Metadata for Enhanced Electronic Program Guides

An increasingly popular feature for TV viewers is an on-screen, interactive, electronic program guide (EPG). The advent of digital television (DTV), with the high digital bandwidth it provides, has the potential to support more and better EPG functions than ever. However, currently the best EPGs are available only in proprietary environments. The reason for this is that the current DTV standards only support data for the most basic EPG functions. To make enhanced EPG functions ubiquitous, enhanced DTV standards are required. One capability that is of great interest to broadcasters and advertisers, if not consumers, is the ability to include general purpose advertising in EPG displays. This paper lays out the vision of future EPGs, describes the standards activities currently underway to support them, and suggests a possible business model for supporting general purpose advertising in EPGs.

Published

2000-10

Content type

Original Research

DOI

10.5594/M00172

ISBN

978-1-61482-933-1