Hypergeometric series solutions of linear operator equations

Let K be a field and L:K[x]→K[x] be a linear operator acting on the ring of polynomials in x over the field K. We provide a method to find a suitable basis {b_k(x)} of K[x] and a hypergeometric term c_k such that is a formal series solution to the equation L(y(x))=0. This method is applied to construct hypergeometric representations of orthogonal polynomials from the differential/difference equations or recurrence relations they satisfied. Both the ordinary cases and the q-cases are considered.