Patent ID: 8087051

Claim:
A method of managing channel lineup information in a television system, the method comprising: receiving an external program guide offered by a television program provider external to the television system, the external program guide including external channel lineup information; generating internal channel lineup information locally in the television system from the external channel lineup information, where all of the internal channel lineup information combined contains information less than all of the combined external channel lineup information; using the internal channel lineup information for internal processing of a database management system; and updating the internal channel lineup information upon receiving notification of a change to the external channel lineup information, by repeating the receiving and the generating steps, and wherein: a data structure of the external channel lineup information includes more variables than a data structure of the internal channel lineup information; name text strings of channels in the external program guide are replaced with indexes in the internal channel lineup information; the internal channel lineup information includes the data structure and a plurality of string tables including the indexes; and the plurality of string tables comprises: a plurality of data elements, each data element containing a string and a reference count of the string, wherein the reference count is a number of attempts made to put the string into one of the string tables; an array of pointers to the data elements, the array of pointers sorted alphabetically according to the string associated with the data element to which each pointer is directed; and a data pointer directed to the array of sorted pointers.