Patent ID: 7516467
Filing Date: 2009-04-07
Classification: H04H,H04N

Abstract:
1. An electronic program information preparing and transmitting apparatus adapted to prepare electronic program information related to a plurality of channel services and for transmitting the prepared electronic program information to at least one users' terminals via a plurality of transport streams, comprising: electronic program information preparing means for preparing: (i): distributing information means indicating which channel service should be distributed to which transport stream and indicating correspondences, respectively, between the transport streams and the channel services broadcast by each of a plurality of broadcast service stations, wherein the correspondences include a correspondence between plural transport streams from among said transport steams and plural channel services which are at least part of the channel services that are adapted to be broadcast by the plurality of broadcast service stations and which are adapted to be broadcast by the same broadcast service station, and (ii): a plurality of channel services, comprising: a first type of electronic program information related to each of said channel services; and a second type of electric program information related to each of the channel services; wherein the first type of electronic program information is described with a first degree of detail of program information and the second type of electronic program information is described with a second degree of detail of program information, and wherein said first degree of detail of program information is greater, in a period covering the channel services, than said second degrees of detail of program information; electronic program information distributing means for distributing, on the basis of the distributing information, to each transport stream: (i): the first type of electronic program information concerning each channel service to a first transport stream assigned to the channel service, wherein, the first type of electronic program information concerning each of the plural channel services broadcast by the same broadcast service station is adapted to be distributed to each of the plural transport streams assigned to the same broadcast service station, and (ii): the second type of electronic program information concerning each channel service is adapted to be distributed to the remaining at least one transport streams other than the first transport stream; and transmitting means, for transmitting at least the transport streams to which the electronic program information has been distributed, in which the transmission of the transport streams to the users' terminals is adapted to allow each of the users' terminals to receive said first and second degrees of detail of program information so as to display the electronic program information occupying, in its description, both of a period of time for a currently tuned channel service and a second period of time for non-tuned channel services, the first period of time being longer that the second period of time in the period covering the channel services.