Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC

Shawn E Pickett

Venkatraman V Kudallur

Anthony T Chor

Yan Ke

Hao Hu

Qiaolin Mao

Ritika Kapadia

Tyler M Barton

Aniket A Patankar

Nomita Paul

James R Wordelman

Hiroshi Ohno

Mark D Schwesinger

Cory J Cirrincione

Thaddeus C Pritchett

Frederic Azera

Glenn Alexander Curtis

Renaud Bordelet

Colin Lee Acton

Michael S Hayton

Paul Michael Irwin

Hans Peter Hess

Alan E Shield

Eric J Silverberg

Christopher F Pezzee

Content pre-render and pre-fetch techniques are described. In one or more implementations, a likelihood is predicted of subsequent navigation to content associated with a network address based at least in part on monitored navigation performed by a computing device to one or more network addresses. A determination is then made whether to cause the computing device to pre-fetch and pre-render the content based at least in part on the prediction.

Content pre-render and pre-fetch techniques

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

Various embodiments provide accurate EPG lineup construction and PVR scheduling for users, regardless of their geographic location. In accordance with the described embodiments, the guide retrieves and aggregates data from multiple available sources, particularly in-band scanning and EPG metadata download. Services are then identified and sorted into logically equivalent groups. Once the services are grouped, in accordance with one embodiment, an analysis is conducted the outcome of which is directed to selecting which services to use for tuning and which services to use for scheduling on a given channel/preset. In addition, various embodiments can, in an automated fashion, assign services to presets/channels, as well as provide a user interface and methods for editing a lineup, modifying tuning information and personalizing presets/channels.

Methods and systems for constructing and editing electronic program guide lineups

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Sammamish, WA, United States of America

Shawn E Pickett