Consumer interface for a digital television system

A television system for receiving a plurality of digitally-encoded television programs, comprising:

• means for selecting a desired one of said digitally-encoded virtual channel in response to a control signal, which particular virtual channel may be allocated to one or more transmission channels, and each virtual channel being subject to reallocation to a different one of said plurality of transmission channels, all of said transmission channels also including television program schedule data for all of said television programs on all of said transmission channels, said television program schedule data defining the relationship of each of said television programs to respective ones of said plurality of transmission channels;
• user-operable data entry means for entering data;
• control means coupled to said selecting means and to said data entry means for generating said control signal in response to said user-entered data;
• and
• said control means selecting said desired one of said digitally-encoded television programs on a data channel in response to said user-entered data.

A television system for receiving a plurality of digitally-encoded television programs transmitted in packetized form via one of a plurality of a data transmission channels, comprising:

• means for selecting data packets corresponding to a particular digitally-encoded television program from a plurality of data packets corresponding to said plurality of digitally-encoded television programs in response to a control signal;
• said particular digitally-encoded television program being subject to allocation to any of said data transmission channels, each of said data transmission channels containing at least one digitally-encoded television program and television program schedule data for all of said television programs on all of said data transmission channels;
• user-operable data entry means for entering data;
• and
• control means coupled to said selecting means and to said data entry means for generating said control signal in response to said user-entered data;
• said control means selecting a digitally-encoded television program in response to said user-entered data, said television program schedule data defining the relationship of each of said digitally-encoded television programs to respective ones of said plurality of data transmission channels.