Method and apparatus for subscription control for television programming.

摘要

One-way subscription television service control allows the subscribers to subscribe in advance to a variety of programming or to select programming on a pay-per-view basis. This involves coding program identification information (20) according to preselected program characteristics and transmitting this information concurrently with programming being transmitted having the said program characteristics to all program subscribers. This is received and read into a subscription table memory (10) at every subscriber address. Individual program subscription information (40) is coded for each subscriber address according to programming selections made by each subscriber and is periodically transmitted to all subscribers. The program subscription information for each subscriber address which corresponds to that subscriber address coded with program subscription information being transmitted at a given time is received and written into the memory (10) where it is compared with the program identification information which has been read into the memory (10). As a result individual subscriber program receivers are enabled so that each subscriber is able to receive programming then being transmitted in response to correspondance between the program subscription information and the program identification information.