Embodiments of the invention relate to technologies that enable the identification of programming events of interest to a viewer.
Television viewers are presently able to access hundreds of channels providing a multitude of programs, only a small fraction of which will be of interest to a given viewer. To assist the viewer in determining programs of interest, current commercially available reception devices such as televisions, analog cable receivers, and digital cable and satellite receivers typically provide a program guide function that allows the viewer to access a grid showing programs that will be available on various channels in upcoming time slots. Brief descriptions of programs may also be accessible. Such receivers may also allow the user to search for programs in basic categories such as news, sports, movies, etc.
Current commercially available television recording technology also provides similar tools. The present generation of digital video recording machines, which typically store video on a bulk storage device such as a hard disk drive, allow users to select programs for recording using an on screen program guide that provides keyword searching of program titles, a program time grid, and basic program categorization.
Although these devices provide tools that improve over devices of earlier generations, most conventional tools still require viewers to examine all upcoming programs to identify programs of interest. Thus, developers of the next generation of devices are focused on providing intelligence in receiving and recording devices for identifying programs of interest on behalf of the user. A number of U.S. patents describe different approaches to this problem.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,223,924 describes a device that downloads program descriptions. The program descriptions are viewed individually by a user, who indicates whether he is interested in each program. Based on the user""s input, the device builds a database of keywords associated with the user""s positive and negative preferences. This database is then used to identify upcoming programs that may be of interest to the user.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,410,344 describes a device that stores a viewer preference file that reflects the viewer""s positive and negative preferences concerning various program attributes. The device uses the preference file to analyze content codes that describe attributes of available programs, and presents a program to the user based on the analysis. Programs are ranked using a neural network thresholding method.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,434,678 and its related patents describe a video retrieval system in which individual portions of scenes within a video are rated in accordance with a rating system and a version of the video is presented by selecting the segments that are acceptable based on a user""s content preferences. Similar technology is described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,717,814 and its related patents.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,444,999 describes a device that tracks the viewing habits of a user and builds a weekly viewing trend. The device notifies the viewer when the television is tuned to different channel in conflict with the viewing trend.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,534,911 describes a system in which a viewer builds a personal profile that is then used to analyze data describing available programs. Programs are selected based on the analysis and are made available on a personalized virtual channel. The viewer is also enabled to select from among programs that are ranked in accordance with the profile. The specific manner in which program analysis is performed is not described.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,585,865 describes a system that searches for a genre code in broadcast signals in accordance with a specified program genre. If more than one signal contains the desired genre code, the system displays the channel with the greatest display history.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,619,247 describes a video recording device that selects programs for storage based on predefined user preferences, and allows a user to view the stored programs on a pay-per-view basis.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,767,893 describes a system that uses content based filtering for identifying video programs to be stored. The specific manner in which content is filtered is not described.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,878,222 describes a system that monitors channel data describing contents of available channels and arbitrates access to display or storage resources based on a user profile.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,945,988 describes a system that monitors the programs viewed by a current viewer and determines the identity of the current viewer using stored viewer profiles. The system may then use the viewer profile to analyze metadata describing upcoming programs to identify programs for viewing or recording. The specific manner in which the metadata analysis is performed is not described.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,088,722 describes a system in which a user profile is compared to program content profiles to generate an agreement matrix for each program. The agreement matrixes are used to select a program for presentation to the viewer. Agreement matrixes may also be generated at a server end using profiles for multiple viewers to select programs to be made available from the server.
One shortcoming of the conventional technology as described above is that programs must be evaluated on a whole-program basis. However, many programs address diverse subjects, some of which will be of interest to a particular viewer and some of which will not. Embodiments of the invention address this problem through devices and processes for generating metadata for individual program segments, thus allowing program segments to be treated as individual programming events that can be individually evaluated by the user or by user equipment. Related embodiments of the invention are applicable to programs such as news broadcasts that are multi-segmented and are typically not described in detail in conventionally available information sources because their contents are typically not known until shortly before broadcast. In accordance with embodiments of the invention, the production data used to produce such programs may be processed to generate metadata for the individual segments of the program and to distribute that metadata to consumers in advance of the airing of the program.
A further shortcoming of the conventional technology is that program classification is limited to broadly defined subject categories that are typically not easily compared to an individual viewers"" personal tastes. For example, conventional technology may be capable of classifying programs as being within the category of xe2x80x9csports.xe2x80x9d However, for the viewer who is only interested in a particular sport, or a particular team, such classification is not effective in identifying programs of particular interest. Embodiments of the invention address this problem through the use of a content classification hierarchy for classifying the content of programming events and for defining viewer""s particular interests. The classification hierarchy is comprised of trees of subject categories of increasing specificity. This allows programming events to be classified with a previously unattainable degree of specificity, and allows viewer preferences to be expressed with equal specificity, both to emphasize particular categories of interest and to exclude categories not of interest. For example, rather than simply being enabled to specify interest in xe2x80x9csportsxe2x80x9d, a viewer may specify that he is interested in football and tennis but not basketball or baseball, and may further express interest in particular football teams. Thus, devices may evaluate programming events that are rated according to the classification hierarchy, using viewer profiles defined according to the same classification system, and the resulting evaluations reflect actual user preferences much more accurately than if conventional general categories were used. Further, among multiple programs that are evaluated as being of interest to a viewer, the degree of specificity of the matches provides a manner of ranking those programs based on viewer preferences.
The use of hierarchical classification as described above enables intelligent identification of programming events that will be of particular interest to a given viewer. This intelligence may be implemented to automatically record programming events of interest, to alert a viewer of upcoming programming events of interest, to automatically display programming events of interest as they become available, or to selectively provide programs to the viewer. When this intelligence is coupled with metadata describing individual program segments as described above, it becomes possible to provide the viewer with a truly personalized viewing experience, from which all uninteresting subject matter has been eliminated through deep content specific filtering at the program segment level.
Further embodiments of the invention may combine the use of a content classification hierarchy with keywords for further characterizing programming events. Keywords may be given scores to characterize the degree to which they are descriptive of the programming event. In some embodiments, a keyword may be associated with a category of a classification hierarchy in a device that analyzes programming events to more precisely indicate the manner in which the keyword characterizes the subject matter of interest to the viewer. Related embodiments of the invention may therefore evaluate programming events using a combination of keyword matching and category matching.
Further embodiments of the invention may utilize interactive processes whereby personnel involved in the production of a programming event are enabled to participate in the generation of metadata for the programming event through an interactive process, whereby preliminary metadata produced by a system is either approved or edited to reflect the judgment of the production personnel as to various aspects such as the categories used to described the programming event, scores associated with the categories, keywords and their scores and category associations, and a title for the programming event.
Further embodiments of the invention may utilize timing data that is inserted in a closed caption data stream to mark at least the beginnings of programming events with precision so that a recording device is enable to determine the beginning of the programming event. The timing data may be created at the time that the rest of the closed caption data is created for the programming event, and closed caption data including such timing data may be synchronized to the programming event through triggering by a teleprompter system. A recording device may use the timing data to initiate, pause, un-pause and terminate recording. Related embodiments may incorporate such timing data in the video signal itself.
In accordance with one embodiment of the invention, metadata for a programming event may be generated through an interactive process. A system may receive data corresponding to a programming event. The data may include descriptive information and timing information. The system may then generate preliminary metadata for the programming event from the received data. The system may provide the preliminary metadata to a system user, and then receive user specified metadata responsive to the preliminary metadata. The preliminary metadata may include one or more of categories of a classification hierarchy, goodness of fit scores associated with the categories, keywords, goodness of fit scores associated with the keywords, and a title. Related embodiments may pertain to a system implementing such methods. Further related embodiments may pertain to methods and systems in which a system user is enabled to approve preliminary metadata provided by the system.
The following description of various embodiments discloses a variety of additional features that may be implemented in conjunction with the various embodiments summarized above and in further combinations that will be apparent to those having ordinary skill in the art.