Patent ID: 8051450

Claim:
A method for operating an electronic program guide displaying television programming information, comprising the following steps: displaying a user interface indicating television programming information comprising a plurality of channels, time periods and programs configured as a program grid comprising program tiles associated with programs, wherein a user can realize when and on what channel a program is offered by viewing a program tile associated with the program, and wherein the user interface implements recording and reminding functionality by providing icons configured to be dragged and dropped by the user into a program tile associated with any program, where the icons can be seen after being dropped, to indicate desire by the user to record the program or be reminded of the program, respectively; generating a query, in response to activation by the user of a query generating button defined by the user interface, wherein the activation of the query generating button results in display of a find window of the user interface to assist the user in creating a query, wherein the query defines a search of an electronic programming guide database, wherein the user interface is configured to allow the user to save the query, and wherein the saving results in creation of a soft button, defined on the user interface, such that operation of the soft button allows a user to quickly retrieve and operate the saved query; receiving search parameters from the find window, the parameters comprising: genre; network; rating; and program name; displaying an advanced find window in response to selection of an advanced query button within the find window, wherein the advanced find window allows search by additional search parameters including keywords, wherein the advanced find window defines a plurality of user created searches, wherein a user created search may be saved by the user by associating the search with a tabbed folder, and wherein tabbed folders may be created and removed by operation of buttons within the advanced find window; querying the electronic programming guide database using filters, comprising: a filter finding program types desired by the user; and a filter removing program types not desired by the user; and unifying plural queries using a unified query function configured to combine queries of plural individuals into a unified query, wherein the combining is performed by a Boolean AND or OR function; and operating the unified query function as a background query, the operating comprising: periodically running the unified query function; identifying a program according to the unified query; displaying an icon on a screen, for view by the user, after identifying the program; and recording the identified program if the user does not activate the icon prior to a viewing time of the identified program.