Digital TV scanning optimization

A method for scanning a plurality of digital transport streams for electronic program guide data, comprising:

• (a) performing an initial scan of a plurality of digital transport streams, each digital transport stream including a plurality of audio, visual or data services and electronic program guide data for said services, the initial scan comprising scanning electronic program guide data in each of the plurality of digital transport streams for each of the services in each of the plurality of digital data streams in a predetermined order;
• (b) gathering user data based on services accessed by one or more users of a digital display device;
• (c) ranking the plurality of data streams according to said user data, the ranking comprising determining the digital transport streams for each of the services viewed by a user, summing service viewing time for each digital transport streams and ordering the streams by greatest to least user service viewing time per stream;
• (d) determining a scan threshold defining a first subset comprising less than all of the plurality of streams providing a number of services likely to be accessed by the user;
• (e) after a first time interval, scanning at least the first subset of the plurality of data streams in a second order based on the step of ranking until a threshold number of streams has been scanned;
• (f) after a second time interval and if step (e) has not occurred, scanning each of the plurality of data streams beginning with the first subset in the second order followed by scanning streams not in the subset in the second order.

A digital receiver comprising:

• a processing device;
• a digital data interface;
• at least one tuner accessing a plurality of digital data streams each stream including a plurality of entertainment broadcast services and electronic program guide data for said services;
• and
• a storage device including processor readable code to instruct the processing device to perform a method comprising:
• scanning electronic program guide data for the plurality of services in each of the plurality of digital data streams, the scanning occurring in an order based on data indicating viewing preferences for a geographical region;
• storing user data based on services viewed by one or more users of the digital display device;
• ranking the plurality of data streams according to said user data, said ranking including ordering the digital transport streams by greatest to least user service viewing time for entertainment services viewed by a user on each stream;
• determining a scan threshold defining a first subset comprising less than all of the plurality of streams providing a number of services likely to be accessed by the user;
• after a first time interval, scanning at least the first subset of the plurality of data streams in a second order based on the step of ranking until a threshold number of streams has been scanned.