Method and apparatus for conditionally processing, storing, and displaying digital channel content in a television reception system

摘要

Content used in creating an electronic program guide and/or channels for a television reception system is delivered to a local receiving device, such as a direct to home satellite receiver, as individual digital objects. Rules (i.e., conditional expressions) may be embedded in the digital objects to allow different actions in different situations. These rules can be used to determine whether an object should be stored, which objects should be included in an electronic program guide, and/or what content should be used to create a particular channel.

主权项

1. An apparatus for conditionally processing digital objects addressed to a receiver/decoder in a satellite television system comprising:
a satellite signal receiver for receiving a digital object from a satellite; a memory for storing the digital object; and, a control circuit operatively coupled to the receiver and the memory for determining if the digital object is a conditional object, wherein conditional objects are objects which include a rule and an embedded object, the embedded object including content used to construct a program guide at the receiver/decoder, the control circuit logically separating the embedded object from the rule if the digital object is a conditional object, the control circuit executing a machine executable instruction included in the rule of the conditional object to display the digital object in the program guide if the rule evaluates to true and, if the rule evaluates to false, to detect a change in a state of a variable utilized in the rule and, in response to the change, re-evaluate the rule, wherein the machine executable instruction in the rule includes a branching operator and is from at least one of an interpreted programming language or a native machine language.