US 4,751,578 · Granted 1988-06-14

The 1988 TV Guide Patent That Predicted Your Smart Guide

Imagine a box that sits on top of your TV and lets you search through what's playing right now using a remote control. This patent describes exactly that—a smart device that stores TV schedules in its memory, updates them through your phone line or special cards, and displays the shows you want to watch in whatever order you choose on your screen.

Curated and verified by the IsItPatented Editorial team

The plain-English version

What it protects

The claim covers a complete electronic system for displaying TV programming information on a television screen. What's protected here is the combination of a microcontroller with a microprocessor, RAM memory, remote control interface, a mixer that blends TV signals together, and an RF converter that sends everything to the TV. The system's ability to be updated through multiple channels—telephone, magnetic cards, floppy disks, or TV/radio signals—and to let viewers search and format the information they want to see is core to what the patent locks down.

Why it matters

This patent arrived in 1988, decades before interactive TV guides became standard in every cable box and streaming device. It represents an early vision of on-screen program guides that viewers could control themselves rather than passively watching printed TV schedules. The inventor, David P. Gordon, was thinking about the infrastructure for searchable, updateable TV information at a moment when most people still relied on newspaper listings. The patent shows how far ahead some engineers were imagining the future of television.

Real-world use

Every time you browse a cable or streaming guide on your TV remote and search for a specific show or genre, you're using the same core concept this patent protected—a microcontroller storing TV data and letting you query it through a remote.

Original USPTO abstract

The electronically controllable system of the invention for viewing on a television, updateable television programming information comprises a microcontroller which is partially controllable by remote control system and is updateable via telephone link, magnetic cards or floppy disks, or television or radio subcarrier, the microcontroller including input/output interfaces, a microprocessor and a RAM; a mixer for mixing a regularly received television signal with the signal generated by the microcontroller; an RF converter for receiving the radio frequency information from the mixer, microcontroller, and television antennae and properly converting the information into information which may be sent to the television; and a remote control system for permitting the viewer to direct the microcontroller to perform searches on information contained in the RAM so as to provide on the television screen in a chosen format, subsets of information desired by the viewer. The system preferably also includes a ROM for directing the microcontroller to access the information link should the RAM lose information due to power failure.

Patent details

Publication number: US 4,751,578
Filing date: 1985-05-28
Grant date: 1988-06-14
Assignee: David P. Gordon
Inventor(s): REITER; ELI, ZEMERING; MICHAEL H., SHANNON; FRANK
CPC class: H04N21/4884

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