Patent Application
20090265739
The present invention relates to the field of digital broadcast reception systems. In particular, the invention discloses a novel method for channel selection in a digital broadcast reception terminal.
With the advent to cable television, a large number of commercial television channels were launched in the last two decades. The number of channels has become so large that an average TV viewer has to spend a significant amount of time just searching for the program that he may want to see. The user has to visit all channels one by one to check the program running on them. There is no good mechanism available that can help in fast channel selection. This factor significantly affects the overall television viewing experience. Frequent channel changing also puts a lot of strain on the eyes of viewer and also causes unnecessary wear and tear on the television system components.
One solution proposed in the prior art to this problem is to send “program identifier information” containing details like title, cast, program type, etc. for each program along with the program signal. The program information from each program running at any given time on different channels is used to construct a program guide.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,867,207 discloses one such program guide shown in
An improved version of the above mentioned program guide is the theme based program guide. FIG. 2 of U.S. Patent Publication No. 2005/0160456 illustrates a theme based program guide in which a list of all the available programs falling under a common theme like news or sports is displayed. The user can scroll through the entire program guide and choose a program of interest.
Although the above mentioned electronic program guides provide the basic program information for channel selection, there are several shortcomings to these guides. Through these guides, the user makes a selection based only on the textual information corresponding to each program available in the program guide. However, in many cases this textual information may be insufficient to select the desired channel. For example, the user may get information from program guide that a specific program on health education is currently running on a particular channel, however he has no information if at that specific instance of time the actual program is running or an advertisement is running on the television. Moreover, it becomes very time consuming and tedious to read the program information of so many different channels to get information on all the programs running at any given moment. Furthermore, viewers often want to see a program set up or view a program's host before making a decision to view a specific channel. This is not possible using only the textual information provided by existing program guides.
These very significant limitations of currently available program guides discourage many users from regularly using such program guides. Instead, viewers may frequently change channels to see a short visual display of each channel on the television screen before making a decision to view a specific channel. This strategy of frequently changing channels for selecting a specific channel puts a lot of strain on the eyes of user and also leads to wastage of time. Further, frequent changing of channels reduces the life of the television system.
Therefore, there is a need for some system/method of channel selection which would remove above mentioned shortcomings and would provide an easy way to determine which programs are running on all channels, to improve the overall viewing experience.
It is an object of the present invention to provide a system and methodology for channel selection in the digital broadcasting reception terminal.
It is another object of the present invention to provide a system of channel selection in which visual information corresponding to each channel is provided to the user to make channel selection.
To achieve the aforementioned objectives, the present invention provides a system that generates visual clips corresponding to different channels and store these visual clips in a memory to construct a program guide. The system sequentially tunes to different frequencies and generate the visual clips for a plurality of the channels in the respective frequency bands. On receiving instruction from the viewer, visual clips of several channels are simultaneously displayed on the display screen to provide the user an easy way to make a program selection. The visual clips are regularly updated when the new picture data is generated for the channels. In a preferred embodiment, the system uses multiple tuning and demodulating systems and generates the visual clips only for the channels present in the favorite list of the user so that the time lag between two successive updating of visual clip for a specific channel may be minimized.
The aforementioned aspects and other features of the present invention will be explained in the following description, taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings, wherein:
The present invention discloses a system and method for channel selection which does not require frequent changing of channels to know the programs running on other channels at any given instance of time.
According to an embodiment of the present invention, the viewer is provided the option to visually check the programs running on different channels without changing the channels one by one. The television screen displays visual clips (also referred to as the “picture data” or “thumbnails”) from a large number of channels grouped together in the same display screen. With a quick glance at the screen, the viewer is able to identify a plurality of the programs running on different channels. Preferably, the view is able to identify all of the programs running on different channels or a selected subset of the programs running on all the different channels.
The system disclosed in
A decoder 304 decodes the encoded video bit stream of several programs to generate video data for specific programs. The program I.D. of the specific program is used by the decoder to decode the encoded video data of that program.
A system memory 305 stores the data while different operations are performed inside the reception device. A display screen 306 displays the final output of reception device
During operation, after the reception device receives a channel selection instruction from the viewer, tuning unit 302 starts tuning the system to different incoming frequencies, one by one. Tuning unit may take some time to tune to each frequency, up to one second for each frequency.
In digital video transmission, one physical channel (i.e., the frequency band) usually carries signals corresponding to multiple channels from the same service provider. The number of channels in a specific frequency band varies and is usually in the range of 10-15. When tuning unit 302 is tuned to a specific frequency band, after demodulation of incoming signal, the encoded video bit stream is preferably decoded to generate the picture data for all the programs running on the channels in that frequency band. Picture data corresponding to each channel is stored in system memory 305 to construct an electronic program guide containing visual information corresponding to all available channels. The visual clips (the picture data) for a specific number of programs are then displayed simultaneously on display screen 306. The system then tunes to the next frequency and subsequently generate the visual clips for the channels available in that frequency band.
The term “visual clip” as used herein means a subset of the frames from a program, preferably from 1-10 frames from a program, and most preferably, just a few frames (i.e., 1-4) from a program
As shown in
In a few seconds the system sequentially generates the visual clips for all or a predetermined plurality of the available channels. While the visual clips from about 8-12 channels are displayed on the screen at any given moment, the picture data corresponding to other channels is stored in memory 305 and the user is able to scroll through the visual clips of remaining channels by pressing a specific button on the remote control unit.
It is pertinent to mention here that after preferably, after completing the generation of picture data for all channels, the system continues the process of sequentially tuning to all available frequencies to generate visual clips for all channels in such frequency bands until the user makes a selection. For any given channel, when the new picture data is generated, the old picture data for that channel is replaced with the new picture data. Assuming that there are about eighty to hundred channels in the incoming RF signal, it is expected to take one to a few seconds for the picture data for any one channel to be updated.
With the present invention, it becomes very easy for the viewer to make a channel selection as he can simultaneously check the latest visual clips/thumbnails of the programs running on multiple channels. Just by having a glance on any visual clip, the user can identify the program running on that channel and determine whether it is a news program, an action movie, or some other program, or whether it is in commercial. Compared to techniques in the prior art in which textual information corresponding to each program is provided to construct a program guide, the present invention makes the channel selection very fast and less cumbersome. With the visual monitoring of the channels, it becomes very fast and easy for the viewer to take decision on the channel that he or she may want to watch as compared to reading the textual information in the currently available program guides.
In a preferred embodiment of the present invention, after generating the visual clips of different channels, the system has a mechanism to identify visual clips that would not be very useful to identify a program. For example, if in the few frames of picture data gathered from a specific channel only blue sky is visible, the user may not understand which program is running on that channel. In such cases the system may incorporate a mechanism to display a blank screen in the area corresponding to that channel until a new visual clip is generated for that channel from which the program could be identified more accurately.
In an alternate embodiment of the present invention, the system includes multiple tuner and demodulator modules and even multiple decoding units to reduce the time lag between subsequent generations of picture data (visual clips) for any given channel. Multiple tuning modules help in faster processing and helps to reduce the time lag between two successive updating of visual clip for a specific channel. The time that is wasted in single tuner system when the same tuner tunes to multiple frequencies one by one is saved in multiple tuner systems. While one tuning unit is used for running the program on the channel selected by the user, all the other tuning units sequentially tune to different frequencies, generate picture data corresponding to the channels in a specific frequency band and stores the said picture data in the system memory 406 in the form of a program guide.
In a preferred embodiment of the present invention, the name of the program is also displayed below its visual clip on the screen. While the user can identify most of the programs just by looking on the visual clips, in some cases the name of the program is also essential to accurately identify the program. For example, the user can identify a news program accurately from the visual clip; however in case of a movie program the user would need the name of the movie to accurately identify the program.
In another preferred embodiment of the present invention, the viewer is provided with the facility to check detailed information about any program by just selecting the visual clip corresponding to that program and pressing a specific button on the remote control unit. This capability would be very useful in cases where the user would want more information about a specific program before making a decision to watch that program. For example, in case the user may want to know all the actors in a movie before wanting to start watching the movie. This embodiment basically combines the visual technique as disclosed in the present invention with the textual techniques as disclosed in the prior art to provide a better viewing experience to the user.
In one alternate embodiment of the present invention, the system distinguishes the programs on the basics of service provider and the type of program. Hierarchal graphical menu is provided and the visual clips of channels under a specific item can be viewed together. When the user issues the instruction for channel selection, multiple icons are displayed on the television screen as shown in
In one other embodiment of the present invention, each of the television service providers transmit a specific channel which just contains the thumbnails of programs running on other channels by that service provider. In this embodiment, the requirement for dynamic construction of visual program guide by storing picture data of each channel would be eliminated.
In one other embodiment, when the user selects a specific service provider in the screen shown in
In one other embodiment of the invention shown in
In one preferred embodiment of the present invention, the user is given the option to construct a favorite channel list. While there are a large number of commercially available channels, an average user just see about 20-30 channels regularly. The user can make a favorite channel list which can be stored in the system. The system is configured in such a manner that either in the backend or on receiving the user instruction for channel selection, the system generates the visual clips just for the channels stored only in the favorite channel list. In this embodiment the system is able to generate the visual program guide very fast. Using multiple tuners and generating clips only for favorite channels could provide the results somewhat close to real time situation wherein all the visual clips displayed on the display screen would update so fast that the user would perceive very less discontinuity in the programs.
Although the disclosure of architecture and method has been described in connection with the embodiment of the present invention as illustrated in the accompanying drawings, it is not limited thereto. It will be apparent to those skilled in the art that various substitutions, modifications and changes may be made thereto without departing from the scope and spirit of the invention.
