An intelligent television can provide various interfaces for navigating processes associated with providing content. The user interfaces include unique visual representations and organizations that allow the user to utilize the intelligent television more easily and more effectively. Particularly, the user interfaces pertain to the display of media content, electronic programming guide information, television content, and other content. Further, the user interfaces provide unique process of transitioning between the content.

An intelligent television system provides an operating system and an application framework for controlling a user interface to handle user input events from a handheld remote control. The remote control includes color keys that are configured for triggering different functions in different application panels displayed on the television.

Systems and methods for navigating through activity information using a media guidance application are provided. An Internet appliance is integrated with a plurality of content sources accessible to user equipment. A simultaneous display of a first plurality of media asset listings, corresponding to a first plurality of media assets transmitted by each of the plurality of content sources during a first time interval that includes the present time, and information received from the Internet appliance is generated. In response to a user request to navigate to a second time interval that precedes the present time, a simultaneous display of a second plurality of media asset listings, corresponding to a second plurality of media assets that were transmitted by each of the plurality of content sources during the second time interval, and a timeline that includes indicators representing activity detected by the Internet appliance during the second time interval is generated.

Identification of services that carry the same or equivalent content. A reception apparatus includes circuitry configured receive first service information for a first service included in a first broadcast stream, and receive second service information for a second service included in a second broadcast stream. The first service is associated with a first virtual channel number and the second service is associated with a second virtual channel number. The circuitry is configured to determine whether the first service included in the first broadcast stream contains the same programming content as a service included in another broadcast stream based on the first service information. The first service information includes an identifier included in the second service information when the first service included in the first broadcast stream contains the same programming content as the second service included in the second broadcast stream.

A data entry apparatus for e.g. a smart TV comprises a wireless remote control device which is used to navigate a series of cells (19) displayed on screen and containing possible alphanumeric characters at the nth position of a title of e.g. a movie or TV channel. Instead of displaying (say) all 26 letters of the alphabet in these cells, only the possible characters at the nth position of a stored list or dictionary of possible titles are displayed. They are displayed in descending frequency order (most common at the left). The process is repeated (steps S1 to S4) to build up a string of characters in a window (18) until a particular title is selected (YES branch from step S4) by selecting its associated image (20). The navigational effort required of the user is reduced.

An electronic device and method are provided for display of a programming guide for content associated with broadcaster and VOD applications. The electronic device receives a DTV signal that include programming content items associated with broadcaster applications on the electronic device and extracts a set of in-band metadata associated with programming content items. The electronic device selects a set of VOD assets offered by at least one VOD application on the electronic device and extracts a set of out-of-band metadata associated with the programming content items and the selected set of VOD assets from at least one metadata source. The electronic device parses the set of in-band metadata and the set of out-of-band metadata and combines such parsed sets of metadata into a unified metadata file based on a master template. Based on the unified metadata file, the electronic device controls a display device to render a programming guide.

A display apparatus includes: a display; a receiver configured to receive a broadcast signal having a plurality of channels; a communication interface configured to communicate with a server; and a processor configured to control the display to display an image of a first channel among the plurality of channels based on the broadcast signal received through the receiver, execute an application to receive content data for content selected by a user from content provided from the executed application from the server through the communication interface and to control the display to display a content image, and allocate the content corresponding to the displayed content image to a second channel among the plurality of channels based on an execution of an operation of allocating a virtual channel based on a predetermined user input while the content image is displayed.

In some embodiments, a method receives a list of ranked entities for video playback for a first interface in a first layout. The list of ranked entities being ranked based on personalized information for a user account. The list of ranked entities is used to determine an ordering of entities in slots of an electronic programming guide. The slots of the electronic programming guide display the entities in a second layout based on a time dimension. The method outputs information to display at least a portion of the entities in the electronic programming guide based on the ordering of entities.

In some embodiments, a method receives a list of ranked entities for video playback for a first interface in a first layout. The list of ranked entities being ranked based on personalized information for a user account. The list of ranked entities is used to determine an ordering of entities in slots of an electronic programming guide. The slots of the electronic programming guide display the entities in a second layout based on a time dimension. The method outputs information to display at least a portion of the entities in the electronic programming guide based on the ordering of entities.

Channel identifiers in electronic program guide (EPG) data are consolidated for one or more EPG providers, and the consolidated channel identifiers are used to automatically process audience measurement data.