Patent ID: 7890987

Claim:
A method for acquiring event information table (EIT) information in an interactive television system, the method comprising: monitoring an EIT broadcast at a client device, said EIT broadcast comprising a plurality of EIT sections, wherein at least a portion of said EIT broadcast is cyclic; initializing an EIT section table, wherein said initializing comprises incorporating section processing latencies of the client device in determining whether a requested section is to be acquired out of an order in which the requested section is broadcast; detecting a first request for a first section of said EIT sections and a second request for a second section of said EIT sections; requesting acquisition of the second EIT section prior to the first EIT section responsive to determining it is likely that the second EIT section will be attainable in the EIT broadcast prior to the first EIT section, wherein the first EIT section is available prior to the second EIT section; wherein determining it is likely the second EIT section will be attainable prior to the first EIT section is based at least in part on an amount of time required by the client device to process the first EIT section.