Patent ID: 7424729

Claim:
A method to optimize a bandwidth of a digital television (DTV) transport stream and to determine transmission cycles for tables to be transmitted as part of the DTV transport stream, the method comprising: setting transmission cycles for event information tables (EITs) to be transmitted in sequence according to the following condition: transmission cycle (EITi- 1 ) <transmission cycle (EITi), for i=1and 2, a time span covered by EITi- 1 being prior to a time span covered by EITi, wherein the transmission cycle for the EIT 0 is set narrower than the transmission cycle for the EIT 1 ; setting a transmission cycle for an extended text table ETT 3 containing program description information associated with one of the event information tables other than the EIT 0 and the EIT 1 , wherein the transmission cycle of the ETT 3 is greater than a sum of the transmission cycle of the EIT 0 and the transmission cycle of the EIT 1 .