Digital TV viewers receive their TV programs using digital receivers connected to their TV sets. Part of a digital receiver feature set is the Interactive Program Guide (IPG). IPG is a set of interactive screens that viewers can display on their TV sets. Using the remote control, viewers can browse through the program listings for the current day and for a few days in advance.

Digital receivers get IPG contents via satellite or cable from the broadcast control center. The control center in turn receives details on TV listings from the service provider that creates TV programs.

Whenever a television program is scheduled for broadcasting on digital TV, its title and a description of its contents and features are listed in a file that contains programming details for one or more TV channels. Prior to scheduled broadcast times, these files are downloaded to the control center and processed.

Usually, service provider creates TV listings as spreadsheets. When you receive them, you may need to convert them into the file format required by your broadcast equipment.

Spreadsheets frequently contain errors, such as overlapping events, missing titles and descriptions, missing or invalid ratings, and so on. These errors are highly visible to the customers, and must be corrected.

At times, you may need to modify TV listings by rescheduling show times, or replacing already scheduled events with other events. You may need to change event ratings and other attributes, such as event category, price, audio, video, and so on.

From time to time you may need to insert into the schedule a new event, such as live sport coverage.

Finally, you may want to produce your own TV listings and download them to the broadcast control center.

As a solution to automating all of your program guide related tasks, we offer the Interactive Program Guide Editor. This product specifically addresses issues such as: loading TV listings from the spreadsheets, automatically detecting and reporting various errors, editing scheduled events, inserting new events in the schedule, creating new TV listings and generating various reports.

Interactive Program Guide Editor is fully compatible with other Micus Real Time Software Inc. products, such as Business Television Broadcast Scheduler (BTBS), Micus Alarm and Control System (MACS) and Trouble Ticketing System (TTS).

Various organizations have different requirements regarding their TV listings, and use variety of file formats to manage them. Our Interactive Program Guide Editor is highly modular and designed for rapid customization to address your specific TV listings format. Similarly, service providers use different equipment in their broadcast centers. Typically, such equipment requires specific file formats in which they accept TV listings. Again, we designed our product in a way that facilitates easy customization to meet specific requirements.