17. A method of detecting text in a television video display table, comprising: saving a frame of video representing a television electronic program guide to a memory device; where the electronic program guide comprises a table having cells containing text; detecting rectangular shapes of size adequate to contain legible text to identify the table cells by identifying lines or color changes that are arranged in a vertical and horizontal pattern; storing a working copy of the frame of video to a memory; isolating text in the table by: removing any table boundaries from the image; removing any cell boundaries from the image by matching a display to a template in order to locate the boundaries; determining if the image has three dimensional or shadow attributes in the table boundaries or cell boundaries; removing any three dimensional or shadow attributes identified, thereby producing text isolated against a contrasting color background; where determining if the image has three dimensional or shadow attributes at the table boundaries comprises determining if a cell is an outer cell in the table, determining that a line of pixels is present parallel to and outside the perimeter of the table on two adjacent sides of the cell, and determining that the line is located within a small number of pixels relative to the cell size outside the table perimeter; and converting the text isolated against a contrasting color background to black text on a white background; and processing the isolated text using an optical character recognition (OCR) engine to extract the text as data to a metadata database.
17. A method of detecting text in a television video display table, comprising: saving a frame of video representing a television electronic program guide to a memory device; where the electronic program guide comprises a table having cells containing text; detecting rectangular shapes of size adequate to contain legible text to identify the table cells by identifying lines or color changes that are arranged in a vertical and horizontal pattern; storing a working copy of the frame of video to a memory; isolating text in the table by: removing any table boundaries from the image; removing any cell boundaries from the image by matching a display to a template in order to locate the boundaries; determining if the image has three dimensional or shadow attributes in the table boundaries or cell boundaries; removing any three dimensional or shadow attributes identified, thereby producing text isolated against a contrasting color background; where determining if the image has three dimensional or shadow attributes at the table boundaries comprises determining if a cell is an outer cell in the table, determining that a line of pixels is present parallel to and outside the perimeter of the table on two adjacent sides of the cell, and determining that the line is located within a small number of pixels relative to the cell size outside the table perimeter; and converting the text isolated against a contrasting color background to black text on a white background; and processing the isolated text using an optical character recognition (OCR) engine to extract the text as data to a metadata database. 18. The method according to claim 17 , where determining that the frame of video contains a table having cells containing text is carried out by tracking remote control commands issued to identify commands that result in display of a table having cells containing text.