Patent Grant
12041285
The present disclosure is directed to guide interface displays, and more particularly to controlling display times of guide interface elements.
Conventional media guides typically offer menus to find media for consumption. Guide interfaces elements (e.g., flip menus, program information screens, etc.) are often displayed on-screen for a fixed period of time before timing out. Durations for displaying guide interface elements are usually fixed and pre-programmed into the guide interface application. Sometimes the viewer may not have enough time to react within the pre-programmed display duration and may then need to manually re-launch the guide interface element. The repeated re-launch of guide interface elements leads to inefficient system operations and also impairs the viewing experience.
In view of this problem, embodiments described herein describe dynamically displaying a guide interface element for a customized period of time that is determined based on characteristics of the actual guide interface element to be displayed. Specifically, as described below, a duration engine is implemented at user equipment or a server to determine the type and/or the amount of guide data to be displayed in the guide interface element, based on which the duration engine adjusts the display duration for the guide interface element. For example, a program information element having a large amount of text, complex graphics, or multiple engageable options will be displayed longer than an interface element having an uncomplicated text. In this way, when the timeout of the guide interface element is customized based on characteristics of the guide data, the duration engine allows sufficient time for the viewer to view and react to the guide interface element. Incidents of viewer re-launching of the guide interface element can thus be reduced to improve system processing efficiency and viewing experience.
To determine a customized display duration for a specific guide interface element, the duration engine queries a display duration data table to retrieve a pre-defined time duration corresponding to a specific characteristic of the guide interface element. The characteristic of the guide interface element can include any of the amount of guide data contained the guide interface element, a type of the guide interface element, an interest level of the viewer in the guide data, etc. Each characteristic corresponds to a pre-defined time duration. For example, a relatively longer duration is pre-defined as corresponding to the characteristic of a large amount of information to be displayed, or guide data that contains a content asset that matches with an interest profile of the viewer.
Additionally, when a content asset is being played at the time when the guide interface element is requested, the duration engine evaluates the criticality level of the content asset in order to determine a pre-defined duration. When critical content (e.g., a sports game, the finale of a thriller movie, etc.) that requires close attention from the viewer is being played, a relatively shorter pre-defined duration is determined for displaying the guide interface element.
As a guide interface element may have different characteristics (e.g., a large amount of text but a low interest level, etc.), the duration engine evaluates different pre-defined durations corresponding to the different characteristics, e.g., by taking a weighted average of the corresponding pre-defined durations, or by treating a specific characteristic with priority. When the duration engine prioritizes a certain characteristic, e.g., choosing a short pre-defined duration because of concurrently played critical content, even if a large amount of text is to be displayed, additional remedial action can be taken to compensate for the shortened display duration. For example, relevant guide data can be sent to a secondary device for extended display time, or one or more items contained in the guide interface element can be highlighted to accelerate a reaction from the viewer, etc.
The above and other objects and advantages of the disclosure will be apparent upon consideration of the following detailed description, taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings, in which like reference characters refer to like parts throughout, and in which:
Diagram 100 further shows that the user equipment 106 obtains guide data 114, and a guide interface element 112 may be subsequently displayed on screen overlaying the content asset 108, as shown at screen 109. As referred to herein, “guide data” or “guidance data” should be understood to mean any data related to content or data used in operating the guidance application. For example, guide data 114 may include program information, guidance application settings, user preferences, user profile information, media listings, media-related information (e.g., broadcast times, broadcast channels, titles, descriptions, ratings information (e.g., parental control ratings, critic's ratings, etc.), genre or category information, actor information, logo data for broadcasters' or providers' logos, etc.), media format (e.g., standard definition, high definition, 3D, etc.), on-demand information, blogs, websites, and any other type of guidance data that is helpful for a user to navigate among and locate desired content selections. The guide data may be received via a communications network from a guide data source, such as a media server, a content provider, a cable network, etc. Guide interface element 112 presents guide data 114 in a certain format, such as a full-screen program listing grid, a message window, a menu window, etc.
Diagram 100 further shows a display duration database 119 that interacts with user equipment 106. Display duration database 119 may be housed locally, at an electronic storage device at the user equipment 106. Or display duration database 119 may be housed at an electronic storage device located remotely from user equipment 106 and may be accessible via a communication network. As referred to herein, the phrase “electronic storage device” or “storage device” should be understood to mean any device for storing electronic data, computer software, or firmware, such as random-access memory, read-only memory, hard drives, optical drives, digital video disc (DVD) recorders, compact disc (CD) recorders, BLU-RAY disc (BD) recorders, BLU-RAY 3D disc recorders, digital video recorders (DVR, sometimes called a personal video recorder, or PVR), solid state devices, quantum storage devices, gaming consoles, gaming media, or any other suitable fixed or removable storage devices, and/or any combination of the same. Display duration databases 119 may also be accessed at a cloud-based storage, which may be used to supplement a local storage device or instead of the storage device. Specifically, display duration database 119 stores a data table having a list of pre-defined durations and corresponding characteristics of guide data or guide interface elements. The example data table 120 stored at display duration database 119 shows data entries including a characteristic identifier 119a of guide data, characteristic values 119b (e.g., the number of characters in the guide data as “<100,” the type of the guide data (“program listing”), etc.), and a corresponding pre-defined time duration 119c (“10 seconds”).
User equipment 106, display duration database 119 and/or additional entities such as a remote server providing guide data 114 interact with each other to provide a mechanism for dynamically displaying a guide interface element, e.g., on user equipment 106. Specifically, a duration engine is implemented at user equipment 106 to determine a customized display duration for each guide interface element. The duration engine may be implemented at different devices (e.g., multiple user equipment, etc.) and may communicate with each other via a communication network. Or alternatively, the duration engine may be integrated into one application running on the same device, e.g., user equipment 106. In such an approach, instructions of the duration engine are stored locally (e.g., at storage of the user equipment 106 but in communication with a remote duration database 119), and data for use by the engine is downloaded on a periodic basis (e.g., from an out-of-band feed, from an Internet resource such as the duration database 119 in). Control circuitry may be used to retrieve instructions of the duration engine from storage and process the instructions to generate any of the displays discussed herein such as the content asset 108 or guide interface element 112. Based on the processed instructions, control circuitry may determine what action to perform when input is received from input interface.
For example, user equipment 106 may receive an input invoking display of a guide interface element. The input may be received, from a viewer viewing the content asset 108, via an interface of user equipment 106. The interface may be any suitable user interface that is connected to an input/output (I/O) path, such as a remote control, mouse, trackball, keypad, keyboard, touch screen, touchpad, stylus input, joystick, voice recognition interface, or other user input interfaces. For example, user equipment 106 may receive an input, via a remote control, to display a full menu of current program listing. For another example, user equipment 106 may receive an input from a touch screen interface to display an information menu of the program currently being played (e.g., 108).
In response to the input, user equipment 106 determines guide data for populating the requested guide interface element. For example, user equipment 106 determines, based on a type of the requested guide interface element, what guide data is required, e.g., program listing information, configuration information, etc. In some implementation, user equipment 106 retrieves guide data that is stored locally, e.g., display setting configurations, playback progress bar information, etc. In some implementations, user equipment 106 receives guide data 114 from a guide data source via an input/output (I/O) path of user equipment 106. The I/O path may provide content (e.g., broadcast programming, on-demand programming, Internet content, content available over a local area network (LAN) or wide area network (WAN), and/or other content) and data to control circuitry at user equipment 106.
Upon obtaining guide data 114, user equipment 106 then populates guide data 114 into the guide interface element 112. Specifically, the duration engine determines characteristics of the guide data, based on which a customized display duration for guide interface element 112 is determined. For example, the duration engine determines the type of the characteristic, e.g., the amount of guide data, the type of guide data, the estimated interest level of the guide data, etc.; and the value of the characteristic, e.g., the amount of guide data=“89 characters,” the type of guide data=“program listing,” the estimated interest level of the guide data=“0.65,” etc. The duration engine may determine the characteristic identifier upon the type of the guide interface element and a program channel that the guide interface element is associated with, e.g., “programlisting_channel5” 119a. The duration engine then sends a query 121 based on the characteristics identifier of the guide data to duration database 119 and the characteristic value and retrieves a display duration 122 from database 119.
Display duration database 119 stores one or more data tables 120 that list pre-defined durations corresponding to different characteristics of a guide interface element. For example, a characteristic identifier (e.g., determined upon the type of the guide interface element and a program channel that the guide interface element is associated with, etc.) corresponds to one or more characteristics values, e.g., a range of characters contained in the guide data, a type of the interface element, an interest level of the guide data, etc. Each characteristic value is associated with a pre-defined duration. For example, as shown in
Additional examples of characteristics and corresponding pre-defined durations in the data table 120 may be provided below. Further details on determining a display duration based on different characteristics are further described in relation to
Upon determining display duration 122, user equipment 106 generates for display, the guide interface element 112 for the determined display duration 122. For example, user equipment 106 selects a guide interface format (e.g., a full screen program listing grid, a flip menu, etc.) for the type of guide data 114, and populates guide data 114 into the interface format. User equipment 106 terminates the display of interface element 112 after the determined display duration 122, e.g., 10 seconds.
In some embodiments, the characteristic of the guide data can be indicative of a type of the guide data. For example, guide interface element 112a, which shows the program schedule that includes a more complex format than guide interface element 112b which is a progress bar, is assigned a longer display duration.
In some embodiments, when two or more characteristics yield conflicting scenarios of pre-defined durations, the duration engine may prioritize a specific characteristic and adopt the respective pre-defined duration corresponding to the specific characteristic. For example, as shown at 401, when an intense tennis match 108 is being played when the guide interface element 112 is requested, the duration engine assigns a short pre-defined duration of 10 seconds to the guide interface element 112, even if the amount of text contained in the guide interface element 112 corresponds to a longer pre-defined duration. To compensate for the shorted display duration of the guide interface element 112, the duration engine may perform remedial actions. For example, as shown at 401, guide data 403 may be delivered to a secondary device 410, which includes any of a personal computer, laptop computer, mobile device, Smart phone, Smart wearable device, and/or other processing device. The secondary device 410 may provide an extended display of the guide data 403.
For another example, as shown in
At 608, control circuitry generates a characteristic identifier based at least in part on a type or a value of the characteristic of the guide data. For example, control circuitry extracts the value from a data field indicative of a type of the guide interface element, and/or the value from a data field indicative of a channel that is being played, based on which a hash is computed as the identifier for the characteristics of the guide interface element.
At 610, for each characteristic, control circuitry queries, a display duration data table (e.g., 120) storing a plurality of pre-defined time durations (e.g., 119c) corresponding to a plurality of characteristics (e.g., 119a-b) of the guide data, for a pre-defined time duration based on the determined identifier and the characteristic. For example, as shown in
At 612, control circuitry determines, based at least in part on the query result (e.g., 122), a display duration for the guide interface element. At 614, control circuitry generates for display, the guide interface element for the determined display duration. For example, as shown in
At 706, control circuitry retrieves an interest profile associated with the viewer. For example, the interest profile takes a form of a structured data file that has a list of terms indicative of content that the viewer is interested in.
At 708, control circuitry compares the one or more indicators with the retrieved interest profile. For example, when the indicator shows “Women's Final,” “ESPN,” and the interest profile has an interested item of “tennis,” control circuitry identifies a match between the indicator and the interest profile.
At 710, control circuitry computes an overlapping percentage between the one or more indicators and the retrieved interest profile. For example, the overlapping percentage is computed as the number of characters that match the interest profile divided by the total characters in the guide data.
At 712, control circuitry determines an interest metric based on the overlapping percentage. For example, control circuitry decides a “low” interest level when the overlapping percentage is below a threshold, or a “high” interest level when the overlapping percentage is higher than the threshold.
At 714, control circuitry queries, the display duration data table, based on a characteristic identifier and the interest metric to retrieve a corresponding displayed duration. For example, as shown in Table 1, control circuitry retrieves corresponding durations based on a “low” or “high” interest level.
At 806, control circuitry determines a genre of the content asset. For example, control circuitry retrieves genre information from metadata associated with the content asset. For another example, control circuitry queries a content asset database based on an identifier of the content asset for genre information, e.g., sports event, comedy, etc.
At 808, control circuitry queries a criticality table for a corresponding criticality level based on the genre. For example, a genre entry of “tennis match” may be assigned with a high criticality value in the criticality table. For another example, a genre entry of “comedy” may be assigned with a low criticality value in the criticality table. Process 800 then proceeds to 818.
At 810, control circuitry retrieves metadata associated with a content segment around the time when the input is received. For example, control circuitry determines a time duration of a pre-defined length (e.g., 5 seconds, 10 seconds, etc.) between a first playback position and a second playback position during which the input was received. At 812, control circuitry extracts one or more key terms from the metadata. For example, control circuitry obtains the key terms from caption data corresponding to the time duration. For another example, control circuitry performs frame analysis on the content segment to obtain the one or more key terms, e.g., the displayed score box during a tennis match.
At 814, for each of the one or more key terms, control circuitry queries, the criticality table storing glossary terms relating to the content asset, for a respective criticality score based on the respective key term. For example, when the one or more key terms include “break point,” “final,” etc., control circuitry retrieves criticality scores corresponding to the key terms “break point” (e.g., a score of 0.75) and “final” (e.g., a score of 0.65).
At 816, control circuitry computes the criticality level of the content asset by taking an average of the respective criticality scores. In the above example, when the key terms include “break point” and “final, a criticality level of 0.7 is computed.
At 818, control circuitry queries, the display duration data table, based on a characteristic identifier and the criticality level to retrieve a corresponding displayed duration. For example, as shown in Table 1, control circuitry retrieves corresponding durations based on the criticality level.
At 904, control circuitry determines a second pre-defined duration based on a second characteristic. For example, as shown in Table 1, control circuitry determines a duration of 5 seconds based on a “high” criticality level, e.g., when the content asset being played contains key terms such as “break point,” “final” in the metadata around the time when the input to launch the guide interface element is received.
At 906, control circuitry computes a difference between the first pre-defined duration and the second pre-defined duration. In the above example, a difference of 25 seconds is computed. At 908, control circuitry determines whether the difference is greater than a threshold. For example, when the difference between the two pre-defined durations is less than a threshold (e.g., 3 s, 5 s, etc.), process 900 proceeds to 911, where control circuitry computes an average of the first pre-defined duration and the second pre-defined duration. Or when the difference between the two pre-defined durations is greater than the threshold, process 900 proceeds to 910, where control circuitry applies a priority rule relating to the first characteristic and the second characteristic to adopt the first pre-defined duration. In the above example, the difference of 25 seconds is significant and greater than the threshold (e.g., 3 s, 5 s, etc.), control circuitry retrieves a priority rule that prioritizes the corresponding duration with the criticality level. The priority rule resolves the conflict with an intention to minimize obstruction of viewing experience of a critical content segment. In this case, control circuitry adopts the duration of 5 seconds to display the guide interface element at 912.
At 914, control circuitry determines whether the adopted duration is less than the second duration. For example, after the priority rule is applied, control circuitry determines whether the adopted duration of 5 seconds is less than the duration of 30 seconds determined based on the total count of characters in the guide data. When the adopted duration is no less than the second duration, process 900 ends. Otherwise, when the adopted duration is no less than the second duration, indicating that a pre-defined duration corresponding to a specific characteristic has been de-prioritized, process 900 proceeds to 916, where control circuitry performs a remedial action to compensate for a shortened display duration of the guide interface element, e.g., as shown in
It is contemplated that the actions or descriptions of each of
It will be apparent to those of ordinary skill in the art that methods involved in the present disclosure may be embodied in a computer program product that includes a computer-usable and/or readable medium. For example, such a computer-usable medium may consist of a read-only memory device, such as a CD-ROM disk or conventional ROM device, or a random-access memory, such as a hard drive device or a computer diskette, having a computer-readable program code stored thereon. It should also be understood that methods, techniques, and processes involved in the present disclosure may be executed using processing circuitry. The processing circuitry, for instance, may be a general-purpose processor, a customized integrated circuit (e.g., an ASIC), or a field-programmable gate array (FPGA) within the content construction engine or the media destruction engine described through the disclosure. Furthermore, processing circuitry, or a computer program, may update configuration data, which may be stored at a storage within the user equipment 106.
The processes discussed above are intended to be illustrative and not limiting. One skilled in the art would appreciate that the steps of the processes discussed herein may be omitted, modified, combined, and/or rearranged, and any additional steps may be performed without departing from the scope of the invention. More generally, the above disclosure is meant to be exemplary and not limiting. Only the claims that follow are meant to set bounds as to what the present invention includes. Furthermore, it should be noted that the features and limitations described in any one embodiment may be applied to any other embodiment herein, and flowcharts or examples relating to one embodiment may be combined with any other embodiment in a suitable manner, done in different orders, or done in parallel. In addition, the systems and methods described herein may be performed in real time. It should also be noted, the systems and/or methods described above may be applied to, or used in accordance with, other systems and/or methods.
While some portions of this disclosure may make reference to “convention,” any such reference is merely for the purpose of providing context to the invention(s) of the instant disclosure, and does not form any admission as to what constitutes the state of the art.
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