Koninklijke Philips Corporation N.V.

Liang Gan

Philip Steven Newton

Declan Patrick Kelly

Jingwei Tan

Jun Shi

Wilhelmus Jacobus Van Gestel

A method and device for storing an interactive television program for playback at a later point in time, wherein said interactive television program comprises at least one interactive television application. The applications are transmitted inside modules () through a data carousel () within a transport stream (). The method comprises receiving the transport stream, parsing the stream for application modules and storing them as a storage stream on a storage medium (). The storage stream is stored separate from said transport stream (). The data or object carousel is recorded outside the Transport Stream and recorded like a stream, preferably as a single file. This file is a sequence of modules with some header information preceding the modules making playback faster as the information needed to obtain the objects from a module is located directly in the header of that module. Furthermore, the solution according to the invention solution is platform independent.

Method and apparatus for storing an interactive television program

A method (1) of transmitting interactive television, whereby interactive television applications are transmitted inside application-modules. These modules are transmitted in a broadcast stream. Recording systems cannot decide which modules are to be recorded. Therefore storage related information of said modules is signalled in the broadcast stream. Module identification information related is implemented in the Application Information Table (AIT) and/or in the Download Information Indication (DII) message. Thus information is included in the broadcast stream concerning categories stating whether application modules are mandatory, optional or forbidden to record. Alternatively properties of a module are chosen from Code/Data/Both and/or Fixed/Variable. Recording systems use this information do decide if application modules are to be recorded or disregarded. Alternatively, application module identification information is transmitted in said broadcast stream. A module identification number is used to avoid multiple recordings. Application modules having the same category are preferably grouped together.

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Shanghai, China

Liang Gan