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AssigneeKoninklijke Philips Electronics N.V.
InventorsRogier Louis Thissen, Rudy Musschebroeck, Sebastien Petrucci, Johan Peeters
Estimating the term…
EPG data regarding programs and their scheduled times are structured and/or transmitted in such a way that program and schedule records are interleaved. This scheme allows better handling by receiving devices such as embedded devices (i.e. LCD remote controls), because a more efficient reception and storage of transmitted data is possible. In particular, the receiving device can read, parse and store the downloaded EPG data on the fly as it is being received (it can start reading, parsing and storing before the complete reception of data id finished). At any time when the device would have to stop storing EPG data into persistent storage, (almost) all of the data that was stored can actually be used.
A method of coding and/or transmitting EPG (electronic program guide) data, the data comprising respective ones of multiple program records identifying a respective one of multiple programs and specific ones of a plurality of schedule records identifying one or more specific scheduled broadcast times of the respective programs, characterized in that the program records (p1, p2, p3) and the schedule records (s11, s12, . . . s1i, s21, s22, . . . s2i, s31,s32, . . . s3i) are coded and/or transmitted in an interleaved manner (({p1,s11,s12, . . . s1i},{p2,s21,s22, . . . s2i}, {p3,s31,s32,s3i, . . . }), (s11,s12, . . . s1i,p1},{s21,s22, . . . s2i,p2},{s31,s32, . . . s3i,p3})).
A computer program operative to parse EPG data, wherein the data comprises respective ones of multiple program records identifying a respective one of multiple programs and specific ones of a plurality of schedule records identifying one or more specific scheduled broadcast times of the respective programs, and wherein the program records and schedule records are interleaved so that two successive ones of the program records are separated by one or more schedule records associated with a particular one of the two successive program records.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.