MESSAGING PROTOCOL FOR INTERACTIVE DELIVERY SYSTEM
First Claim
1. A method for communication for an interactive information delivery system, comprising:
- partitioning, by a transport stream generator at a headend, a plurality of interactive program guide (IPG) pages into a plurality of regions including guide, video, icon and program description regions;
encoding each partitioned region using slice-based encoding;
transmitting each encoded region from the transport stream generator toward a plurality of terminals, each of the transmitted regions being adapted for assembly into a respective IPG page portion by a terminal;
receiving a demand-cast request message including a region identifier to identify one of the regions of one of the IPG pages; and
transmitting the requested region.
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Accused Products
Abstract
Efficient messaging techniques that facilitate interactive program guide (IPG) delivery and allow a terminal to specifically designate requested items of information from a server. The IPG can be provided via a number of IPG pages, with each page including a number of defined regions. In one method, selection for a particular region of a particular page is received at a terminal and a determination is made whether the selected region is currently received. If the answer is no, a request for the selected region is generated and sent to a server. The request can conform to a particular message format that includes a number of fields, e.g., a region ID field that identifies the selected region, a subtype field that identifies a particular type, a time slot field that identifies a specific time slot, and a page offset field that identifies a specific page from among many.
16 Citations
25 Claims
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1. A method for communication for an interactive information delivery system, comprising:
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partitioning, by a transport stream generator at a headend, a plurality of interactive program guide (IPG) pages into a plurality of regions including guide, video, icon and program description regions;
encoding each partitioned region using slice-based encoding;
transmitting each encoded region from the transport stream generator toward a plurality of terminals, each of the transmitted regions being adapted for assembly into a respective IPG page portion by a terminal;
receiving a demand-cast request message including a region identifier to identify one of the regions of one of the IPG pages; and
transmitting the requested region. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18)
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19. Apparatus for interactive information delivery system communication, comprising:
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means for partitioning, by a transport stream generator at a headend, a plurality of interactive program guide (IPG) pages into a plurality of regions including guide, video, icon and program description regions;
means for encoding each partitioned region using slice-based encoding;
means for transmitting each encoded region from the transport stream generator toward a plurality of terminals, each of the transmitted regions being adapted for assembly into a respective IPG page portion by a terminal;
means for receiving a demand-cast request message including a region identifier to identify one of the regions of one of the IPG pages for transmission.
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20. A system for communication for an interactive information delivery system, comprising:
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a transport stream generator, for partitioning a plurality of interactive program guide (IPG) pages into a plurality of regions including guide, video, icon and program description regions, each partitioned region being encoded using slice-based encoding; and
a session manager (SM) for transmitting each encoded region from the transport stream generator toward a plurality of terminals, each of the transmitted regions being adapted for assembly into a respective IPG page portion by a terminal;
the SM transmitting a requested encoded IPG page region in response to receiving a demand-cast request message including identification of the IPG page region. - View Dependent Claims (21, 22, 23, 24, 25)
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Specification