Patent ID: 8074243

Claim:
A method for generating an electronic program guide (EPG), comprising: sharing EPG data among at least two service providers (SPs) and at least one terminal interconnected over a network; searching the shared EPG data; creating an EPG of the at least one terminal according to the searched shared EPG data and customization information provided by the at least one terminal; wherein the creating the EPG of the at least one terminal according to the searched shared EPG data and customization information provided by the at least one terminal comprises: at the at least one terminal, parsing the searched shared EPG data to acquire a characteristic value of the searched shared EPG data, storing the characteristic value, establishing the customization information, comparing the customization information with the characteristic value, and creating the EPG of the at least one terminal according to the customization information when the characteristic value satisfies requirements of the customization information; wherein the sharing of the EPG data among the at least two SPs and the at least one terminal interconnected over the network comprises: mapping a tag of each node in the network into a node identifier and assigning the node identifier uniquely to the node; mapping the characteristic value of the EPG data to be shared into a data identifier and storing each data identifier on a subsequent node or a previous node of the data identifier, and associating the shared EPG data with the subsequent node or the previous node; the subsequent node referring to a first node whose node identifier is equal to or greater than the data identifier and the previous node referring to a first node whose node identifier is smaller than the data identifier.