TELEVISION INTERACTIVE ACCESS SYSTEM USING URLS

摘要

A television distribution network (12) for enabling a user to download Internet web pages related to the currently viewed television broadcast via channel hyperlinking. User sends channel hyperlink requests through upstream channel (22) to network headend (14) by actuating web button on remote controller (23). The headend is interfaced to Internet Service Provider or ISP (30) for downloading related web pages. The headend uses ID tag with channel and time of request information to identify the location of the information to be downloaded to the user. Preferably, the information is pre-cached from the ISP to a headend cache (31) in advance of the broadcast to facilitate quicker downloading of the information to the user.