Patent ID: 8255960

Claim:
A method of providing video-on-demand (VOD) services comprising: transmitting service information from a VOD service system to a set-top box via an out-of-band channel; transmitting location and identification information from the set top box to the VOD service system via the out-of-band channel after the transmitting of service information; transmitting a VOD service request from the set-top box to the VOD service system via the out-of-band channel after transmitting location and identification information of the set top box; and providing the requested content from the VOD service system to a distribution system via an in-band channel with reference to the location and identification information of the set-top box, and providing the requested content from the distribution system to the set-top box via the in-band channel, wherein the location information of the set-top box is a transport identifier (TSID), the location information, is stored in a TSID table, and the transmitting location and identification information is generated by extracting VOD transport data by analyzing a network interface table (NIT) and a virtual channel table (VCT) contained in the service information; scanning the VOD transport data to obtain a program association table (PAT); and extracting TSIDs from the PAT.