Patent Application
20060075015
1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to filtering of content and, more particularly, to a filter which can be selected based upon a selected profile in a portable electronic device.
2. Brief Description of Prior Developments
Universal Plug and Play (UPnP) is a networking architecture. UPnP™ technology is making home networking simple and affordable for users so the connected home experience becomes a mainstream experience for user experience and great opportunity for the industry. UPnP™ architecture offers pervasive peer-to-peer network connectivity of PCs of all form factors, intelligent appliances, and wireless devices. UPnP™ architecture leverages TCP/IP and the Web to enable seamless proximity networking in addition to control and data transfer among networked devices in the home, office, and everywhere in between. UPnP™ technology can be supported on essentially any operating system and works with essentially any type of physical networking media—wired or wireless—providing maximum user and developer choice and great economics.
The UPnP™ Forum (www.upnp.org) is an industry initiative designed to enable simple and robust connectivity among stand-alone devices and PCs from many different vendors. The Forum consists of more than 700 vendors, including industry leaders in consumer electronics, computing, home automation, home security, appliances, printing, photography, computer networking, and mobile products. By defining and publishing UPnP™ device and service descriptions, members of the UPnP™ Forum are creating the means to easily connect devices and simplify the implementation of networks. UPnP™ technology is broad in scope in that it targets home networks, proximity networks, and networks in small businesses and commercial buildings. It enables data communication between any two devices under the command of any control device on the network. UPnP™ technology is independent of any particular operating system, programming language, or physical medium.
The UPnP™ architecture supports zero-configuration networking and automatic discovery whereby a device can dynamically join a network, obtain an IP address, announce its name, convey its capabilities upon request, and learn about the presence and capabilities of other devices. DHCP and DNS servers are optional and are only used if they are available on the network. A device can leave a network smoothly and automatically without leaving any unwanted state information behind.
Like the creation of Internet standards, the UPnP™ initiative involves a multi-vendor collaboration for establishing standard Device Control Protocols (DCPs). Similar to Internet-based communication, these are contracts based on wire protocols that are declarative, expressed in XML, and communicated via HTTP.
The Digital Home Working Group (DHWG), now known as the Digital Living Network Alliance (DLNA), is a non-profit organization dedicated to the simplified sharing of digital content, such as digital music, photos and video, among networked consumer electronics (CE), mobile devices and PCs. The group consists of industry leaders including Fujitsu, Gateway, HP, Intel, IBM, Kenwood, Lenovo, Matsushita Electric (Panasonic), Microsoft, NEC CustomTechnica, Nokia, Philips, Samsung, Sharp, Sony, STMicroelectronics and Thomson.
The group shares a common goal of establishing a platform of interoperability based on open industry standards and will deliver technical design guidelines that companies can use to develop digital home products that share content through wired or wireless networks in the home. Examples of these products include PCs, TVs, set-top boxes, printers, stereos, mobile phones, PDAs, DVD players, digital projectors and other devices.
Due in large to an increase in broadband adoption and device sales, consumers today are acquiring, viewing, managing and sharing an increasing amount of digital media on devices in the CE, mobile and PC domains. As such, consumers want to easily enjoy this content, regardless of the source, across different devices and locations in the home. A number of conflicting standards and media formats exist today making the digital home complex to set-up and manage.
Industry standards alone do not always ensure interoperability. The interoperability framework and technical design guidelines established by the DHWG will provide the baseline for development of multi-branded products and solutions that will work better together. The goal of the group is to deliver guidelines resulting in the first compliant products within the next 12 months.
This collection of cross-industry leaders share a common vision and are collaborating to make the connected home a reality. One of the critical requirements for mass-market success of networked devices is true and reliable interoperability. The Digital Home Working Group has proposed a sound and fair baseline of interoperability standards, which is an important milestone towards realizing this vision.
The DHWG design guidelines will utilize well-known and established standards such as Internet Protocol (IP), UPnP™, Wi-Fi™, and other common formats. Over time, the guidelines will evolve to incorporate emerging or subsequent versions of existing standards. Format interoperability will be achieved by requiring certain formats that meet specific criteria. The format will be an open standard that has been formally ratified by an internationally recognized standards organization, and IP will be licensed under reasonable, non-discriminatory terms.
In the emerging digital home environment, users often share with each other multimedia content. As an example, parents would sit together with their children, browse and search multimedia content stored in different home electronic devices (set-top boxes, PCs, etc), and choose a family movie to watch together. They typically use a portable device (remote control or mobile phone) to browse or search for content, and the search result may be displayed on a large display (e.g., TV) for everyone to see. In addition, brief introduction or thumbnail images of browsed/searched content may be shown on the display to allow better user experience by using remote I/O technology which is developed in UPnP Forum. In UPnP terminology, the devices that store content are called MediaServers, the devices that render the content are called MediaRenderers, and the device that serves as control point's I/O are called remote I/O (or UI) client. As an example, an UPnP-enabled TV can act as both MediaRenderer and remote display client. The controlling device that a user uses to search/browse content and control MediaServers and MediaRenderers is called the Control Point.
A problem arises when inappropriate content (such as violent or adult content for example) is shown on the MediaRenderer that children are watching. For the same reason, embarrassment may also arise when browsing/searching for content to share with a guest. This problem may result from browsing a content directory that stores both desired and inappropriate content. It could also happen because the inappropriate content inadvertently matches the search criteria set by the user.
In accordance with one aspect of the present invention, a universal plug and play (UPnP) control point is provided which includes a memory and a system for selecting a first user profile. The memory includes multiple user profiles. A first one of the profiles includes content filter information. The system for selecting the first user profile is for use by the UPnP control point, and automatically selectively prevents display of images on a MediaRenderer from a MediaServer based upon the content filter information in the first user profile.
In accordance with another aspect of the present invention, a system for displaying images on a MediaRenderer from a MediaServer is provided comprising a system for determining location of a universal plug and play (UPnP) control point; a system for selecting a user profile in the control point based upon the determined location of the control point; and a system for filtering the display of the images based upon control filter information of the selected user profile in the control point.
In accordance with another aspect of the present invention, a system for displaying images on a MediaRenderer is provided comprising a universal plug and play (UPnP) control point having control filter information for selectively preventing display of images on the MediaRenderer; and a system for displaying at least a portion of the images on the control point while the images are prevented from being displayed on the MediaRenderer.
In accordance with another aspect of the present invention, a system for displaying images on a MediaRenderer is provided comprising a universal plug and play (UPnP) control point having a user selectable content filter; and a content filter transmitter for automatically setting the content filter to a predetermined content filter setting based at least partially upon proximity of the control point to the content filter transmitter.
In accordance with one method of the present invention, a method for preventing display of images on a MediaRenderer is provided comprising selecting a first profile from a plurality of profiles in a universal plug and play (UPnP) control point, the first profile comprising content filter information; and preventing display of images on the MediaRenderer based at least partially upon the content filter information of the selected first profile in the control point.
The foregoing aspects and other features of the present invention are explained in the following description, taken in connection with the accompanying drawings, wherein:
Referring to
The system 10 shown in
The provider(s) 14 could comprise any suitable type of provider, such as a cable television provider, a satellite television provider, and/or an Internet entertainment provider, for example. The connection 12 could comprise any suitable type of connection including, for example, a cable connection, a satellite connection, a telephone line connection, a DSL line connection, and/or a wireless connection through a mobile telephone network. Although the present invention is being described in a home entertainment system, features of the present invention could be incorporated into a mobile entertainment system, such as in a vehicle, or any other suitable type of system which comprises a UPnP MediaRenderer, UPnP MediaServer, and UPnP control point. In alternate embodiments, any suitable type of networking architecture could be used so long as the components function similar to the UPnP MediaRenderer, UPnP MediaServer, and UPnP control point described herein. In the home entertainment system shown in
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For example, a first profile could comprise settings for the control point for use while the user is in a home environment, a second profile could comprise settings for the control point for use while the user is driving in a vehicle, a third profile could comprise settings for the control point for use while the user is an office environment or a classroom environment, a fourth profile could comprise settings for the control point for use while the user is in a meeting, etc. The location rules 46 could be used in conjunction with location determination by a location system such as a GPS locator 52 shown in
As noted above, a problem arises when inappropriate content (such as violent or adult content for example) is shown on the MediaRenderer that children are watching. For the same reason, embarrassment may also arise when browsing/searching for content while children are present or to share with a guest. This problem may result from browsing a content directory that stores both desired content and inappropriate content. During searching, rather than browsing, it could also happen because the inappropriate content matches the search criteria set by the user.
The present invention uses profile information in the mobile telephone to avoid the problem described above. With the present invention a mobile phone can be used as the control point used to browse/search for content. The mobile telephone 20, acting as the control point, is adapted to allow a user to select one of the profiles 40 for use of its content filter rules (and any content filter application(s)) by the control point. Thus, the present invention can comprise a system for selecting the user profile comprising a manually selectable system at a user interface of the control point. The system for selecting the user profile comprises a receiver of the control point adapted for receiving a user profile selection signal from another device. The system for selecting the user profile could comprises a system for automatically selecting the user profile based upon location of the control point, such as relative to another mobile telephone or relative to a geographic location, such as determined by a global positioning system (GPS) device in the control point. For example, the mobile telephone may have a “family” profile (or other similar profile) that indicates that the user is at home or children might be present. When such profile is in use, the telephone 20 (functioning as the control point) filters the browsed/searched content list so that inappropriate content is not shown on the display 16.
It is possible for the phone 20 to use other methods to infer that children or guests are present. For example, if the phone detects the presence or proximity of mobile phones owned by children or unknown people (such as by examining the identification obtained from Bluetooth for example), it can perform similar filtering.
The present invention should be straightforward to implement on DLNA-compliant mobile phones. Such phones will support UPnP A/V Browse and Search actions, and can check related metadata field of the content, returned by UPnP A/V MediaServers. Especially, a UPnP A/V MediaServer may support the “rating” metadata, which may carry MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America) rating of the content. The mobile phone that implements the invention could check the profile and other information. If it decides that the user is sharing content with children or guests (e.g., the current profile is “Family”), it can remove all content items rated “R” or “X” and display the remaining content items on the display. For television programs, the programs can carry TV Parental Guidelines (such as used by V-chips in television sets) of TVY, TVY7, TVY7FU, TVG, TVPG, TV14, TVMA which can be used by the control point 20 for filtering during browse/search and/or viewing of the program(s).
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The system 10 could be configured such that a profile is automatically selected in the control point by the local transmitter as indicated by block 74. Alternatively, the profile could be automatically selected or changed by the control point based upon other parameters, such as geographic location of the mobile telephone (such as determined by a GPS receiver 52 (see
As indicated by block 78 the control point and/or the MediaServer can comprise a conflict resolution for resolving conflicts in the content filter information downloaded from the control point, such as with use of conflict resolution rules 42 shown in
Although the present invention is primarily described with a media server which receives media content from one or more remote providers 14, features of the present invention could also be used with a MediaServer or UPnP remote I/O server, such as a DVD player, which can read content coded portions with different parental guideline codes or movie ratings codes on a DVD. For example, a DVD could be provided of a movie wherein violent portions of the movie are rated with a violence rating which can be read by the DVD player. This portion rating can be used for subsequent filtering or blocking of only that portion of the movie. Thus, an R rated movie could be watched by the entire family with violent portions automatically filtered or blocked; and perhaps automatically fast forwarded through by the DVD player. The same type of partial content filtering can be used with other parameters, such as adult language, nudity, adult situations, etc. The present invention can also be used in cases where there is no concept of profile. In these scenarios, content filtering is done based on rules about internal or external events or conditions.
It should be understood that the foregoing description is only illustrative of the invention. Various alternatives and modifications can be devised by those skilled in the art without departing from the invention. Accordingly, the present invention is intended to embrace all such alternatives, modifications and variances which fall within the scope of the appended claims.
