Electrical program guide system and method

摘要

An electrical program guide system and method by which a desired program can be selected rapidly with certainty, intuitively and directly from among a large number of programs, in which nine reduced screens reduced from nine screens of different programs are arranged in a 3x3 matrix to construct one multi-screen as a screen for program selection. Six such screens for program selection are individually produced by multi-screen production circuits and encoded by MPEG video encoders, and then multiplexed by a multiplexer so that they may be transmitted via a single transmission channel. The multiplexed signal is subjected to error correction coding and QPSK modulation by a transmission line coding apparatus and then it is further subjected to frequency conversion by an up converter. The resultant signal is transmitted to an artificial satellite through a mixer and a parabola antenna. Each multi-screen received on the reception side from the satellite is displayed as 3x3 pieces of reduced screens of full motion, and a viewer will find out and directly select a desired program from a preview screen formed from the reduced screens.