User managed internet links from TV

A method of obtaining metadata associated with television programming content, comprising:

• at a television remote controller that does not have direct access to the metadata, generating a first signal instructing an access device to generate and communicate a second signal to a digital television device suitable for driving a television display of the digital television device, where the second signal contains visual metadata in a video format suitable for rendering on the television display of the digital television device in a visual representation;
• receiving the second signal at the digital television device and storing a representation of a video frame within a memory of the digital television device;
• processing the video frame via the digital television device using optical character recognition (OCR) of the visual metadata to extract enough information to identify the television programming content from the video frame;
• where at least one of a selected channel, date, time, service provider and approximate physical location is determined using the optical character recognition (OCR) processing of the video frame to identify the television programming content;
• retrieving additional metadata associated with the identified television programming content from a television programming content source of metadata;
• and
• displaying the retrieved additional metadata on the television display of the digital television device at a configured time other than a time at which the additional metadata is retrieved.

A method of obtaining metadata associated with television programming content, comprising:

• at a television remote controller that does not have direct access to the metadata, generating a first signal instructing an access device to generate and communicate a second signal to a control digital television device suitable for driving a television display of the digital television device, where the second signal contains visual metadata in a video format suitable for rendering on the television display device of the digital television in a visual representation;
• receiving the second signal at the digital television device and storing a representation of a video frame within a memory of the digital television device;
• processing the video frame via the digital television device using optical character recognition (OCR) of the visual metadata to extract enough information to identify the television programming content from the video frame;
• where at least one of a selected channel, date, time, service provider and approximate physical location is determined using the optical character recognition (OCR) processing of the video frame to identify the television programming content, where identifying the television programming content is carried out by accessing a specified web site that contains a database of additional metadata;
• retrieving the additional metadata associated with the identified television programming content from a television programming content source of metadata from the database over the Internet;
• and
• displaying the retrieved additional metadata on the television display of the digital television device at a configured time other than a time at which the additional metadata is retrieved.