Patent Application
20070237106
The present invention relates to systems and methods for delivering electronic data. More specifically, it relates to systems and methods for delivering contents to electronic devices using broadcast networks such as television and radio broadcasts.
Nowadays, portable electronic devices such as mobile phones, personal digital assistances (PDA), and laptop PCs are used widely. Typically, users of these devices want to personalize their devices with their favorite ring-tones and screen-savers. They also want to playback songs and video clips and play games on their devices. However, content creators and application developers for these devices need a cost effective and wide reaching distribution channel through which they can reach their customers.
Currently, the foregoing contents are typically distributed using portable storage media such as CD, DVD, and the like portable data storage means. With the pervasive availability of wireless communications, content can also be delivered through telecommunication infrastructures via a telecom service provider or through a portal on the Internet.
For example, the telecom service provider provides codes corresponding to different ring-tones. To download a ring-tone, a user has to send an SMS indicating a code corresponding to a ring-tone to a particular number provided by the telecom service provider. Upon receiving the request and verification, the desired ring-tone is then sent to the mobile phone of the user as an EMS and thereafter the ring-tone is installed on the mobile phone. Typically, this is a premium messaging service provided by most telecom service providers and users have to pay extra charges for this service. Apart from the high cost, users are inconvenienced with the problem of having to remember the codes corresponding to the desired ring-tones as well as the requesting numbers to which the users need to send ring-tone requests.
Another example of delivering ring-tones to users is using the Internet. There are numerous portals where ring-tones as well as other contents for mobile phones are available. To obtain a ring-tone, a user has to logon to the Internet using a PC, visit a relevant portal and download the ring-tone to the PC and thereafter downloading the ring-tone to the mobile phone using either a wired or wireless connection (e.g. Infra-Red, WiFi, or Bluetooth). The entire process is time consuming and cumbersome for the average users.
In the case where the mobile phone is WAP enabled, the user can use the mobile phone to browse the Internet portal and download the ring-tone directly to the mobile phone. However, WAP connections are typically slow and generally not favored by users. Furthermore, the small form factor of most mobile phones does not facilitate easy Internet browsing and searching. Therefore, it is desirous to provide an alternative distribution channel that alleviates at least some of the foregoing limitations.
Embodiments of the present invention are herein described, purely by way of example, with reference to the accompanying drawings, in which:
Television and radio broadcast technologies are mostly used for delivering program contents such as news, sports, movies, and the like entertaining and informing programs to audience members (i.e. viewers and listeners) on a mass scale. Businesses are also heavily relying upon television and radio broadcasts to advertise their products. Government entities also use television and radio broadcasts to reach as many people as possible in conveying information or warning of an impending dangerous situation.
Given the wide reaching effect of such broadcasts, it is desirable to be able to also deliver supplementary content, such as mobile phone ring-tones, games, music, video clips, images, text data, and the like contents, along with the broadcasting programs. Accordingly, systems and methods for delivering contents to electronic devices using the television or radio broadcast technologies are described hereinafter with reference to the accompanying drawings. The systems and methods enable contents to be delivered to wide audiences of television or radio programs using existing television or radio broadcasting networks.
For clarity and convenience, the following definitions are used herein: The term “data-augmented AV signal” refers to an AV signal of a television program content or an audio signal of a radio program content (hereinafter generally referred to as AV signal) which has “supplementary content” added to the AV signal. The data-augmented AV signal has the format of the original television or radio AV signal. Typically, the supplementary content is inserted into “a non-program portion” of the AV signal while the program content is carried in a program portion of the AV signal.
The term “supplementary content” refers to information or data relating to the program content of the AV signal of a television or radio broadcast program. The information or data can be, for example, mobile phone ring-tones, music, games, pictures, video clips, sound bites, general information, and the like audience desired information all of which are associated with the program content. The supplementary content is able to be printed on a printer, reproduced or rendered on an electronic device, or stored in a data storage device, in an embodiment, substantially concurrently with the rendering of the program content.
The description “non-program portion” refers to the portion of the AV signal which is reserved for conveying information or data other than the program content. Exemplary embodiments of the non-program portion of the AV signal include the vertical blanking interval (VBI) of an analog television signal or an equivalent signal portion of digital television broadcast signal (referred to as DVB-VBI and DVB-TXT in the Digital Video Broadcast (DVB) Standard), as well as equivalents in digital radio broadcasting (e.g. the programming associated data channel in a digital audio broadcast signal).
The term “conventional broadcast receiver” refers to radio and television receivers or sets which are primarily dedicated to the function of receiving radio and/or television broadcasts, respectively. The conventional broadcast receiver typically has a demodulation circuit operable to extract program content from the data-augmented AV signal which has the same format as the conventional AV signal.
“Conventional radio receivers” within this definition include digital audio radios as described below. Other digital and analog receivers operable to extract program content from a radio broadcast signal may be employed in alternative embodiments. As used herein, the term “conventional television set” refers to conventional analog television sets, such as those configured to process television broadcast signals transmitted in NTSC format, using, for example, North American Basic Teletext (NABTS), PAL and SECAM broadcast formats, using, for example, the European Broadcast Union (EBU) Teletext Standards. In a further embodiment, the term “conventional television set” includes digital televisions receivers, such those operable to process HDTV broadcasts using, for example, the Vertical Ancillary DATA (VANC), and the like standards. Notwithstanding specific references made herein, the term “conventional television set” extends to television sets primarily operable to receive and process broadcast signals, regardless of when it is developed, which employ a non-program portion of the AV signal onto which the supplementary content can be inserted. Specifically excluded from “conventional broadcast receivers” are systems, such as computers, which can be programmed or otherwise modified to emulate the functionality of a commonly known television or radio receiver. Such systems do not have as its primary function to receive and process such broadcast signals, and are not specifically dedicated to operate as broadcast receivers, and accordingly are not within the scope of the present disclosure.
The term “conventional” as used with regard to broadcast, radio, or television receivers/sets refers to the primary functionality of the broadcast receiving system as described, and does not refer to the timing of when such a broadcast system was developed or deployed, which may be at any time during the past, present or future.
Television Data-Augmented AV Signal
As known in the art of analog television broadcasting, program content of a television program is provided in the form of an AV signal which includes a program portion and non-program portion in each frame. The program portion is used for carrying program content while the non-program portion is used for carrying extra information or data such as the vertical and horizontal traces information. In the television broadcast standard, the non-program portion of the AV signal is typically the vertical blanking interval (VBI) found in each frame of the AV signal.
More recently, a variety of digital video broadcast (DVB) standards are also used for broadcasting programs via satellite (DVB-S), cable (DVB-C), terrestrial (DVB-T), or via handheld and mobile terminals (DVB-H). Similar to the VBI in the analog AV signals, DVB broadcast signals also allow the simulcasting of supplementary content or data through DVB-TXT or DVB-VBI. When a digital broadcasting system is employed, the DVB-TXT/VBI is used to deliver the supplementary content as described in the foregoing. For convenience, the description “vertical blanking interval” refers to the vertical blanking interval (VBI) of the analog broadcast television signal, as well as the equivalent non-program portion of the digital broadcast television signals.
Each VBI line is capable of transmitting 288 bits per television frame (one packet). At 50 frames per second, 12 VBI lines per frame translate into a raw data rate transmission of about 144 Kbits per second. However, ensuring data integrity requires forward error correction and this reduces the throughput to about 70 Kbits per second. This throughput is better than those provided by asynchronous telephone lines which have a throughput of 19.2 Kbits per second. The error rate after error correction is 1.0e-5 and this compares favorably with telephone network based data transmission technologies.
In a teletext system, a separate channel of information is formed by inserting various types of information, such as news, sports, advertisements, and so on, in the VBI of the television AV signal 100. Typically, the various types of information do not have any correlation with the particular program content of the television AV signal 100. In an embodiment, the VBI is utilized to transport supplementary content specific to the program content of the particular television AV signal 100. In a further embodiment, the supplementary content inserted in a particular VBI represents a supplementary content associating with the program content embedded in adjacent program portions of the AV signal. In this way, each program segment may have a different supplementary content associated therewith and the supplementary content can be accessed substantially concurrently with the rendering of the segment of the program content at the conventional television set.
An embodiment of a system 210 and corresponding method 250 for providing data-augmented AV signals are respectively illustrated in
The content server 212 is operable to provide supplementary content 214 which is associated solely with a program content conveyed in an AV signal 216 provided to the inserter 220. The supplementary content 214 may further include information concerning the program content, such as additional facts, figures or other data, contact information such as a telephone number, physical or email addresses, and the like information which is specific to the program content of the a particular broadcast program. Further, identifying information such as the version number, size, copyright/digital-right status, author and language of the supplementary content file may be included. Additionally, program-specific advertiser or sponsor information may be included in the supplementary content 214. For example, information such as a list of manufacturers who provide cooking equipment shown in a cooking program.
In another embodiment, the supplementary content 214 may include interactive information which is designed to create an interactive session with the television viewers. Such information may include viewer queries which poses questions regarding the content of the broadcast program, and which invites a response thereto. Those skilled in the art will appreciate that other types of supplementary content may be included.
The supplementary content 214 may be parsed into two or more segments with each segment corresponding to a different segment of the program content as conveyed in the AV signal 216. For example, a cooking show may describe the processes of preparing several different dishes. The supplementary content 214 may accordingly include different content segments which include details regarding recipes, recommended cooking times, and so on for the different dishes. The content segments are accordingly sequenced so that the supplementary content conveyed therein is synchronized with the corresponding segments of the program content received by the inserter 220. This process may be facilitated by the use of a synchronization signal 218 communicating between the content server 212 and the inserter 220.
In an embodiment, the supplementary content 214 is organized into a structured file or document, such as an extensible markup language (XML) document. As such, the supplementary content 214 may includes meta-data which is tagged using known or broadcast industry adopted tags and fields. For example, identification of an advertiser or sponsor associated with one or more segments of the supplementary content may be identified using a meta-data tag “Sponsor ID”. Other meta-data tags corresponding to additional information may also be used. For example, meta-data tag “Lang ID” may be used to identify the language of the supplementary content, “Date ID” to identify the composition date of the supplementary content, “DRM ID” to identify digital rights management information, “Exp ID” to identify an expiration date of the supplementary content, and “Enc ID” to identify encryption information applied to the supplementary content. The aforesaid tags represent only a small sample of the possible meta-data tags and types of information which can be conveyed, and other meta-data tags may be used alternatively to or in addition thereto in other embodiments.
Furthermore, the structured document may be linked (i.e., associated) with the program, either as one complete document which contains one or more segments of the supplementary content, or as a document having only a single segment of the supplementary content. In the latter case, two or more such documents are used to compose the entire stream of supplementary content 214 with each document being linked to a corresponding segment of the program content. The supplementary content 214, in this exemplary embodiment, includes both the supplementary content associating with the program content and identifying information (e.g., “Sponsor ID”) in XML meta-data file.
The inserter 220 adds application level forward error correction (FEC) to the supplementary content 214 and thereafter embeds the treated supplementary content 214 in the non-program portion (i.e. VBI in the case of a television AV signal) of the AV signal 216. The output from the inserter 220 is a data-augmented AV signal 222 which is fed to the RF module 224. The RF module 224 channel codes the data-augmented AV signal 222 before converting it to an intermediate frequency and finally to an RF broadcast signal for broadcasting. The RF broadcast signal is broadcast using the transmitter 226 via one of the transmitting means described in the foregoing.
In DVB standards, the data-augmented AV signal 222 is broadcast in MPEG2 and the like digital formats. Thus, an encoder (not shown) is provided to converted the data-augmented AV signal 222 output from the inserter 220 into an MPEG2 stream before feeding the MPEG2 stream to the RF module 224 for further signal conditioning.
Referring to
In step 254, the inserter 220 receives the supplementary content 214 associating with the program content from the content server 212. Subsequently in step 256 (also referring to
In an embodiment, the provision of the supplementary content 214 can be synchronized with the appropriate program content segment using the synchronization signal 218. Thus, the combining process involves synchronizing segments of the supplementary content 214 with the vertical blanking intervals of the AV signal 216 portions which carry the corresponding segments of the program content. The data-augmented AV signal 222 retains the signal waveform of the original television AV signal 216 and can therefore be processed by a television set in the conventional manner. In step 258 (also referring to
An embodiment of a system 320 and corresponding method 350 for processing data-augmented AV signals are respectively illustrated in
The conventional television set 323 then renders the program content on the television screen in the conventional manner. At the same time, the data-augmented AV signal 324 is output to the supplementary content processor 325, for example, via a video output port of the conventional television set 323, where the supplementary content is extracted therefrom.
The supplementary content processor 325 further processes the extracted supplementary content to provide supplementary documents or data 326 which are associated with the program content being rendered on the conventional television set 323. Subsequently, the supplementary data 326 can be output to a printer 327a for hardcopy printout or can be stored in a data storage device 327b.
In an embodiment, the remote controller unit 328 (the functionality of which may be incorporated into a remote control of the conventional television set 323) can be used to control the supplementary data downloading process at the supplementary content processor 325. In an embodiment, the remote controller unit 328 is operable to instruct the supplementary content processor 325 to process the data-augmented AV signal 324 whereby the supplementary content 324 corresponding to the currently viewed program content is extracted and assembled to provide the supplementary documents or data 326 which are subsequently delivered to one or more of the output devices 327. In this manner, the viewer can download supplementary content concurrently with little or no disruption to the program viewing experience.
The supplementary content processor 325 is operable to extract the supplementary content from the data-augmented AV signal and assembles the supplementary content into one or more printable supplement documents or data 326. Further details of the supplementary content processor 325 are described below with reference to
Radio Data-Augmented Signal
The system 210 and method 250 of
Likewise, similar system and method to those of
Once the supplementary content is extracted from the base-band signal 402, the supplementary content is put through the FEC decoder 423 to correct any errors introduced during broadcasting. The output from the FEC decoder 423 is subsequently fed to the document structure decoder 425.
In an embodiment, the supplementary content (which may include more than one segment, as described above) is recovered in the form of structured data such as XML-formatted data. In such an embodiment, the document structure decoder 425 is employed to decode the meta-data, or other such similar data used in alternative structured document. The decoded data is supplied to the application suite 427 which further assembles the decoded data into the desired format (i.e. data 404) for a particular application. The application drivers 429 are operable to interface with a particular output device 327, and may be incorporated within the application suite 427 in an alternative embodiment. The appropriately formatted data 404, referred to in the foregoing
The supplementary content processor 400 may further include a remote controller interface module (not shown) to which various command signals can be issued for instructing the supplementary content processor 400 to perform one, some, or all of the aforementioned supplementary content processor functions. As an example, the supplementary content processor 400 continually processes streams of supplementary content segments as described in relation to the content server 212 of
In many broadcasting situations, whether radio or television, audience members may want to obtain extra information relating to the radio or television program being broadcast. In an embodiment, the systems and methods described in the foregoing can be used for delivering the extra information (i.e. contents) to electronic devices of the audience members as described hereinafter with reference to
The system 510 as shown in
Subsequently, the supplementary content processor 518 may, upon the audience issuing a command by using a remote controller (such as the one shown in
The method 550 of delivering contents to an electronic device using broadcast networks as shown in
In an embodiment, in step 556, the supplementary content is combined with a specific non-program portion segment of the AV signal to coincide with the specific program-portion segment of the program content. For example, if a supplementary content is closely related to a segment of the program content, the supplementary content is combined with the non-program portion adjacent to the program portion of the related segment of the program content of the AV signal. In this way, at the receiver end, the audience is presented with the option to download the supplementary content at the appropriate time when the audience is most influenced by the program content segment.
In step 560, the transmit signal is received by a conventional receiver. The conventional receiver processes the transmit signal in the conventional manner. Typically, step 560 includes demodulating the transmit signal to provide a base-band signal (i.e. the data-augmented AV signal) which contains the program content and the supplementary content. In the case where the transmit signal is a radio signal, the conventional receiver is a radio receiver and it retrieves the program content from the base-band signal and presents the program content to the listener in audio form. In the case where the transmit signal is a television signal, the conventional receiver is a television receiver and it renders the program content on the television screen. The act of rendering the program content is performed in step 562, a process well known in the art.
At substantially the same time of rendering the program content, the base-band signal is output to a supplementary content processor in step 564. The supplementary content processor, as described in the foregoing with reference to
For example, in an embodiment, while watching a movie on a television at home, an audience member desires to obtain the theme song of the movie for use as a ring-tone on his mobile phone, a trailer of the movie for showing to a friend, and a picture for use as a wall-paper or screen saver on his mobile phone. The audience member can conveniently obtain the desired supplementary contents by instructing the supplementary content processor to display the possible supplementary content available either on a display of the supplementary content processor or on the television screen (e.g. superimpose with the program content being rendered thereon). In an embodiment, during the rendering of the program content, an indicator may be shown on the display of the supplementary content processor or on a portion of the television screen to indicate the availability of the supplementary contents. Thereafter, the audience member may select the desired supplementary contents by using, for example, a remote controller unit. Upon receiving the request, the desired supplementary content is delivered to the mobile phone (registered with the supplementary content processor) of the audience member. In an alternative embodiment, the registered mobile phone can be adapted to allow the user to directly issue a request for supplementary contents to the supplementary content processor.
Each type of supplementary contents includes a metadata for differentiating one type from another and for indicating the electronic devices the supplementary content is suitable for. In this exemplary embodiment, each of the theme song, the trailer, and the picture includes a metadata which describes the name of the content, data format (e.g. binary, ASCII, etc), size, and type of content. Further, for example, if the content is provided in the XML format (other formats can also be used), a mobile phone application can be included which can be transferred to the mobile phone for installation and operation thereon. Thus, upon receiving the supplementary contents at the mobile phone, the mobile phone knows how to manage the supplementary contents and launches the appropriate applications.
The metadata can also include digital rights management (DRM) information for intellectual property rights control. Each audience member can be provided with an access key to unlock the contents. The access key is obtainable by subscribing to a subscription package from a broadcast company or content provider. To unlock the contents, the audience member may be prompted to enter the access key (e.g. by using the buttons on the remote controller unit) upon selecting each desired supplementary content. It should be noted that other forms of securities (e.g. biometric) can also be employed. These various forms of securities are well known in the art.
As readily appreciated by those skilled in the art, the described processes may be implemented in hardware, software, firmware or a combination of these implementations as appropriate. For example, the processes of combining, modulating, and broadcasting signals may be carried out by hardware component modulators and transmitter systems operable to modulate and broadcast signals at the desired frequency and in the desired format. The described supplementary content processor may employ a combination of hardware front-end receiver components operable to additionally demodulate and/or condition the received supplementary content, and firmware/software operable to FEC decode the supplementary content and to store/process the resultant data as well as the output applications and device drivers. In addition, some or all of the described processes may be implemented as computer readable instruction code resident on a computer readable medium (removable disk, volatile or non-volatile memory, embedded processors, etc.), the instruction code operable to program a computer of other such programmable device to carry out the intended functions.
The foregoing description is presented for purposes of illustration and description. It is not intended to be exhaustive or to limit the invention to the precise form disclosed, and obviously many modifications and variations are possible in light of the foregoing description. The described embodiments are chosen in order to best explain the principles of the invention and its practical application to thereby enable others skilled in the art to best utilize the invention in various embodiments and with various modifications as are suited to the particular use contemplated. It is intended that the scope of the invention be defined by the claims appended hereto.
| Number | Date | Country | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Parent | PCT/IN05/00269 | Aug 2005 | US |
| Child | 11692209 | Mar 2007 | US |
