Patent ID: 7861269

Claim:
A method comprising: compressing electronic program guide (EPG) data using: a character compression technique that generates a compression table by examining the EPG data to recognize common sets of characters, the compression table being used to assign a plurality of character encoding values to represent each common set of characters; a word compression technique that analyzes the EPG data to create a word table that includes words having a predetermined number of letters, wherein words having the predetermined number of letters are represented by a plurality of word encoding values; and spacing and capitalization rules to reduce a number of character encoding values in the EPG data in which one of the spacing rules includes removing character encoding values that identify spaces in the compressed EPG data, and one of the capitalization rules includes limiting a number of character encoding values such that separate encoding values are not needed to represent capital letters; applying at least one of the capitalization rules and one of the spacing rules to a word obtained from the compressed EPG data, the compressed EPG data including the plurality of word encoding values and the plurality of character encoding values, wherein each of the capitalization and spacing rules is based on an arrangement, in the compressed EPG data, of one word encoding value that references the obtained word with respect to at least one of: one or more of the character encoding values; and one other word encoding value; and outputting the obtained word to which at least one of the capitalization rules and the spacing rules was applied.