Patent ID: 7367042

Claim:
A hyperlinked reception system comprising: a receiver in communication with a broadcast channel, the receiver decoding a digital broadcast signal transmitted over the broadcast channel to recover a video signal, a plurality of masks, and a plurality of object data packets included in the broadcast signal, each mask corresponding to a particular video frame of a video program and including graphics data associated with one or more video objects in the particular video frame, each mask including an identifier to an object mapping table included in at least a particular one of the plurality of object data packets, the object mapping table including an entry associated with each of the one or more video objects in the particular video frame, each entry in the object mapping table referencing one or more information data structures included in one or more of the plurality of object data packets, the information data structures including information associated with the corresponding video object; and a display device in communication with said receiver, the display device overlaying one or more graphics images on a particular video frame based on the graphics data in the mask for the particular video frame, and a processor coupled to the receiver, the processor being configured to: receive a user selection associated with one of the graphics images overlaid on the particular video frame; retrieve the identifier of the object mapping table from the mask corresponding to the particular video frame responsive to the user selection; retrieve the object mapping table based on the retrieved identifier; locate the entry in the object mapping table for the video object associated with the one of the graphics images; identify the one or more information data structures referenced in the located entry; retrieve information in the identified one or more information data structures; and display the retrieved information on the display device.