Described are a method and apparatus for incorporating broadcast
television into Web pages. Broadcast television can be embedded into Web
pages using, for example, a "tv:" attribute in conjunction with common
HTML tags. Within the "tv:" attribute, a Web-page author can reference a
TV station by channel number, network, or broadcast call letters. HTML
documents are parsed to recover both the conventional-tags and tags that
include TV attributes. The resulting Web pages display the identified
broadcast TV in a frame specified by the TV attribute. One embodiment
supports the presentation of television in the background of an HTML
document. In that embodiment, HTML tags corresponding to overlying HTML
content are provided with an attribute that defines a level of
transparency from zero to one-hundred percent. The transparency attribute
allows content providers to overlay any type of HTML information over a
broadcast television show without completely obscuring the underlying
show. This aspect of the invention employs a z attribute that can be used
to specify the relative position of broadcast television and overlying
HTML content.
