Patent ID: 7594253

Claim:
A method of storing channel information in a digital television receiver, comprising: tuning to a selected physical channel; reading program specific information (PSI) on the selected physical channel; determining from the PSI whether the physical channel is PSIP compliant, and if not, then directly concluding that the physical channel is an MPEG compliant channel, where said concluding is based exclusively upon the determination that the channel is not PSIP compliant; storing tuning data for tuning the digital television receiver in no more than exactly three lookup tables, the tables storing data as follows: storing in a first lookup table an attribute associated with the major channel explicitly designating as a table entry that a major channel associated with the physical channel is or is not a PSIP compliant channel, and where the table data entries consist of major channel numbers and their associated attribute designating whether or not the table major channel is or is not a PSIP compliant channel; if the selected physical channel is a PSIP compliant channel: storing a TSID corresponding to the selected physical channel as an entry associated with the PSIP compliant physical channel in a second lookup table; and storing a major channel corresponding to the selected physical channel's TSID as entries in a third lookup table; and if the selected physical channel is an MPEG compliant channel: storing no additional attributes in the second and third lookup tables; whereby, tuning of an MPEG compliant channel is carried out without reference to the second and third channel.