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On-screen intelligent electronic program guide

  • US 20060117337A1
  • Filed: 11/04/2005
  • Published: 06/01/2006
  • Est. Priority Date: 03/27/2003
  • Status: Abandoned Application
First Claim
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1. An intelligent and interactively maneuverable interface display of current electronic programming guide (EPG) textual context information drawn from an ever periodically changing, currently available EPG database, and presentable as a narrative-statement-format display on the screen in a user'"'"'s television receiver providing information regarding the currently viewed program comprising a display window, a body of current EPG paragraph text set forth in said window in the above-mentioned narrative-statement format and containing certain television program information which is presently contextually related to the currently displayed program and which contains present keywords organized into an unseen hierarchy of keywords based upon relative population numbers thereof in the current EPG database, with the respective population number for each keyword being determined by the number of other programs currently referred to in the EPG database having associated EPG texts which contain that keyword, and with the pinnacle of the hierarchy being represented by the keyword having the lowest current population number and the base of the hierarchy being represented by the keyword having the highest current population number, such present context and hierarchy being unpredictably and changeably determined by the real-current-time confluence of (a) currently chosen and displayed program material, (b) currently established EPG descriptive narrative associated with such chosen program material, and (c) currently available information distributed throughout the current EPG database, and a virtual change-condition maneuvering tool also appearing in said window, enabling user-interactive maneuvering, in different user-selectable modes, to initiate (a), in one mode of interactive maneuvering, sequential changes in the textual information content of the window, where such changes have both commonality and hierarchical functional relationships relative to one another and with respect to the textual content which is presented in the window at the time of implementation of said one mode, with the commonality relationship being based upon the mentioned contextual relationship, and the hierarchical relationship being directly associated with the mentioned relative population numbers hierarchy regarding the text-contained keywords, and with the sequence of possible changes in textual content being solely determined by the confluence mentioned above, and independent of any user selection, and (b), in another mode of interactive maneuvering, user selectability, for user viewing, of the specific selectable programming material then associated with the EPG text presented at that time in said display window.

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