Patent ID: 8782701

Claim:
A method for watching missed television (TV) programs, comprising: receiving Electronic Program Guide (EPG) information distributed by a headend; obtaining a local table of missed programs and a current time, wherein the local table of missed programs comprises a local table of missed series and a local table of missed common programs, and wherein the local table is stored at a user terminal; determining that a program has been missed when the user terminal is in a non-working status according to the local table of missed programs and the current time; updating information of the missed program in the local table of missed programs according to the EPG information; detecting whether the missed program is currently being played; and implementing a service of watching the missed program when it is detected that the missed program is currently being played, wherein implementing the service of watching the missed program comprises: switching to a target channel and updating the local table of missed programs when a user chooses to watch the missed program at the user terminal; determining whether the missed program is a series by determining whether a name of a program in the EPG information distributed by the headend includes brackets and whether a number is in the brackets; determining a missing tag of a current episode from the local table of missed series and determining whether all episodes of the series have been watched when the missed program is in the series; notifying the user that all the episodes of the series have been watched and deleting a tracking record relevant to the series from the local table of missed programs when all the episodes of the series have been watched; and deleting a tracking record relevant to the missed program from the local table of missed common programs when the missed program is not in the series, wherein the local table of missed series comprises a plurality of columns of information, and wherein the plurality of columns of information comprises a name column, an alias column, a total number of episodes column, a language column, a main channel column, a current schedule column, and a playing time column, and wherein the local table of missed common programs comprises a plurality of columns of information, and wherein the plurality of columns of information comprises a name column, an alias column, a language column, a missed or not missed column, a main channel column, a played or not played column, a playing time column, and a times of choosing not to watch column.