Latency reduction in providing interactive program guide
First Claim
1. A method for providing an interactive program guide, comprising:
- providing a plurality of transport streams, wherein each transport stream includes at least one elementary stream representing a respective interactive program guide (IPG) page, wherein each IPG page has associated with it a respective guide portion and a common video portion, and wherein each of said IPG pages has associated with it a first plurality of slices representing said common video portion and a second plurality of slices representing said respective guide portion; and
grouping elementary streams associated with related IPG pages within a common transport stream;
encoding said slices associated with said common video portion of said IPG pages only once;
encoding each respective plurality of slices associated with said respective guide portions of said IPG pages; and
associating, for each IPG page, said encoded common video portion slices and respective encoded guide portion slices.
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Accused Products
Abstract
Techniques presented reduce latencies or delays in the delivery of an interactive program guide. In accordance with a first technique, a method for providing an interactive program guide comprises: providing a plurality of transport streams; providing a group of interactive guide pages within each said transport stream, where the group of interactive guide pages comprise related pages. In accordance with a second technique, a method for providing an interactive program guide comprises: forming a first transport stream including video packets with a first set of packet identifiers; and forming a second transport stream including video packets with a second set of packet identifiers, where the first set of packet identifiers and the second set of packet identifiers include a common packet identifier. In accordance with a third technique, a method for providing an interactive program guide comprises: providing an interactive guide page which may be navigated by a viewer; providing a threshold within the interactive guide page; and if the threshold is crossed during navigation of the page by the viewer, then requesting a next interactive guide page.
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Citations
5 Claims
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1. A method for providing an interactive program guide, comprising:
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providing a plurality of transport streams, wherein each transport stream includes at least one elementary stream representing a respective interactive program guide (IPG) page, wherein each IPG page has associated with it a respective guide portion and a common video portion, and wherein each of said IPG pages has associated with it a first plurality of slices representing said common video portion and a second plurality of slices representing said respective guide portion; and grouping elementary streams associated with related IPG pages within a common transport stream; encoding said slices associated with said common video portion of said IPG pages only once; encoding each respective plurality of slices associated with said respective guide portions of said IPG pages; and associating, for each IPG page, said encoded common video portion slices and respective encoded guide portion slices.
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2. A method for providing an interactive program guide, comprising:
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providing a plurality of transport streams, wherein each transport stream includes at least one elementary stream representing a respective interactive program guide (IPG) page, wherein each IPG page has associated with it a respective guide portion and a common video portion; grouping elementary streams associated with related IPG pages within a common transport stream; and providing for each of a predetermined number of IPG pages in a sequence of IPG pages one video frame for time incremented intra-coding and remaining video frames for time-incremented predictive coding. - View Dependent Claims (3, 4, 5)
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Specification