Patent ID: 7856647

Claim:
A method for providing standardized genre assignments, the method comprising: receiving at least a first digital data transmission, wherein at least one program in the first digital data transmission is associated with a genre according to a first genre assignment schedule; identifying a jurisdiction associated with the first genre assignment schedule; obtaining data from the first digital data transmission that identifies the associated genre, wherein the data that identifies an associated genre is carried in standard content data or user data, and wherein obtaining data further includes decoding user data to recover original genre data associated with a given program of the at least one program if the user data are defined, else if user data are not defined, then decoding standard content data to recover the original genre data associated with the given program of the at least one program; and mapping the at least one program to a genre in a standardized genre assignment schedule according to (i) the identified jurisdiction associated with the first genre assignment schedule and (ii) the associated genre identified from the data of the first digital data transmission, wherein the standardized genre assignment schedule is configured to resolve a mix of genre assignments for different countries and regions.