Abstract: A television signal substitution system that replaces known video segments such as advertisements with selected replacement advertisements. Fingerprint data of known advertisements can be stored in a fingerprint database. When new fingerprint data is available, the fingerprint data can be automatically or manually transmitted to subscribers. Various techniques can be used to identify advertisements based on the fingerprint data.

Abstract: An apparatus for compressing and transmitting both video and graphics portions of an interactive program guide (IPG). For an IPG that comprises a graphics portion and at least one video portion having audio associated with the video portion, the apparatus separately encodes the video and audio portion and the graphics portion. The video portion is slice-base encoded using a predictive encoder that produces a bitstream comprising intra-coded picture slices and predictive-coded picture slices. The graphics portion is separately slice-base encoded to produce encoded slices of the graphics image. To transmit an IPG, a transport stream is created containing the intra-coded and predicted picture streams as well as the encoded slices that comprise a graphics image that is to be included in the IPG. The receiver reassembles the components of the IPG into a comprehensive IPG.