Patent ID: 8910210

Claim:
A method of processing an EPG (Electronic Program Guide) metadata in a network device, the method comprising: performing a services discovery procedure utilizing service discovery metadata components supplied by a service provider, wherein the step of performing comprises: receiving a master SI table which locates in a master SI table location in provisioning information, wherein the provisioning information includes multiple elements, an EPG provider information element in the multiple elements having both a first delivery layer element and an EPG data locator element, the first delivery layer element giving a list of one or more types of delivery layer that are delivered by one or more of an EPG metadata provider's EPG data sources, wherein the EPG data locator element has a second delivery layer element, the second delivery layer element giving one or more types of delivery layer that are delivered by an EPG data source corresponding to the EPG data locator, receiving a virtual channel map table which locates in virtual channel map locations in the received master SI table, receiving a virtual channel description table which locates in virtual channel description table locations in the received virtual channel map table, and receiving a source table which locates in source table locations in the received virtual channel description table; and processing an EPG metadata, wherein profiles for the EPG metadata are classified by 3 sorts of an EPG full profile, an EPG lite profile having less than information in the EPG full profile and an EPG list profile having less than information in the EPG lite profile, wherein the type of delivery layer represents a quantity of the EPG metadata, wherein the types of delivery layer include at least one of a full layer for delivering full EPG metadata of the EPG full profile, a lite layer for delivering lite EPG metadata of the EPG lite profile for light weight devices and a list layer for delivering list EPG metadata of the EPG list profile for supporting listings of available programs, wherein the EPG lite profile is obtained from the full profile at least by eliminating some of classification schemes, wherein the light weight devices are devices that have resource limitations, and wherein a delivery of the EPG metadata performs using a service guide delivery unit (SGDU) containing a collection of fragments that meet a grouping criteria, and a grouping of the fragments in the SGDU conforms to the grouping criteria declared for the SGDU in SGDDs (Service Guide Delivery Descriptors) announcing the SGDU.