Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC

Michael S Hayton

Cory J Cirrincione

Frederic Azera

Colin Lee Acton

Hiroshi Ohno

David Searle Noble

Renaud Bordelet

Shawn E Pickett

Ian M Bavey

David N Trowbridge

Paul Michael Irwin

Hans Peter Hess

Vinay Bharadwaj

Jack Greenfield

Frank Fan

Erick Fejta

Andrew Willis Bliven, Ii

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

Various technologies and techniques are disclosed for providing an integration framework that enables tools to be integrated. The integration framework enables tools participating in the framework to be encapsulated in a manner that hides their implementations, thereby preventing them from taking deep dependencies on each other. The integration framework also enables the tools participating in the framework to carry formal type definitions called service and data contracts that describe the public behaviors they offer. The integration framework also provides support for migrating integration logic from tools into pluggable commands to further reduce coupling between the tools.

Integrating loosely coupled tools using contracts and references

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Kirkland, WA, United States of America

Michael S Hayton