US 7,627,883 B2Granted

Interactive entertainment and information system using television set-top box

AssigneeMicrosoft Corporation

InventorRobert M. Fries

Life of this patent

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Abstract

An interactive entertainment and information system using a television set-top box, wherein pages of information are periodically provided to the set-top box for user interaction therewith. The pages include associated meta-data defining active locations on each page. When a page is displayed, the user interacts with the active locations on the page by entering commands via a remote control device, whereby the system reads the meta-data and takes the action associated with the location. Actions include moving to other active locations, hyperlinking to other pages, entering user form data and submitting the data as a form into memory. The form data may be read from memory, and the pages may be related to a conventional television program, thereby providing significant user interactivity with the television.

Claims2

Dependent claims

In an audiovideo data transmission environment comprising a server source and at least one client receiver, a method comprising:

transmitting a stream of video data from the server source to a client receiver for display, including transmitting a plurality of cycles of a carousel periodically injected into the stream, each cycle of the carousel including a plurality of pages of image data and metadata stored in a plurality of locations of the carousel;
and
for one or more cycles of the carousel, the server source inserting at least one new page of image data different from at least one old page of image data of a previous cycle, wherein the at least one new page of image data is stored in a location of the carousel corresponding to a location of the at least one old page of image data, thereby controlling at the server source a slide show from the perspective of the client receiver, wherein the slide show comprises a series of pages of image data that are sequentially and automatically displayed at the client receiver.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.

Facts

Application: 11/491,048Filed 20 Jul 2006 · division
Priority: 26 Jun 1997
Published: US 2006/0259937 A116 Nov 2006
Granted: 1 Dec 2009
Term ends: Not estimatedThe source records don’t support an estimate.

Classification21 codes

H04N 21/8583
Linking data to content, e.g. by linking an URL to a video object, by creating a hotspot: by creating hot-spots
H04N 7/17318
Transmission or handling of upstream communications: direct or substantially direct transmission and handling of requests
H04N 21/2355
Processing of additional data, e.g. scrambling of additional data or processing content descriptors: involving reformatting operations of…
H04N 21/23617
Multiplexing of additional data and video streams: by inserting additional data into a data carousel, e.g. inserting software modules into a DVB…

Family

Application08/882,908Parent of this continuation · filed 26 Jun 1997
Application09/895,452Parent of this division · filed 29 Jun 2001
US 2006/0259937 A1Pre-grant publication · published 16 Nov 2006
US 6,317,885 B1Parent of this continuation
Application09/895,452Parent of this continuation
US 2002/0035728 A1Published application
US 7,590,994 B2Related patent
US 7,627,883 B2This patent

From the US filing history. Foreign family members aren’t listed.