Television program highlight tagging
AssigneeStexar Corp.
InventorRobert Proebstel
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
An improved audio-visual playback system which identifies and displays only high-interest segments of a program, according to peaks or thresholds of positive and negative user interaction events from a multitude of other users of the program. A personal video recorder which receives a history of positive user interaction events such as “thumbs up” approval events, jump backward events, and rewind events, and negative user interaction events such as “thumbs down” disapproval events, jump forward events, and fast forward events. If prior viewers gave high interest approval for a segment, either by affirmatively voting “thumbs up” or by rewatching the segment, the playback system plays that segment; otherwise the segment is skipped or muted, such that user can watch only the “highlights”.
Claims28
A method of displaying an audio-visual program, the method comprising:
- retrieving a history of user interaction events from a plurality of users of the audio-visual program;
- displaying only those high-interest segments of the audio-visual program for which the history includes a peak of positive user interaction events and/or a number of positive user interaction events exceeding a predetermined threshold;
- and
- preventing display of low-interest segments of the audio-visual program.
A method of displaying a television program which has been previously displayed for a plurality of other viewers, the television program including synchronized audio and video portions, the method comprising:
- retrieving a history of user interaction events from the previous viewers;
- responsive to the history, identifying high-interest program segments and low-interest program segments;
- and
- for each respective program segment sequentially in the program,
- if the respective program segment is a high-interest program segment, displaying the respective program segment, and
- if the respective program segment is a low-interest program segment, muting at least one of the audio and video portions of the respective program segment.
A method of displaying electronic programming guide data on a television display, the method comprising:
- displaying an identification of a channel;
- displaying at least one time of day;
- displaying, for that channel, a title of at least one program broadcast at the at least one time of day;
- and
- displaying, for that program, an indication of highlight marker events associated with that program.
A method of displaying a television program on a display, the method comprising:
- in response to a user changing from a previous channel to a new channel,
- displaying a program currently broadcast on the new channel, and
- temporarily displaying an indication of highlight marker events associated with that program.
A television system comprising:
- a display screen;
- video electronics coupled to drive the display screen;
- and
- a segment selector coupled to provide a video signal to the video electronics, and coupled to receive a television program from a video source providing skip-forward playback, wherein the segment selector includes,
- means for retrieving a history of user interaction events for the television program from a ratings service provider,
- means, responsive to the history, for identifying high-interest program segments and low-interest program segments in the television program, and
- a position controller for providing only the high-interest program segments to the video electronics.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.