Patent ID: 7096487

Claim:
An apparatus for encoding realtime and non-realtime interactive program guide (IPG) content comprising a realtime video portion and non-realtime guide graphics portion, the apparatus comprising: a non-realtime encoder configured to encode the non-realtime guide graphics portion into a plurality of encoded non-realtime graphics slices; a realtime encoder configured to encode the realtime video portion into encoded realtime video slices; means for assigning packet identifiers to the realtime video portio slices and the non-realtime guide graphics portion slices, wherein said assigning step assigns a different packet identifier to each guide graphics slice that is part of a different guide graphic, and assigns a common packet identifier to all common realtime video portion slices; a remultiplexer configured to repacketize the encoded non-realtime guide graphics portion slices and the encoded realtime video portion slices into transport packets; a slice combiner coupled to the realtime and non-realtime encoders and the remultiplexer, the slice combiner configured to combine slices of encoded realtime video portion with slices of encoded non-realtime guide graphics portion in a predetermined order; and a re-timestamp unit coupled to the remultiplexer and configured to provide timestamps to be applied to the transport packets in order to synchronize the realtime video portion and non-realtime guide graphics portion of said IPG.