Program and System Information Protocol

The Program and System Information Protocol (PSIP) is the MPEG (Moving Picture Experts Group, a video and audio industry group) and privately defined program-specific information originally defined by General Instrument for the DigiCipher 2 system and later extended for the ATSC digital television system for carrying metadata about each channel in the broadcast MPEG transport stream of a television station and for publishing information about television programs so that viewers can select what to watch by title and description.

PSIP defines virtual channels and content ratings, as well as electronic program guides with titles and (optionally) descriptions to be decoded and displayed by the ATSC tuner.

[2] PSIP also supersedes the A/55 and A/56 protocol methods of delivering program guide information (which the ATSC has deleted).

PMCP does not dictate systems' internal database structures; it is simply a platform-independent protocol for the exchange of data.

[4] PMCP was first published as A/76 in November 2004,[5] and enjoys adoption from a variety of broadcast equipment and system vendors.