Patent ID: 7603687

Claim:
In a system having one or more applications, a method for scaling, storing, and managing electronic program guide (EPG) data received from one or more EPG data providers comprising the acts of: receiving EPG data from one or more EPG data providers, the EPG data comprising channel data, and time period data; in order to accommodate storage of selected and scaled portions of the received EPG data and thereby exclude from storage remaining portions of the received EPG data, scaling the received EPG data, wherein said scaling includes prior to storing the received EPG data, scaling the received EPG data temporally, wherein the temporal scaling includes making a determination, using the time period data of the received EPG data, of whether portions of the received EPG data will be excluded from storage, wherein the determination is made by means of adjustable and user-definable time range system settings which define at least one time range for which collected EPG data will be stored, and wherein EPG data that has a time period outside the at least one time range will be excluded from being stored, and prior to storing the received EPG data, scaling the received EPG data selectively to a variable and customizable level of richness, wherein the variable and customizable level of richness is determined by adjustable and user-definable system settings, and whereby a variable amount of the received EPG data will be stored corresponding to the variable and customizable level of richness, and a variable amount of the received EPG data that does not correspond to the variable and customizable level of richness will be excluded from being stored; and subsequent to scaling the received EPG data, writing the portions of the received EPG data that were scaled and thereby selected for storage into a storage associated with the system, and to thereby selectively limit an amount of the received EPG data that is actually stored such that the EPG data stored by the system is altered from the EPG data received from the one or more EPG data providers and such that at least some of the received EPG data is selectively excluded from being written to the storage.