Patent ID: 8645999

Claim:
A method of processing an EPG (Electronic Program Guide) metadata in a network device, the method comprising: performing a services discovery procedure utilizing multiple service discovery metadata components supplied by a service provider, wherein the step of performing comprises multiple steps of: receiving provisioning information, wherein the provisioning information includes multiple elements, an EPG provider information element in the multiple elements having both a first delivery layer element and an EPG data locator element, the first delivery layer element giving a type of delivery layer that is delivered by at least one of an EPG metadata provider's multicast EPG data sources, wherein the EPG data locator element includes a second delivery layer element which gives a type of delivery layer that is delivered b an EPG data source corresponding to the data locator element, receiving a master SI table which locates in a master SI table location in the provisioning information, receiving a virtual channel map table which locates in a virtual channel map location in the received master SI table, receiving a virtual channel description table which locates in a virtual channel description table location in the received virtual channel map table, and receiving a source table which locates in a source table location in the received virtual channel description table; and processing an EPG metadata, wherein profiles for the EPG metadata are classified by 3 sorts of an EPG full profile, an EPG lite profile having less than information in the EPG full profile and an EPG list profile having less than information in the EPG lite profile, wherein the type of delivery layer represents a quantity of the EPG metadata, wherein the type of delivery layer represents one of three types, the three types including a full layer for delivering full EPG metadata of the EPG full profile, a lite layer for delivering lite EPG metadata of the EPG lite profile, and a list layer for delivering list EPG metadata of the EPG list profile, wherein the EPG Lite profile is obtained from the full profile at least by eliminating some of classification schemes; and wherein fragments in an SGDU (Service Guide Delivery Unit) belong to the same profile, and wherein SGDUs described in the SGDD (Service Guide Delivery Desciptor) contain fragments of the same profile.