Patent Application
20060218573
1. Technical Field of the Invention
This invention relates generally to television program recording and viewing methodologies, and more specifically to a method for viewing only highlights of a program.
2. Background Art
Each user has one or more display devices (TV Set) coupled to his set-top box(es), for displaying the television programs he watches. Typically, the user operates the display device and the set-top box with one or more remote control devices.
Optionally but increasingly more commonly, the user's set-top box and/or television set are coupled to the internet. Or, more specifically, they are coupled to an internet service provider which couples them to the internet. In some instances, the television service provider may also be the internet service provider. The television service provider may, themselves, have an internet service provider which couples them to the internet.
Presently, users are left to their own devices in selecting which programs to watch. They may get some guidance from generalized ratings provided by the television program content providers and/or the television service providers, but these are notoriously subjective and generalized.
More pointedly, these generalized ratings apply to entire programs.
What is desirable is a system which enables users to obtain more specific viewing guidance as to particular portions of a particular program.
The invention will be understood more fully from the detailed description given below and from the accompanying drawings of embodiments of the invention which, however, should not be taken to limit the invention to the specific embodiments described, but are for explanation and understanding only.
In addition to specific drawing figures to which the reader is referred, the reader should continue to make reference to
Three exemplary types of user interaction events are charted, but other types of events can certainly be used within the purview of this invention. The charted events include “thumbs”, “rewinds”, and “forwards”. Thumbs are the positive rating approval indicators which users of e.g. the Tivo system can enter on their remote control devices. Tivo uses these approval indicator events to gather data used in guessing which other programs a particular user is likely to enjoy watching. For example, if User A very often gives a “Thumbs Up” approval indicator during professional football and hockey games, the Tivo system may in the future send User A prior notifications of, or even cause his Tivo set-top box to automatically record, e.g. college football games or movies about hockey.
Existing systems, to applicant's knowledge, apply these approval indicators at a whole-program or even whole-genre level. Applicant's invention, by way of contrast, makes special use of the particular times at which such approval indicators are given by a multitude of viewers. For example,
This group of users collectively gave a significant number of positive approval indicators around the 26 minute mark, an even bigger spike of them at around the 57 minute mark, again at the 62 minute mark, and somewhat smaller groupings or spikes at the 98 and 114 minute marks.
In one embodiment, the present invention makes special usage of such spikes. For example, the large groups of “thumbs” at 57 minutes, 62 minutes, etc. may be interpreted to identify especially interesting or good content at or around those time periods, which caused large numbers of users to register their approval. The users may be doing so for their own benefit, e.g. to tell their Tivo personal video recorder to notify them about similar future programs or to automatically record such programs, and/or the users may be doing so for the benefit of other users. The present invention thus in some measure changes the group dynamic of the television viewers, creating a cooperative community rather than a collection of disconnected individuals.
Some personal video recorders have the ability to “jump” ahead by a predetermined amount of time. For example, the Dish Network set-top box's remote control has a Skip button which causes playback to jump forward approximately 30 seconds. Often, this button is used for the purpose of skipping commercial advertisements. But it is also used for skipping boring or offensive portions of the actual television program.
Spikes of “jump forward” user events can be interpreted as identifying time periods which are likely to contain uninteresting, offensive, or advertisement content.
Spikes of “jump backward” user events can be interpreted as identifying time periods which are likely to contain highly interesting content. For example, many users will rewind or jump back to re-watch key plays in a football game, or to re-watch particularly funny moments in a movie.
However, because the user typically does not know exactly how many minutes of commercials to skip, very frequently a series of forward-forward-forward-etc. multiple skips will be followed immediately by one or more rewind skips. Often, or perhaps usually, the user skips forward one time too many, and has to slightly rewind to find the point at which the commercials ended and his television program resumed.
Spikes of rewind events which follow immediately after spikes of forward events may, in some instances, be nothing more than this and do not necessarily represent time periods of superb program content.
In addition to, or in lieu of, looking at the spikes, the system can utilize predetermined threshold values in deciding which segments of the program to display and which to skip. For example, the user may indicate that a thumb spike should be ignored unless it includes thumbs from at least 50,000 viewers. Or, the user may indicate that any portion of the program that caused at least 1,000 rewind events or rewind events from at least 17% of the total viewers should be viewed, even if it was not a local spike in the data.
In addition to jump-type rewind events, the user may also perform a conventional display-while-rewinding type of rewind event. And in addition to jump-type forward events, the user may also perform a conventional display-while-fast-forwarding.
As shown in
The Segment Selector includes a Program Selector via which the user selects which program to watch, such as by selecting the program from an on-screen electronic program guide (EPG) from his television service provider, or from a list of programs which his PVR has recorded, or from a list of movies pre-installed on his video server.
A Position Controller controls the viewing flow through the selected program, determining which portions to show and which portions to skip and so forth.
A Thumb Threshold stores a threshold value for thumb events, below which a thumb value will not cause display of its time period of the program. A Rewind Threshold stores a threshold value for rewind events, below which a rewind value will not cause display of its time period of the program. A Jump Backward Threshold stores a threshold value for jump-back events. A Fast Forward Threshold stores a threshold value for fast-forward events. A Jump Forward Threshold stores a threshold value for jump or skip forward type events.
A Peak Detector identifies peaks of the various types of user interaction events being tracked. The Position Controller utilizes these identified peaks for selecting program segments to display, utilizing values stored in or generated by a Time Window Determiner to determine how much time before and how much time after the detected peak should be displayed. In one mode, the user can pre-program these before and after values, and they may be different for each of the various types of peaks detected.
In one embodiment, a Recovery Detector interacts with the Peak Detector to identify e.g. peaks of rewind or jump back events which, because they follow very closely after peaks of fast forward or jump forward events, are likely to be caused by users attempting to get to the point at which commercials ended and the actual program content resumed. In this embodiment, such peaks of recovery-oriented rewind and jump back events are suppressed from or at least identified for the Position Controller, as they do not likely represent highly interesting content.
The user should continue referring to
The Peak Detector identifies Thumb peaks, and further identifies program segments (particular periods of time) which are above the Thumb Threshold. The Peak Detector identifies jump-back peaks, and program segments which are above the Jump Backward Threshold. The Peak Detector identifies rewind peaks, and program segments which are above the Rewind Threshold. The Peak Detector identifies Jump Forward peaks, and program segments which are above the Jump Forward Threshold. The Peak Detector identifies Jump Forward peaks, and program segments which are above the Jump Forward Threshold.
The Time Window Determiner identifies time windows which should, according to the identified peaks and program time periods, be selected for viewing.
If the current program display position (time) is not within one of these marked time windows, the Position Controller skips forward to the beginning of the next marked time window. Program display continues, whether within the current window or at the start of the next window.
If the program reaches its end (either because the current display position has reached the end of the program stream, or because the final marked window has been displayed), the Position Controller stops causing display of the program and viewing ends. Otherwise, the Segement Selector continues monitoring for the next time window.
The method begins when the user selects a program for display, and the Position Controller starts retrieving the audio/video stream for that program. Because the audio/video program is being streamed in real time (whether or not from a live broadcast), the Segment Selector is unable to skip forward, and can only display the program as it is streamed. The Position Controller mutes the audio and/or video portions of the broadcast.
If the Peak Detector identifies that the current program “location” (time) is where a thumb peak occurred when other users previously viewed the program or a thumb peak has now occurred for the real time broadcast, or if the thumb value exceeds the Thumb Threshold, the Position Controller turns off the mute. After a predetermined minimum time has passed, the mute is again turned on, and the Segment Selector returns to monitoring for peaks etc. If the program reaches its end, display is stopped and the method ends.
If the current program position does not exceed the thumb threshold and does not have a thumb peak, the Peak Detector checks whether it has a peak of Jump Back events or is above the Jump Backward Threshold, or has a peak of Rewind events or is above the Rewind Threshold. If so, it then checks whether this is a “recovery” by checking for recent Forward or Jump Forward peaks and thresholds. If it is not a recovery, the mute is turned off for the minimum specified time period.
In one embodiment, the video portion continues to. display, the audio is muted, and closed captioning is turned on.
The EPG display is enhanced with the insertion of the “thumbs” histogram for the selected program (and subsequent programming on the same channel, for convenience). The user's conventional thumb threshold is shown e.g. as a dashed line across the histogram, giving the user a quick visual indication of whether this program includes highlight segments which he should watch. The user may then choose to watch the program in its entirety, or to have the PVR record or display only the highlights, as indicated above.
In other embodiments, the histogram representation of a program's highlights may be overlayed onto the video display for the first few seconds after the user changes channels, enabling the user to quickly assess whether the new program is worth watching, or whether he should surf on past it, or perhaps whether there may be some interesting highlights later in the program which are worth returning to this channel later to view.
While the invention has been described with respect to television programs, it may be used with any form of video and/or audio programming, such as terrestrial television broadcasts, satellite television broadcasts, cable television broadcasts, personal video recorders, video servers, terrestrial radio broadcasts, satellite radio broadcasts, internet video broadcasts, internet radio broadcasts, and so forth, whether pre-recorded, live, real time, or what have you.
The term “audio-visual” should be interpreted to mean including audio and/or video content. For example, a cable television broadcast, a DVD movie, a music CD, an electronic slide show of still photographs, and an MP3 audio track are all audio-visual programs.
The term “displaying” should be interpreted to include the displaying of visual images and/or the playing of audio sounds.
When one component is shown adjacent another component, it should not be interpreted to mean that there is absolutely nothing between the two components, only that they are in the order indicated or that they are directly or indirectly coupled or in communication with each other.
The various features illustrated in the figures may be combined in many ways, and should not be interpreted as though limited to the specific embodiments in which they were explained and shown.
Those skilled in the art having the benefit of this disclosure will appreciate that many other variations from the foregoing description and drawings may be made within the scope of the present invention. Indeed, the invention is not limited to the details described above. Rather, it is the following claims including any amendments thereto that define the scope of the invention.
