Abstract: This invention relates to programming a remote control comprised of storing in a memory, data for control of a population of appliances, the data being sufficient to allow a remote control to remotely control functions of any of the population of appliances; selecting which appliances are to be controlled by the remote control; transmitting to the remote control data for control of the selected appliances; storing the transmitted data in the remote control; whereby the remote control is programmed to control the selected appliances.

Abstract: The present invention relates to a method of data assembly for distribution of the data via a mass audience distribution system, comprised of storing in a random access memory packets of data which are to be transmitted to the audience, storing in a first address table a sequence of memory addresses of the data for transmission of the data in the sequence, progressively reading the first table to retrieve the addresses of those packets of data that are to be transmitted to the audience in the sequence, reading the memory to retrieve the packets of data in the sequence, and transmitting the read packets to the audience in real time.