Inventors:
John H. Roop - Palo Alto CA, US
Alan R. Ebright - Los Gatos CA, US
Jeffrey J. Kochy - San Jose CA, US
David P. Warden - Redwood City CA, US
Konstantine Sokolik - Redwood City CA, US
Giambattista A. Alegiani - San Francisco CA, US
Assignee:
Starsight Telecast, Inc. - Fremont CA
International Classification:
G06F 3/00
G06F 13/00
H04N 5/445
H04N 7/00
H04N 11/00
US Classification:
725 54, 725 40, 725 44, 725 48, 725 50, 348467, 348473, 348734
Abstract:
Television schedule information transmission and utilization systems transmit TV schedule data and associated network control messages provided by computer as packets via the Video Blanking Interval (VBI) lines in the TV signal from various television program providers. This data is acquired by regional data processing systems and forwarded by the regional data processing systems to subscriber units and used to construct an internal database. This internal database can be accessed by the subscriber unit to display a TV schedule for the channels that are received by the user's TV.