Methods and Systems for Generating Electronic Program Guides

Abstract

Various embodiments provide ways to collect, organize and process metadata associated with particular instances of media content. Metadata can be collected from a variety of metadata providers and organized in individual content folders that can be provided to various client devices. The client devices can process the content folders to provide an electronic program guide for its users. Methods and systems can also make use of user-specific data to evaluate various media content and then make recommendations as to which content a user would most likely wish to experience. Such user-specific data can comprise one or more user preference files that contain information associated with individual users, and one or more significance files that hold values, for individual users, that can be used to determine the significance of any matches found between the user preference files and media content.

1 . A method comprising: 
 determining whether a particular piece of media content has an associated artwork file that contains content-specific artwork that can be rendered into an electronic program guide for one or more users;    if the particular piece of content does not have an associated artwork file, ascertaining the genre of the particular piece of media content;    selecting a generic image associated with the ascertained genre; and    rendering an electronic program guide that contains the generic image in association with the particular piece of media content.    
   
   
       2 . The method of  claim 1 , wherein the act of determining comprises searching a content folder associated with the individual piece of media content.  
   
   
       3 . The method of  claim 1 , wherein the act of determining comprises searching a content folder associated with the individual piece of media content, the content folder being previously downloaded from a server.  
   
   
       4 . The method of  claim 1 , wherein the act of ascertaining comprises searching an XML content description file that contains an XML tag associated with the genre of the particular piece of media content.  
   
   
       5 . The method of  claim 1 , wherein the act of ascertaining comprises searching an XML content description file that contains an XML tag associated with the genre of the particular piece of media content, the XML content description file comprising part of a content folder associated with the individual piece of media content.  
   
   
       6 . The method of  claim 1 , wherein the act of ascertaining comprises searching an XML content description file that contains an XML tag associated with the genre of the particular piece of media content, the XML content description file comprising part of a previously downloaded content folder associated with the individual piece of media content.  
   
   
       7 . A client device configured to implement the method of  claim 1.