Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC

Colin Lee Acton

Cory J Cirrincione

Frederic Azera

Michael S Hayton

Hiroshi Ohno

Thaddeus C Pritchett

Terje Kristian Backman

Sean C McDowell

Alan W Carter

Ilan Gabriel Caron

Jay Alan Borseth

Michael Joe Woolf

David Alan Goll

Tom Corbett

Renaud Bordelet

Shawn E Pickett

Paul Michael Irwin

Hans Peter Hess

Erick Fejta

Techniques are disclosed herein for merging EPG data associated with a variety of program sources. In one aspect, EPG data is accessed for different program sources and rules are selected that define how entries in the EPG data are to be merged. The rules may be selected based on whether the EPG data was collected in-band or out-of-band. In addition, the merging rules can be dependent on the program source, which allows the flexibility of applying different rules to different program sources. The EPG data from the different program sources is merged into a single EPG based on the selected rules.

Merging electronic program guide information

A channel-selection filter. The channel-selection filter helps a user navigate to a desired channel. In particular, the channel-selection filter presents a filtered channel list to the user when the user issues one or more channel-filtering commands. The filtered channel list narrows a list of all available channels to those channels that correspond to the channel-filtering commands issued by the user. When presented with a filtered channel list, the user can select a channel from the filtered channel list. The user can also issue additional channel-filtering commands to further narrow the list of channels presented in the filtered channel list.

Channel filter for a content player

An extensible framework for tuning to programming sources includes tune request objects and tuning space objects that are used to maintain and pass information regarding how to tune to a particular program. The extensible framework can be easily modified by creating, deleting, or modifying tune request objects and tuning space objects without requiring changes on the part of applications interacting with the framework.

Extensible framework for tuning to programming sources

A method and system for interfacing to type libraries are provided. In a preferred embodiment, the present invention defines an interface to a type library. The interface has a plurality of interface methods through which type information can be stored in and retrieved from the type library. A plurality of implementations of the defined interface are provided. A computer program is compiled using the defined interfaces to access the type information. When the compiled computer program is executed, it accesses the type information using one of the plurality of implementations. In a preferred embodiment, a type library contains type information to allow a compiler to bind to an instance of type at compile type (early binding).

Method and system for interfacing to a type library

Growing community of inventors

Kirkland, WA, United States of America

Colin Lee Acton