Electronic program guide
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Electronic program guides and interactive program guides provide users of television, radio, and other media applications with continuously updated menus displaying scheduling information for current and upcoming programming.
Non-interactive electronic program guides (EPG) are typically available for television and radio, and consist of a digitally-displayed, non-interactive menu of program scheduling information shown by a cable or satellite TV provider to its viewers on a dedicated channel. EPGs are broadcast by specialized video generation equipment housed within each such provider's central television distribution facility. By tuning into an EPG channel, a menu is displayed that lists current and upcoming programs on all available channels.
A more modern form of the EPG, associated with both television and radio broadcasting, is the interactive [electronic] program guide (IPG, though often referred to as EPG[1]). An IPG allows television viewers and radio listeners to navigate scheduling information menus interactively, selecting and discovering programming by time, title, station, or genre using an input device such as a keypad, computer keyboard, or TV remote control. Its interactive menus are generated entirely within local receiving or display equipment using raw scheduling data sent by individual broadcast stations or centralized scheduling information providers. A typical IPG provides information covering the next 7 or 14 days.
Data to populate an interactive EPG may be distributed over the Internet, either for a charge or free of charge, and implemented on equipment connected directly or through a computer to the Internet[2].
Television-based IPGs in conjunction with Programme Delivery Control (PDC) technology can also facilitate the selection of programs for recording with digital video recorders (DVRs), also known as personal video recorders (PVRs).
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[edit] History
[edit] Key events
[edit] North America
In 1981 United Video Satellite Group launched the first North American EPG service, known simply as The Electronic Program Guide channel. It allowed United States and Canadian cable systems to provide on-screen listings to their subscribers 24 hours a day on a dedicated cable channel. Raw listings data for the service was supplied via satellite to participating cable systems, each of which installed a computer within its headend facility to present that data to subscribers in a format customized to the system's unique channel line-up. The EPG Channel would later be renamed Prevue Guide and go on to serve as the de facto EPG service for North American cable systems throughout the remainder of the 1980s, all of the 1990s, and – as TV Guide Network – for the first decade of the 21st century.
In June 1988 US patent 4751578 was awarded to Eli Reiter, Michael H. Zemering, and Frank Shannon. This patent concerned the implementation of a searchable electronic program guide – an interactive program guide (IPG).
In 1996 Prevue Networks introduced the first IPG service in the United States, Prevue Interactive, designed for the General Instruments DCT 1000 series of set-top digital cable boxes. Prevue Interactive would later become TV Guide Interactive, and then i-Guide.
[edit] Western Europe
In Western Europe 59 million TV households were equipped with EPGs at the end of 2008, a penetration of 36 percent of all TV households. But the situation varies from country to country, depending on the status of digitization and the role of pay-TV and IPTV in each market. With Sky as an early mover and the BBC iPlayer or Virgin Media as ambitious followers, the UK is to date the most developed and innovative EPG market and has an EPG penetration rate of 70 percent. Scandinavia also is a highly innovative EPG market. Even in Italy, the EPG penetration is relatively high with 38 percent. In France, IPTV is the main driver of EPG developments. And in comparison to many other European countries Germany stays behind, due to a relatively slow digitization process and a minor role for pay-TV in Germany.[3]
[edit] Current applications
Interactive program guides (IPGs, also called EPGs) are nearly ubiquitous in most broadcast media today. For television, IPG support is built into almost all modern receivers for digital cable, digital satellite, and over-the-air digital broadcasting. They are also commonly featured in digital video recorders such as TiVo and MythTV. Higher-end receivers for digital broadcast radio and digital satellite radio commonly feature built-in IPGs as well.
Demand for non-interactive TV electronic program guides—television channels displaying listings for currently-airing and upcoming programming—has been nearly eliminated by the widespread availability of interactive program guides for television. Television-based IPGs provide the same information as EPGs, but faster and often in much more detail. When television IPGs are supported by PVRs they enable viewers to plan viewing and recording by selecting broadcasts directly from the EPG, rather than programming timers.
The aspect of an IPG most noticed by users is its graphical user interface. typically a grid or table listing channel names and program titles and times: Television-based IPG interfaces allow the user to highlight any given listing and call up additional information about it supplied by the EPG provider. Programs on offer from subchannels may also be listed.
Typical IPGs also allow users the option of searching by genre, as well as immediate one-touch access to, or recording of, a selected program. Reminders and parental control functions are also often included. The IPGs within some DirecTV IRDs can control a VCRs using an attached infrared emitter that emulates its remote control.
The latest development in IPGs is personalization, where semantics are used to permit interest-based suggestions to one or several viewers on what to watch or record based on past patterns. One such IPG, iFanzy, allows users to customize its appearance.
Standards for delivery of scheduling information to television-based IPGs vary from application to application, and by country. Older television IPGs like Guide Plus+ relied on analog technology (such as the vertical blanking interval of analog television video signals) to distribute listings data to IPG-enabled consumer receiving equipment. In Europe, the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) published standard ETS 300 707 to standardize the delivery of IPG data over analog terrestrial television broadcast signals. Listings data for IPGs integrated into today's digital terrestrial TV and radio receivers is typically sent within each station's MPEG transport stream, or alongside it in a special data stream. The ATSC standard for terrestrial digital TV, for instance, uses tables sent in each station's PSIP. These tables are meant to contain program start times and titles along with additional program descriptive metadata. Current time signals are also included for on-screen display purposes, and they are also used to set timers on recording devices.
Devices embedded within modern digital cable and satellite TV receivers, on the other hand, customarilly rely upon third-party listings metadata aggregators to provide them with their on-screen listings data. Such companies include Tribune TV Data, Gemstar-TV Guide, and FYI Television, Inc. in the United States and Europe, TV Media in the United States and Canada, Broadcasting Dataservices in Europe and Dayscript in Latin America.
A growing trend is for manufacturers such as Elgato and Topfield and software developers such as Microsoft in their Windows Media Center to use an Internet connection to acquire data for their built-in IPGs. This enables greater interactivity with the IPG such as media downloads, series recording and programming of the recordings for the IPG remotely; for example, IceTV in Australia enables Tivo-like services to competing DVR/PVR manufacturers and software companies.
In developing IPG software, manufacturers must include functions to address the growing volumes of increasingly complex data associated with programming. This data includes program descriptions, schedules, ratings, user configuration information such as favorite channel lists, and multimedia content. To meet this need, some set-top box software designs incorporate a "database layer" that utilizes either proprietary functions or a commercial, off-the-shelf embedded database system for sorting, storing and retrieving programming data.[4][5]
Most technical details are invisible to users, who simply have a program guide on their equipment which "just works".
[edit] See also
- IceTV
- NexTView
- TV Genius
- TV Guide Channel (formerly Prevue Guide and The EPG Channel)
[edit] References
- ^ A typical PVR website which makes no references to "IPG", using instead "EPG" throughout for the interactive electronic programme guide, as can be confirmed with a site search
- ^ An example of a computer program to export Internet-derived data from an EPG (DigiGuide) to set timers on a PVR (Topfield)
- ^ EPG Forecast, Western Europe (2008-2014)
- ^ Gorine, Andrei. "Programming Guide Manages Networked Digital TV", EE Times, December, 2002. Retrieved on August 15, 2008.
- ^ Graves, Steve. "Hybrid Data Management Gets Traction In Set-Top Boxes", Embedded.com, July, 2008. Retrieved on August 15, 2008.
[edit] External links
- ETSI standard ETS 300 707 "Electronic Programme Guide (EPG); Protocol for a TV Guide using electronic data transmission"
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