EPG with advertising inserts

摘要

Advertisements (50) are inserted in an EPG on the screen (40) of a display monitor (20) between the individual television program listings. Specifically, a memory (22, 34) stores EPG data and advertising data. A microprocessor (24) is programmed to recover EPG data corresponding to a number of television programs and advertising data from the memory. The microprocessor controls the monitor to display the recovered EPG data on the screen in lines of television program listings, each television program listing being displayed in a separate line, and to display the recovered advertising data in a line on the screen instead of one of the television program listings. The EPG and advertising data are displayed in a first area (46) of the screen and a detail window is displayed in a second area (44) of the screen. One of the lines of EPG data is highlighted with a cursor (48). A description of the television program listing highlighted by the cursor is inserted in the second area. When the line of advertising data is highlighted with the cursor, an information relating to the advertising data is inserted in the second area.