Patent ID: 8904444

Claim:
A method of acquiring and accumulating data from a server via a network, comprising the steps of: transmitting a request for a plurality of items of data, the request including a first of one or more ingestion markers associated with the data, the first ingestion marker representing a last occurrence of when a change was made to the data; receiving data via a transfer protocol in response to the request, the data having at least one associated ingestion marker different than the first ingestion marker transmitted with the request; and storing the data and the at least one associated ingestion marker received during said receiving step in memory; wherein said transmitting, receiving and storing steps are performed electronically with an electronic client device communicating with the server over the network, wherein the data is Electronic Program Guide (EPG) data including information concerning scheduled programs and wherein, for each scheduled program, the plurality of items is program metadata including channel information, title information, date information, time slot information, and other metadata concerning the scheduled program.