ELECTRONIC PROGRAM GUIDE FOR PROCESSING CONTENT-RELATED INFORMATION CONFIGURED USING A REFERENCE INFORMATION MODEL

摘要

Electronic program guide (EPG) processing techniques are disclosed which involve processing content-related information in the form of documents generated using a reference information model (RIM). The documents may be configured in an extensible mark-up language (XML) or other standard format. At least a portion of the content-related information is configured for consistency with corresponding portions of the RIM, the portion of the content-related information so configured thereby being suitable for processing by different EPG applications. The RIM preferably comprises multiple classes of information, and specifies properties of the classes utilizing attributes, relationships and states. For example, instances of the classes may be configured as objects in an object-oriented programming format, and one or more of the objects may contain structures represented as attributes. The RIM may be generated utilizing an iterative process in which progressively more inclusive versions are generated by modifying previous versions to support additional data specifications.