1. In a system including a television and a video transmission medium, wherein interactive broadcast data text descriptions such as electronic program guide information, news headlines, sports scores, or other similar kinds of periodically updated information that can be displayed as text simultaneously with other programming is transmitted across the video transmission medium, and wherein the system also includes a management system having a digital processor for processing one or more unique digital signatures that correspond to the interactive broadcast data, and an input device for inputting other digital data that corresponds to user instructions input by a user when searching for particular interactive broadcast data, a method for efficiently searching the interactive broadcast data in response to a string of text input by a user in order to identify the particular interactive broadcast data desired by the user, the method comprising: receiving interactive broadcast data at the management system, said interactive broadcast data having unique binary signatures, each unique binary signature generated for an electronic program guide entry using programming information from a plurality of information fields of the electronic program guide entry, wherein each of the unique binary signatures is created prior to transmission across the video transmission medium using a first function adapted to convert alphanumeric text in fields of the electronic program guide entries into unique binary signatures having a fixed number of bytes, wherein at least one of the unique binary signatures includes a plurality of distinct four bit binary representations corresponding to a plurality of distinct terms found within a single electronic program guide entry, with each of the distinct four bit binary representations in the unique binary signature corresponding to a distinct term, and with all of the distinct four bit binary representations being concatenated into a single binary signature comprising the fixed number of bytes, storing the unique binary signatures at the management system; receiving a first user-entered text string; using a second function to convert the first user-entered text string into a unique binary signature; retrieving and comparing the stored unique binary signatures corresponding to the interactive broadcast data text descriptions to the unique binary signature of the user-entered text string; and based on the comparison, the management system identifying at least one item of interactive broadcast data that matches the user-entered text string.
1. In a system including a television and a video transmission medium, wherein interactive broadcast data text descriptions such as electronic program guide information, news headlines, sports scores, or other similar kinds of periodically updated information that can be displayed as text simultaneously with other programming is transmitted across the video transmission medium, and wherein the system also includes a management system having a digital processor for processing one or more unique digital signatures that correspond to the interactive broadcast data, and an input device for inputting other digital data that corresponds to user instructions input by a user when searching for particular interactive broadcast data, a method for efficiently searching the interactive broadcast data in response to a string of text input by a user in order to identify the particular interactive broadcast data desired by the user, the method comprising: receiving interactive broadcast data at the management system, said interactive broadcast data having unique binary signatures, each unique binary signature generated for an electronic program guide entry using programming information from a plurality of information fields of the electronic program guide entry, wherein each of the unique binary signatures is created prior to transmission across the video transmission medium using a first function adapted to convert alphanumeric text in fields of the electronic program guide entries into unique binary signatures having a fixed number of bytes, wherein at least one of the unique binary signatures includes a plurality of distinct four bit binary representations corresponding to a plurality of distinct terms found within a single electronic program guide entry, with each of the distinct four bit binary representations in the unique binary signature corresponding to a distinct term, and with all of the distinct four bit binary representations being concatenated into a single binary signature comprising the fixed number of bytes, storing the unique binary signatures at the management system; receiving a first user-entered text string; using a second function to convert the first user-entered text string into a unique binary signature; retrieving and comparing the stored unique binary signatures corresponding to the interactive broadcast data text descriptions to the unique binary signature of the user-entered text string; and based on the comparison, the management system identifying at least one item of interactive broadcast data that matches the user-entered text string. 6. The method as recited in claim 1 , wherein receiving binary signatures of the interactive broadcast data text descriptions comprises the following: a set top box associated with a television receiving binary signatures of the interactive broadcast data text descriptions.