag, an EPG currently broadcasting and a tag, and an EPG which will be broadcast in the future and a tag in advance, and stores the received EPGs and the tags.

16. The system of claim 9, wherein the data broadcast receiving apparatus is a multimedia set-top box or a Digital TV set.