News
The Electronic Program Guide for digital television
2008-06-24
The Electronic Program Guide (EPG) is one of the most important elements of the correctly working system of digital TV. Everyone who uses satellite digital TV platforms knows how useful and comfortable such a system is. Subscribers of these platforms think highly of displayed information on current and next programs and the program list available after pressing one button on the remote controller. Thanks to this data the viewer can quickly recognize the current offer transmitted in several tens of channels and can make up his mind which program he wants to watch or record. So far the EPG system has not been often used in cable TV.
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In most cases cable subscribers must use the teletext or the simplified version of EPG transmitted on some satellite channels. Transmission of EPG information is essential when subscribers want to use PVR (personal Video Recording) option. Such an option is available in Set Top Boxes with a hard disk. PVR is possible thanks to EPG and choosing the programs for recording from the list.
VECTOR offers a solution for the EPG system. In this system there is a server in the headend belonging to the cable network operator. The server acquires the EPG information from any source (usually from specialized companies preparing program lists for TV weekly magazines). The EPG data is automatically buffered and added to the digital streams in the headend. Then the EPG data is broadcasted to the subscribers’ STBs. Additionally, the system adds the global data to the streams. The data makes possible to create a fixed program list in a subscriber’s decoder by the operator. The program order on the list is established by the operator. Another advantage is an automatic search of new programs which appear in the network. It is possible due to the creation of all PSI/SI tables (with all necessary descriptors) by the system.
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The system can serve several files (several STB types) because it creates all necessary PSI/SI tables. This is why the automatic STB software upgrade is possible.
