Method for acquisition and display of an on-screen program guide

A method for translating the generic, raw information of a broadcast on-screen program guide service into a displayable screen signal that can drive TV electronics, utilizing the step of building a virtual generic screen before creating the displayable screen signal in order to ease the translation burden from generic to TV specific information.

FIELD OF THE INVENTION 
The present invention relates to on-screen program guides of the type whose 
information is broadcast, i.e., distributed, to a television receiver or 
display unit (hereinafter TV) and subsequently used to control the 
functioning of the TV and/or related apparatuses, such as video tape 
recorders (VTRs). 
DISCUSSION OF THE RELATED ART 
Recently an interactive on-screen program guide, which is updated by 
broadcast transmissions and stored in the broadcast receiver, has become a 
reality. One such on-screen program guide is STARSIGHT (TM). The reader is 
referred generally to U.S. Pat. No. 4,706,121 for an exposition of such a 
system. Basically, program guide data can be broadcast during the vertical 
blanking interval (VBI) of a regular broadcast and stored in a program 
guide memory within the receiver. The receiver is generally a TV, although 
it may be a stand alone unit connected to the TV. The viewer can then 
superimpose the program guide over the regularly displayed programming and 
select viewing or recording options from the guide. The on-screen 
programming guide is controlled by a separate microprocessor from that of 
the TV. 
The broadcast program guide data is raw data unrelated to the operation of 
the TV on which it will be displayed. Thus the program guide data is 
"universal" or generic and must be formatted or translated into a signal 
or language which the display circuitry of the TV can display. 
This translation of the raw program guide data into a displayable screen 
signal for the particular circuitry of the TV can require a large amount 
of programming. Because there are many models of TVs, and because product 
cycles for an individual model of TV are short, a great many translation 
programs would have to be accomplished on a continual basis to support a 
scheme for an on-screen programming guide broadcast to a large enough 
customer base to make the scheme economically feasible. 
There is, therefore, a need to simplify the translation of the generic 
program guide data into the displayable screens of various TV models. It 
is among the objects of the present invention to provide a scheme for 
simplifying such a translation in order to relieve the burden of 
translation programming necessary to support such a broadcast on-screen 
program guide scheme.

DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED 
As seen in FIG. 1, a TV 11 receives a broadcast signal 13 containing 
on-screen program guide data in the vertical blanking interval (VBI). The 
signal 13 is routed to the TV control module 15. The TV control module 15 
removes the on-screen program guide data from the broadcast signal 13 and 
transfers this data to the on-screen program guide module 17. While 
indicated as being within the TV 11, the on-screen program guide module 
may also be a stand alone unit. The on-screen program guide module 17 then 
must organize the data in a manner suitable for interaction with the TV 
module 15 and display electronics 23 as further explained below. 
As the data is in generic, or raw, form it must be translated into a form, 
or language, that the specific model of TV will "understand", i.e., the 
type of signal the TV display electronics 23 can use to produce a display 
of the on-screen program guide. This is the function of the translator 
block 21. Were the translator block 21 to convert the on-screen program 
guide raw data directly into displayable screen data with all instructions 
necessary to operate the display electronics 23 of the TV 11 a translation 
program of 15K-20K bytes of complex code would be required and would have 
to be rewritten everytime a new TV control module 15 was introduced. As 
further explained below, by following the method of the present invention, 
only about 1K byte of translation code is necessary and would have to be 
rewritten upon introduction of a new TV control module 15. It will be 
appreciated that the translator block 21 may be physically incorporated 
into either the on-screen program guide module 17 or the TV control module 
15 as dictated by necessity or convenience and as indicated by its 
location between the modules 15 and 17. 
Referring to FIGS. 1 and 2, the broadcast signal 13 is originally 
distributed to the TV microprocessor 23 within the TV control module 15. 
The TV microprocessor 23 strips the on-screen program guide data from the 
VBI and transfers this data to the on-screen program guide microprocessor 
25 where it is packetized into a specific length of data for further 
processing in the on-screen program guide module 17. A data depacketer 27 
then breaks down the packetized data into "commands", i.e., program guide 
data with associated instructions and identifiers, of variable length. The 
database front end 29 then takes the commands and stores only the 
necessary program guide data in an orderly fashion into DRAM, or other 
suitable memory 31. The data base back end 33 performs the retrieval from 
the memory 31 of program guide data which is requested by the display 
formatter 35. The display formatter 35 then formats the raw program guide 
data into a generic screen 37 consisting of "primitives", i.e., 
descriptors of shapes, their colors and borders, alphanumerics and icons 
contained therein, etc. without putting these descriptors into a language 
which the display electronics 23 can understand. The display interface 
translator 21 can then translate the generic screen 37 into a language 
which will drive the display electronics when the program guide is called 
on to be displayed. 
As illustrated by the flow chart of FIG. 3, when the operator of the TV 
selects the program guide function, the TV microprocessor will command 39 
the on-screen program guide microprocessor to issue instructions to the 
display formatter to compile a generic screen. The TV microprocessor will 
then poll 41 the on-screen program guide microprocessor to determine if 
any generic screen primitives, or segments thereof, are compiled. If yes, 
these generic screen descriptors are written 43 to the translator. The 
on-screen program guide microprocessor is repeatedly polled 45 until there 
are no more segments to write to the translator. At that time the generic 
screen is translated 47 by the translator to a language the display 
electronics can understand, i.e., the generic screen is converted into a 
displayable screen, although both screens are virtual. The displayable 
screen is then sent to the display electronics to produce the displayed 
on-screen program guide, which the TV operator can use to review and 
select programming for display or recording. 
While the present invention has been illustrated and described in 
connection with the preferred embodiments, it is not to be limited to the 
particular structure shown, because many variations thereof will be 
evident to one skilled in the art and are intended to be encompassed in 
the present invention as set forth in the following claims: 
Having thus described the invention,