US 2004/0006767 A1 · System, method, and computer program product for selective filtering of objectionable content from a program

Abstract

A system, method, and computer program product is provided for the selective filtering of objectionable content from a program. The selective filtering of objectionable content from a program is accomplished by applying an encoding process and a decoding process to the audio and/or video signal of the program. The encoding process includes marking potentially objectionable material in the program with filtering information that identifies the type (e.g., audio, violent content, sexual content, etc.) and intensity level (e.g., mild, graphic, extreme, etc.) of the potentially objectionable material using filter codes. The decoding process includes comparing, during the presentation of the program to the user and prior to outputting the audio or displaying the video, the filtering information to filter criteria, which includes user supplied filter settings, to determine whether filtering of the potentially objectionable content (i.e., audio and/or video) should be performed. If filtering is to be performed, the objectionable content in the program is filtered according to the filtering information which, in the preferred embodiment, identifies the start and duration of the filtering and, for filtering of the video of the program, also identifies the display area of the video to be blocked.

Claims46

Dependent claims

A device for selectively filtering objectionable content from a program received as a signal, including a video signal and/or an audio signal (e.g., television broadcast signal), comprising:

an extraction device receiving at least a portion of said signal(s) and configured to extract information therefrom;
a video control device and/or an audio control device;
a processor operatively coupled to said video control device and said audio control device and communicatively coupled to said extraction device for receiving at least a portion of said extracted information therefrom;
a memory coupled to said processor and storing filtering criteria;
said processor programmed to identify audio filtering information and video filtering information in said extracted information;
said processor programmed to cause said audio control device to filter a portion of the audio signal in response to identifying audio filtering information that satisfies said filtering criteria;
and
said processor programmed to cause said video control device to filter a portion of the video signal in response to identifying video filtering information that satisfies said filtering criteria.

5 more elements

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.

System, method, and computer program product for selective filtering of objectionable content from a program

Life of this patent

System, method, and computer program product for selective filtering of objectionable content from a program

Life of this patent

Abstract

Claims46