Patent ID: 8225354

Claim:
A machine implemented method for merging electronic program guide (EPG) data, the method comprising: scanning to find active tuners, each tuner is able to obtain EPG data from zero or more in-band sources and zero or more out-of-band sources; creating a lineup object for each of the sources of EPG data for each of the active tuners; accessing EPG data for a plurality of sources of program content, the accessing includes receiving the EPG data from the active tuners; selecting rules from a plurality of rule sets, the selected rules define how the EPG data for a pair of the lineup objects is to be merged, the pair of lineup objects include a primary lineup object and a secondary lineup object, the rule sets include a first set for merging in-band EPG data from a primary object and a secondary object, a second set for merging out-of-band EPG data from a primary and a secondary object, and a third set for merging in-band EPG data from a primary object and out-of-band EPG data from a secondary object; and merging the EPG data from the plurality of sources into merged EPG data based on the selected rules.