A method and system for decoding a transport stream are disclosed. In one embodiment, the method includes receiving a system information table in the transport stream, reading an activation time from the system information table, storing the table in a memory without activating values contained in the system information table, determining when the activation time is reached, and activating the values contained in the system information table when the activation time is reached. An advantage of the present invention is that the program and system information tables can be transmitted less frequently and still allow the receiver to execute the acquired "next" tables in a timely manner, once the tables have been received for the first time and their activation times have arrived. Another advantage of the present invention is its backward compatibility with the existing protocol formats, because the present invention requires no syntactic modification to the existing table formats.