METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR PROVIDING AN INTERACTIVE GUIDE TO AVAILABLE EVENTS ON INFORMATION NETWORKS (METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR PROVIDING AN INTERACTIVE GUIDE TO EVENTS AVAILABLE ON AN INFORMATION NETWORK)

摘要

The apparatus and method of the present invention is provided for performing an interactive program guide on an information network. A plurality of database pages are transmitted beyond the information network. Each page corresponds to a time slot greater than or equal to an available event on the network. Schedule data for each event included in the interaction guide is inserted into the database page during the time slot during which the event is being served. The database page is transmitted over the information network at a selected transmission rate so as to be able to restore a particular database page within a predetermined acquisition time limit, in order to retrieve the schedule data during the time represented by the page. During the current time period, schedule information may be provided to the trickle data stream with future scheduling information provided in the demand data stream. The demand data stream is transmitted at substantially higher speed than the trickle data stream. Data from the trickle data stream is downloaded from the decoder to memory for simultaneous display. Data from the demanded data stream is easy to access on the basis needed by searching the data network needed for display of the scheduling information during the requested timeslot.