Now to really stretch the theory - this would depend on how other STB's store & display their data, but here goes - given that messages relating to a channel can be shown in that channel's info, can that concept be extended to provide a way of flagging important notiices/announcements to end users right where they're watching? What if it were possible to assign a dummy "channel" which could be used to send & display announcements? It would be easy enough to transmit, it's just a question of how it could be viewed by the user...
I am guessing that for the Topfield, it might not be workable with the standard EPG unless it could be built into the IceLoader or EPG_Uploader TAPS - but with something like JustEPG, it could be set up to view the dummy "channel" on page 2...
Just a wild, random and probably impractical thought....
Cheers,
Brian H