US 5,479,268 · Granted 1995-12-26

The 1995 Patent That Shaped How You Browse TV Schedules

This patent describes the grid layout you see when scrolling through TV listings on your cable box or streaming app. It solved a tricky problem: when program lengths vary wildly (some are 30 minutes, others 2 hours), how do you make a cursor that moves smoothly without jumping around in confusing ways?

Curated and verified by the IsItPatented Editorial team

The plain-English version

What it protects

The claim covers a visual grid system for displaying television schedules where cells (boxes) represent programs of different lengths arranged in columns and rows. What's protected here is the specific method of placing an invisible underlying grid of uniform cells behind the visible irregular cells, so that cursor movement stays predictable. The patent also covers the 3D highlighting effect—the black shadow bar that underlines and wraps around selected programs to show which one you're about to pick.

Why it matters

This patent was foundational to interactive TV guide systems in the 1990s and 2000s, when cable boxes and set-top devices needed user-friendly ways to let people browse hundreds of channels and programs. The underlying-grid solution was clever because it let designers make a visually intuitive interface (programs sized by their actual length) without sacrificing smooth, predictable navigation. This became the standard approach adopted by most digital program guide systems.

Real-world use

When you use your cable remote to scroll through a TV schedule on your set-top box, or browse program listings on a smart TV, you're navigating a grid layout that traces back directly to this patent's design principles.

Original USPTO abstract

Screen (10) for a user interface of a television schedule system and process consists of an array (24) of irregular cells (26), which vary in length, corresponding to different television program lengths of one half hour to one-and-one half hours or more. The array is arranged as three columns (28) of one-half hour in duration, and twelve rows (30) of program listings. Some of the program listings overlap two or more of the columns (28) because of their length. Because of the widely varying length of the cells (26), if a conventional cursor used to select a cell location were to simply step from one cell to another, the result would be abrupt changes in the screen (10) as the cursor moved from a cell (26) of several hours length to an adjacent cell in the same row. An effective way of taming the motion is to assume that behind every array (24) is an underlying array of regular cells. By restricting cursor movements to the regular cells, abrupt screen changes will be avoided. With the cursor (32 ), the entire cell (26) is 3-D highlighted, using a conventional offset shadow (34). The offset shadow (34) is a black bar that underlines the entire cell and wraps around the right edge of the cell. To tag the underlying position--which defines where the cursor (32) is and thus, where it will move next--portions (36) of the black bar outside the current underlying position are segmented, while the current position is painted solid.

Patent details

Publication number: US 5,479,268
Filing date: 1994-02-18
Grant date: 1995-12-26
Assignee: Starsight Telecast Inc.
Inventor(s): YOUNG; PATRICK, ROOP; JOHN H., EBRIGHT; ALLAN R., FABER; MICHAEL W., ANDERSON; DAVID
CPC class: H04N21/4858

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