Electronic program guide
Encyclopedia
Electronic program guides (EPG) and interactive program guides provide users of television, radio, and other media applications with continuously updated menus displaying broadcast programming or scheduling information for current and upcoming programming. Some guides such as ITV also feature backward scrolling to promote their catch up content.
Non-interactive electronic program guides (EPG) are typically available for television and radio, and consist of a digitally displayed, non-interactive menu of Broadcast programming scheduling information shown by a cable or satellite TV provider to its viewers on a dedicated channel. EPGs are broadcast by specialized video character generation
(CG) equipment housed within each such provider's central television distribution facility. By tuning into an EPG channel, a menu is displayed that lists current and upcoming television program
s on all available channels.
A more modern form of the EPG, associated with both television and radio broadcasting, is the interactive [electronic] program guide (IPG, though often referred to as EPG). An IPG allows television viewers and radio listeners to navigate scheduling information menus interactively, selecting and discovering programming by time, title, station, or genre using an input device such as a keypad, computer keyboard, or TV remote control. Its interactive menus are generated entirely within local receiving or display equipment using raw scheduling data sent by individual broadcast stations or centralized scheduling information providers. A typical IPG provides information covering the next 7 or 14 days.
Data to populate an interactive EPG may be distributed over the Internet
, either for a charge or free of charge, and implemented on equipment connected directly or through a computer to the Internet.
Television-based IPGs in conjunction with Programme Delivery Control
(PDC) technology can also facilitate the selection of programs for recording with digital video recorder
s (DVRs), also known as personal video recorders (PVRs).
facility to present that data to subscribers in a format customized to the system's unique channel line-up. The EPG Channel would later be renamed Prevue Guide and go on to serve as the de facto EPG service for North American cable systems throughout the remainder of the 1980s, all of the 1990s, and – as TV Guide Network – for the first decade of the 21st century.
In 1986, STV/Onsat, a paper programing guide company, introduced SuperGuide- an interactive electronic programming guide for home satellite dish viewers. This was at the Nashville 1986 trade show. The system was the focus of a 1987 article in STV magazine. The original system had a black and white display, and would locally store programming for around 1 week of shows. A remote control was used to interact with the unit. When the user found a show they wanted to watch, they turned off the guide and then the user tuned the satellite receiver to the correct service. The system was developed by Chris Schultheiss of STV/OnSat and Peter Hallenbeck an engineer. The guide information was distributed by satellite using the home owners dish as the receiver. The information was stored locally so that the user could use the guide without having to be on a particular satellite or service.
In March of 1990, a second generation SuperGuide system was introduced that was integrated into the Uniden 4800 receiver. This version had a color display and the hardware was based on a custom chip. Up to two weeks of programming information was available. When the user found the show of interest, they pressed a button on the remote and the receiver tuned to the show they wanted to watch. This unit also had single button recording. It controlled VCRs via an infrared output (see ). This was the first commercially available unit for home use that had a locally stored guide integrated with the receiver for single button viewing and taping. It was available in North America.
A presentation on the system was given at the 1990 IEEE consumer electronics symposium in Chicago.
In June 1988 was awarded to Eli Reiter, Michael H. Zemering, and Frank Shannon. This patent concerned the implementation of a searchable electronic program guide – an interactive program guide (IPG).
In 1996 Prevue Networks introduced the first IPG service in the United States, Prevue Interactive, designed for the General Instruments DCT 1000 series of set-top digital cable
boxes. Prevue Interactive would later become TV Guide Network, and then i-Guide.
Interactive program guides (IPGs, also called EPGs) are nearly ubiquitous in most broadcast media today. EPGs can be made available through television (on set top boxes), mobile phones, and on the web. Online TV Guides are becoming more ubiquitous, with over 7 million Google searches for "TV Guide" each month.
For television, IPG support is built into almost all modern receivers for digital cable
, digital satellite
, and over-the-air digital broadcasting
. They are also commonly featured in digital video recorders such as TiVo
and MythTV
. Higher-end receivers for digital broadcast radio
and digital satellite radio
commonly feature built-in IPGs as well.
Demand for non-interactive TV electronic program guides—television channels displaying listings for currently airing and upcoming programming—has been nearly eliminated by the widespread availability of interactive program guides for television. Television-based IPGs provide the same information as EPGs, but faster and often in much more detail. When television IPGs are supported by PVR
s they enable viewers to plan viewing and recording by selecting broadcasts directly from the EPG, rather than programming timers.
The aspect of an IPG most noticed by users is its graphical user interface
(GUI), typically a grid or table listing channel
names and program titles and times: Web and Television-based IPG interfaces allow the user to highlight any given listing and call up additional information about it supplied by the EPG provider. Programs on offer from subchannel
s may also be listed.
Typical IPGs also allow users the option of search
ing by genre, as well as immediate one-touch access to, or recording of, a selected program. Reminders and parental control functions are also often included. The IPGs within some DirecTV
IRD
s can control a VCRs using an attached infrared
emitter
that emulates its remote control
.
The latest development in IPGs is personalization through a recommendation engine or semantics
. Semantics are used to permit interest-based suggestions to one or several viewers on what to watch or record based on past patterns. One such IPG, iFanzy
, allows users to customize its appearance.
Standards for delivery of scheduling information to television-based IPGs vary from application to application, and by country. Older television IPGs like Guide Plus
+ relied on analog technology (such as the vertical blanking interval
of analog television video signals) to distribute listings data to IPG-enabled consumer receiving equipment. In Europe, the European Telecommunications Standards Institute
(ETSI) published standard ETS 300 707 to standardize the delivery of IPG data over digital television broadcast signals. Listings data for IPGs integrated into today's digital terrestrial TV and radio receivers is typically sent within each station's MPEG transport stream, or alongside it in a special data
stream. The ATSC standard for terrestrial digital TV, for instance, uses tables sent in each station's PSIP. These tables are meant to contain program start times and titles along with additional program descriptive metadata. Current time signals
are also included for on-screen display purposes, and they are also used to set timers on recording devices.
Devices embedded within modern digital cable
and satellite
TV receivers, on the other hand, customarily rely upon third-party listings metadata aggregators to provide them with their on-screen listings data. Such companies include Tribune TV Data, Gemstar-TV Guide, and FYI Television, Inc. in the United States and Europe, TV Media in the United States and Canada, Broadcasting Dataservices in Europe and Dayscript in Latin America.
A growing trend is for manufacturers such as Elgato
and Topfield
and software developers such as Microsoft
in their Windows Media Center
to use an Internet
connection to acquire data for their built-in IPGs. This enables greater interactivity with the IPG such as media downloads, series recording
and programming of the recordings for the IPG remotely; for example, IceTV
in Australia enables TiVo-like services to competing DVR/PVR manufacturers and software companies.
In developing IPG software, manufacturers must include functions to address the growing volumes of increasingly complex data associated with programming. This data includes program descriptions, schedules, ratings, user configuration information such as favorite channel lists, and multimedia content. To meet this need, some set-top box software designs incorporate a "database layer" that utilizes either proprietary functions or a commercial, off-the-shelf embedded database
system for sorting, storing and retrieving programming data.
Most technical details are invisible to users, who simply have a program guide on their equipment which "just works".
Non-interactive electronic program guides (EPG) are typically available for television and radio, and consist of a digitally displayed, non-interactive menu of Broadcast programming scheduling information shown by a cable or satellite TV provider to its viewers on a dedicated channel. EPGs are broadcast by specialized video character generation
Character generation
Character generation may refer to:* Character creation, the process of creating a character for a role-playing game* Character generator, a device or software that produces text for keying into a video stream...
(CG) equipment housed within each such provider's central television distribution facility. By tuning into an EPG channel, a menu is displayed that lists current and upcoming television program
Television program
A television program , also called television show, is a segment of content which is intended to be broadcast on television. It may be a one-time production or part of a periodically recurring series...
s on all available channels.
A more modern form of the EPG, associated with both television and radio broadcasting, is the interactive [electronic] program guide (IPG, though often referred to as EPG). An IPG allows television viewers and radio listeners to navigate scheduling information menus interactively, selecting and discovering programming by time, title, station, or genre using an input device such as a keypad, computer keyboard, or TV remote control. Its interactive menus are generated entirely within local receiving or display equipment using raw scheduling data sent by individual broadcast stations or centralized scheduling information providers. A typical IPG provides information covering the next 7 or 14 days.
Data to populate an interactive EPG may be distributed over the Internet
Internet
The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide...
, either for a charge or free of charge, and implemented on equipment connected directly or through a computer to the Internet.
Television-based IPGs in conjunction with Programme Delivery Control
Programme Delivery Control
Programme delivery control is specified by the standard ETS 300 231, published by the European Telecommunications Standards Institute...
(PDC) technology can also facilitate the selection of programs for recording with digital video recorder
Digital video recorder
A digital video recorder , sometimes referred to by the merchandising term personal video recorder , is a consumer electronics device or application software that records video in a digital format to a disk drive, USB flash drive, SD memory card or other local or networked mass storage device...
s (DVRs), also known as personal video recorders (PVRs).
Key events
North America
In 1981 United Video Satellite Group launched the first North American EPG service, known simply as The Electronic Program Guide channel. It allowed United States and Canadian cable systems to provide on-screen listings to their subscribers 24 hours a day on a dedicated cable channel. Raw listings data for the service was supplied via satellite to participating cable systems, each of which installed a computer within its headendCable television headend
A cable television headend is a master facility for receiving television signals for processing and distribution over a cable television system. The headend facility is normally unstaffed and surrounded by some type of security fencing and is typically a building or large shed housing electronic...
facility to present that data to subscribers in a format customized to the system's unique channel line-up. The EPG Channel would later be renamed Prevue Guide and go on to serve as the de facto EPG service for North American cable systems throughout the remainder of the 1980s, all of the 1990s, and – as TV Guide Network – for the first decade of the 21st century.
In 1986, STV/Onsat, a paper programing guide company, introduced SuperGuide- an interactive electronic programming guide for home satellite dish viewers. This was at the Nashville 1986 trade show. The system was the focus of a 1987 article in STV magazine. The original system had a black and white display, and would locally store programming for around 1 week of shows. A remote control was used to interact with the unit. When the user found a show they wanted to watch, they turned off the guide and then the user tuned the satellite receiver to the correct service. The system was developed by Chris Schultheiss of STV/OnSat and Peter Hallenbeck an engineer. The guide information was distributed by satellite using the home owners dish as the receiver. The information was stored locally so that the user could use the guide without having to be on a particular satellite or service.
In March of 1990, a second generation SuperGuide system was introduced that was integrated into the Uniden 4800 receiver. This version had a color display and the hardware was based on a custom chip. Up to two weeks of programming information was available. When the user found the show of interest, they pressed a button on the remote and the receiver tuned to the show they wanted to watch. This unit also had single button recording. It controlled VCRs via an infrared output (see ). This was the first commercially available unit for home use that had a locally stored guide integrated with the receiver for single button viewing and taping. It was available in North America.
A presentation on the system was given at the 1990 IEEE consumer electronics symposium in Chicago.
In June 1988 was awarded to Eli Reiter, Michael H. Zemering, and Frank Shannon. This patent concerned the implementation of a searchable electronic program guide – an interactive program guide (IPG).
In 1996 Prevue Networks introduced the first IPG service in the United States, Prevue Interactive, designed for the General Instruments DCT 1000 series of set-top digital cable
Digital cable
Digital cable is a generic term for any type of cable television distribution using digital video compression or distribution. The technology was originally developed by Motorola.-Background:...
boxes. Prevue Interactive would later become TV Guide Network, and then i-Guide.
Western Europe
In Western Europe 59 million TV households were equipped with EPGs at the end of 2008, a penetration of 36 percent of all TV households. But the situation varies from country to country, depending on the status of digitization and the role of pay-TV and IPTV in each market. With Sky as an early mover and the BBC iPlayer and Virgin Media as ambitious followers, the UK is to date the most developed and innovative EPG market, with 96 percent of viewers frequently using the EPG in 2010. Scandinavia also is a highly innovative EPG market. Even in Italy, the EPG penetration is relatively high with 38 percent. In France, IPTV is the main driver of EPG developments. And in comparison to many other European countries Germany stays behind, due to a relatively slow digitization process and a minor role for pay-TV in Germany.Current applications
For television, IPG support is built into almost all modern receivers for digital cable
Digital cable
Digital cable is a generic term for any type of cable television distribution using digital video compression or distribution. The technology was originally developed by Motorola.-Background:...
, digital satellite
Direct broadcast satellite
Direct broadcast satellite is a term used to refer to satellite television broadcasts intended for home reception.A designation broader than DBS would be direct-to-home signals, or DTH. This has initially distinguished the transmissions directly intended for home viewers from cable television...
, and over-the-air digital broadcasting
Digital television
Digital television is the transmission of audio and video by digital signals, in contrast to the analog signals used by analog TV...
. They are also commonly featured in digital video recorders such as TiVo
TiVo
TiVo is a digital video recorder developed and marketed by TiVo, Inc. and introduced in 1999. TiVo provides an on-screen guide of scheduled broadcast programming television programs, whose features include "Season Pass" schedules which record every new episode of a series, and "WishList"...
and MythTV
MythTV
MythTV is a free and open source home entertainment application with a simplified "10-foot user interface" design for the living-room TV, and turns a computer with the necessary hardware into a network streaming digital video recorder, a digital multimedia home entertainment system, or home theater...
. Higher-end receivers for digital broadcast radio
Digital radio
Digital radio has several meanings:1. Today the most common meaning is digital radio broadcasting technologies, such as the digital audio broadcasting system, also known as Eureka 147. In these systems, the analog audio signal is digitized into zeros and ones, compressed using formats such as...
and digital satellite radio
Satellite radio
Satellite radio is an analogue or digital radio signal that is relayed through one or more satellites and thus can be received in a much wider geographical area than terrestrial FM radio stations...
commonly feature built-in IPGs as well.
Demand for non-interactive TV electronic program guides—television channels displaying listings for currently airing and upcoming programming—has been nearly eliminated by the widespread availability of interactive program guides for television. Television-based IPGs provide the same information as EPGs, but faster and often in much more detail. When television IPGs are supported by PVR
Digital video recorder
A digital video recorder , sometimes referred to by the merchandising term personal video recorder , is a consumer electronics device or application software that records video in a digital format to a disk drive, USB flash drive, SD memory card or other local or networked mass storage device...
s they enable viewers to plan viewing and recording by selecting broadcasts directly from the EPG, rather than programming timers.
The aspect of an IPG most noticed by users is its graphical user interface
Graphical user interface
In computing, a graphical user interface is a type of user interface that allows users to interact with electronic devices with images rather than text commands. GUIs can be used in computers, hand-held devices such as MP3 players, portable media players or gaming devices, household appliances and...
(GUI), typically a grid or table listing channel
Channel (communications)
In telecommunications and computer networking, a communication channel, or channel, refers either to a physical transmission medium such as a wire, or to a logical connection over a multiplexed medium such as a radio channel...
names and program titles and times: Web and Television-based IPG interfaces allow the user to highlight any given listing and call up additional information about it supplied by the EPG provider. Programs on offer from subchannel
Virtual channel
In telecommunications, a logical channel number , also known as virtual channel, is a channel designation which differs from that of the actual radio channel on which the signal travels....
s may also be listed.
Typical IPGs also allow users the option of search
Search engine technology
Modern web search engines are complex software systems using the technology that has evolved over the years. There are several categories of search engine software: Web search engines , database or structured data search engines , and mixed search engines or enterprise search...
ing by genre, as well as immediate one-touch access to, or recording of, a selected program. Reminders and parental control functions are also often included. The IPGs within some DirecTV
DirecTV
DirecTV is an American direct broadcast satellite service provider and broadcaster based in El Segundo, California. Its satellite service, launched on June 17, 1994, transmits digital satellite television and audio to households in the United States, Latin America, and the Anglophone Caribbean. ...
IRD
Integrated receiver/decoder
An integrated receiver/decoder is an electronic device used to pick-up a radio-frequency signal and convert digital information transmitted in it.-Consumer IRDs:...
s can control a VCRs using an attached infrared
Infrared
Infrared light is electromagnetic radiation with a wavelength longer than that of visible light, measured from the nominal edge of visible red light at 0.74 micrometres , and extending conventionally to 300 µm...
emitter
Emitter
-In general:*A device used to exude any signal, beacon, light, odor, liquid, fragrance, ionizing particles or any other type of signal.-In horticulture:*A device used in drip irrigation.-In electronics and instrument physics:...
that emulates its remote control
Remote control
A remote control is a component of an electronics device, most commonly a television set, used for operating the television device wirelessly from a short line-of-sight distance.The remote control is usually contracted to remote...
.
The latest development in IPGs is personalization through a recommendation engine or semantics
Semantics
Semantics is the study of meaning. It focuses on the relation between signifiers, such as words, phrases, signs and symbols, and what they stand for, their denotata....
. Semantics are used to permit interest-based suggestions to one or several viewers on what to watch or record based on past patterns. One such IPG, iFanzy
IFanzy
iFanzy is a personalized EPG that is being developed by Stoneroos, a Dutch Interactive Television Developer, in cooperation with the Eindhoven University of Technology. The personalized EPG provides the viewer with an offer of programs selected especially for this person, based on his or her...
, allows users to customize its appearance.
Standards for delivery of scheduling information to television-based IPGs vary from application to application, and by country. Older television IPGs like Guide Plus
Guide Plus
Guide Plus+ , TV Guide On Screen and Guide Plus+ Gold or G-Guide is an interactive electronic programme guide system that is used in consumer electronics products, such as television sets, DVD recorders, personal video recorders, and other digital television devices...
+ relied on analog technology (such as the vertical blanking interval
Vertical blanking interval
The vertical blanking interval , also known as the vertical interval or VBLANK, is the time difference between the last line of one frame or field of a raster display, and the beginning of the first line of the next frame. It is present in analog television, VGA, DVI and other signals. During the...
of analog television video signals) to distribute listings data to IPG-enabled consumer receiving equipment. In Europe, the European Telecommunications Standards Institute
European Telecommunications Standards Institute
The European Telecommunications Standards Institute is an independent, non-profit, standardization organization in the telecommunications industry in Europe, with worldwide projection...
(ETSI) published standard ETS 300 707 to standardize the delivery of IPG data over digital television broadcast signals. Listings data for IPGs integrated into today's digital terrestrial TV and radio receivers is typically sent within each station's MPEG transport stream, or alongside it in a special data
Data
The term data refers to qualitative or quantitative attributes of a variable or set of variables. Data are typically the results of measurements and can be the basis of graphs, images, or observations of a set of variables. Data are often viewed as the lowest level of abstraction from which...
stream. The ATSC standard for terrestrial digital TV, for instance, uses tables sent in each station's PSIP. These tables are meant to contain program start times and titles along with additional program descriptive metadata. Current time signals
Time signal
A time signal is a visible, audible, mechanical, or electronic signal used as a reference to determine the time of day.-Audible and visible time signals:...
are also included for on-screen display purposes, and they are also used to set timers on recording devices.
Devices embedded within modern digital cable
Cable television
Cable television is a system of providing television programs to consumers via radio frequency signals transmitted to televisions through coaxial cables or digital light pulses through fixed optical fibers located on the subscriber's property, much like the over-the-air method used in traditional...
and satellite
Satellite television
Satellite television is television programming delivered by the means of communications satellite and received by an outdoor antenna, usually a parabolic mirror generally referred to as a satellite dish, and as far as household usage is concerned, a satellite receiver either in the form of an...
TV receivers, on the other hand, customarily rely upon third-party listings metadata aggregators to provide them with their on-screen listings data. Such companies include Tribune TV Data, Gemstar-TV Guide, and FYI Television, Inc. in the United States and Europe, TV Media in the United States and Canada, Broadcasting Dataservices in Europe and Dayscript in Latin America.
A growing trend is for manufacturers such as Elgato
Elgato
ElgatoSystems is a hardware and software manufacturer that makes television viewing and recording products specifically for the Macintosh family of personal computers, including EyeTV software...
and Topfield
Topfield
Established in Korea in 1998, TOPFIELD Co., Ltd. is a consumer electronics manufacturer making broadcasting receivers, other video and audio related apparatus. Their main business is making products such as set top boxes and personal video recorders to be used with satellite television or...
and software developers such as Microsoft
Microsoft
Microsoft Corporation is an American public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions...
in their Windows Media Center
Windows Media Center
Windows Media Center is a digital video recorder and media player developed by Microsoft. It is an application that allows users to view and record live television, as well as organize and play music and videos...
to use an Internet
Internet
The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide...
connection to acquire data for their built-in IPGs. This enables greater interactivity with the IPG such as media downloads, series recording
Season Pass
Season Pass refers to a ticket attainable at most amusement parks allowing admission to the park multiple times during a certain period of time - usually a year. Season passes also are issued by ski areas....
and programming of the recordings for the IPG remotely; for example, IceTV
Icetv
IceTV is an award winning Australian company providing an independently compiled Electronic Program Guide for digital free-to-air television. IceTV provides series recording, keyword recording and advanced searching for compatible devices...
in Australia enables TiVo-like services to competing DVR/PVR manufacturers and software companies.
In developing IPG software, manufacturers must include functions to address the growing volumes of increasingly complex data associated with programming. This data includes program descriptions, schedules, ratings, user configuration information such as favorite channel lists, and multimedia content. To meet this need, some set-top box software designs incorporate a "database layer" that utilizes either proprietary functions or a commercial, off-the-shelf embedded database
Embedded Database
An embedded database system is a database management system which is tightly integrated with an application software that requires access to stored data, such that the database system is “hidden” from the application’s end-user and requires little or no ongoing maintenance...
system for sorting, storing and retrieving programming data.
Most technical details are invisible to users, who simply have a program guide on their equipment which "just works".
See also
- Digital video recorderDigital video recorderA digital video recorder , sometimes referred to by the merchandising term personal video recorder , is a consumer electronics device or application software that records video in a digital format to a disk drive, USB flash drive, SD memory card or other local or networked mass storage device...
- IceTVIcetvIceTV is an award winning Australian company providing an independently compiled Electronic Program Guide for digital free-to-air television. IceTV provides series recording, keyword recording and advanced searching for compatible devices...
- NexTViewNexTViewNexTView is an electronic program guide for the analog domain. It is used by TV programme listings for all of the major networks in Germany, Austria, France and Switzerland...
- On-screen displayOn-screen displayAn on-screen display is an image superimposed on a screen picture, commonly used by modern television sets, VCRs, and DVD players to display information such as volume, channel, and time.-History:...
- SubRipSubRipSubRip is a software program for Windows which "rips" subtitles and their timings from video. It is free software, released under the GNU GPL...
- TeletextTeletextTeletext is a television information retrieval service developed in the United Kingdom in the early 1970s. It offers a range of text-based information, typically including national, international and sporting news, weather and TV schedules...
- TV GeniusTV GeniusTV Genius is a United Kingdom-based software company that specializes in TV search engines, TV recommendation engines, and EPG development. TV solutions are provided across TV, mobile, web, set top boxes and devices like Playstation and Nintendo Wii. The company works with television operators in...
- TV Guide Network (formerly Prevue Guide and The EPG Channel)
External links
- ETSI standard ETS 300 707 "Electronic Programme Guide (EPG); Protocol for a TV Guide using electronic data transmission"