KR101241878B1 - Data structure and method for program guide, and broadcasting receiver - Google Patents

Abstract

The present invention relates to a data structure, a method for servicing program ranking information through program guide information, and a broadcast receiver to which the same is applied. The transmitting side of the present invention includes the program ranking information included in the channel and the program guide information, and the receiving side parses the program ranking information from the transmitted channel and the program guide information and displays it on the screen together with the corresponding program information. Therefore, the user can consider not only the subjective judgment but also the objective judgment when selecting the program, so that the user can determine the program selection more advantageously.

DMB, EPG, Ranking, Genre

Description

Data structure and method for program guide, and broadcasting receiver

1 is a diagram showing an embodiment of a general DMB service structure

2 is a diagram showing an embodiment of a structure of a ServiceInformation element of an EPG service according to the present invention;

3 is a diagram showing an embodiment of a structure of an epg element of an EPG service according to the present invention;

4 is a diagram illustrating an embodiment of an XML structure of a genreRanking element in the epg element of FIG. 3.

FIG. 5 illustrates an embodiment of an XML structure of a termReferenceType type in the genreRanking element of FIG.

FIG. 6 illustrates an embodiment of an XML structure of a CRIDType type in the genreRanking element of FIG. 4. FIG.

7 is a diagram illustrating an example in which the epg element of FIG. 3 is expressed in an XML structure.

8 is a diagram illustrating an example of actual transmission of program rankings by genre according to the present invention.

9 is a diagram illustrating an example of displaying a program ranking for each genre according to the present invention on a screen.

10 is a schematic diagram of a broadcast receiver for decoding an EPG service according to the present invention;

DESCRIPTION OF THE REFERENCE NUMERALS

101: tuner 102: demodulator

103: DAB decoder 104: memory

105: first audio decoder 106: RS decoder

107: Demux 108: second audio decoder

109: video decoder 110: OD decoder

111: BIFS decoder 112: packet decoder

113: data group decoder 114: MOT decoder

115: Binary EPG Parser 116: XML EPG Parser

117: EPG Engine 118: Storage Medium

119: EPG Browser

The present invention relates to mobile broadcasting, and more particularly, to a data structure, a method, and a broadcast receiver for providing program guide information.

Digital Multimedia Broadcasting (DMB) among mobile broadcasts is based on Digital Audio Broadcasting (DAB), which has been adopted as the European terrestrial radio standard. That is, the DMB refers to a technology that enables high-quality sound and high-definition broadcasting by digitizing various multimedia signals such as voice and video by extending the DAB standard.

In the DMB system including the DAB standard, one broadcast service in an ensemble may be configured as a plurality of service components, and multiple broadcasts may be multiplexed and transmitted through the about 2 MHz frequency band.

1 illustrates an example of a DMB service structure in which at least one service component constitutes one service and at least one service constitutes one ensemble.

The ensemble corresponds to a broadcasting station, the service corresponds to one channel of a TV or radio, and is composed of one or more service components. The service component means video, audio, traffic information, or broadcast service information constituting a broadcast program. The service component corresponds 1: 1 to a sub channel.

In the above-described DMB, multiplex configuration information (MCI) is defined as information indicating what services are multiplexed in an ensemble, service components constituting each service, and where service components are located.

That is, the DMB system transmits data through repetitive transmission of a unit structure called a frame, and a transmission frame includes a synchronization channel, a fast information channel (FIC), and a main service channel (MSC).

The synchronization channel has a predetermined form so that the DMB receiver recognizes the beginning of the frame, and a null symbol and a phase reference symbol (PRS) are allocated.

The FIC is used to transmit various types of information for receiving a broadcast service, and is composed of MCI, Service Information (SI), Fast Information Data Channel (FIDC), and CA (Conditional Access). Here, the form of the MCI in the FIC is already known, so detailed description thereof will be omitted. At this time, the DMB receiver refers to the MCI information present in the FIC to recognize where the service component of the service desired by the user is located in the MSC. That is, the DMB receiver receives the desired broadcast by extracting and restoring a portion containing the service component of the service desired by the user from the broadcast contents delivered through the MSC. Therefore, MCI is essential information for receiving desired broadcast service in DMB which multiplexes multiple broadcast services.

The MSC is composed of one or more Common Interleaved Frames (CIFs), and is used for transmitting broadcast services such as video, audio, and data.

Data services that can be supported by the DMB include a broadcast web site (BWS), a slide show, a dynamic label segment (DLS), a transport protocol expert group (TPEG), and an electronic program guide (EPG).

That is, in the DMB, there is an EPG, which is a program guide service that provides program information and schedule information so that a user can easily access desired broadcast content. Users can get information about broadcast programs such as program name, broadcast time, genre, and program summary through EPG. Furthermore, users can be provided with program search, viewing guide information, etc. to select desired program. have. EPG also allows program selection and movement.

In this case, the EPG is configured in a language format for expressing broadcast programming information. For example, the EPG may use an extensible markup language (XML).

The EPG in XML format is converted into EPG in binary format and transmitted. That is, the XML format EPG is encoded as an EPG in binary format and transmitted to a receiver through a multimedia object transfer protocol.

For convenience of description, the XML format EPG is referred to as XML EPG, and the binary format EPG is referred to as binary EPG. That is, the XML EPG and the binary EPG have a difference between XML and binary, and the program related information contained therein is the same.

An object of the present invention is to provide a data structure, a method, and a broadcast receiver applying the same for servicing program ranking information through an EPG.

In order to achieve the above object, the data structure for program guidance according to the present invention, the channel and program guide information (EPG) is composed of an element representing the channel information and the element representing the program configuration information, the program An element representing organization information includes an element representing program ranking information.

The method for program guide according to the present invention comprises the steps of transmitting the program ranking information in the channel and program guide information; And parsing the program ranking information from the channel and the program guide information transmitted in the step and displaying the program ranking information on the screen together with the corresponding program information.

The transmitting may be performed by including at least information uniquely identifying a program and information capable of identifying a rank of the program in the program rank information.

In the transmitting step, genre information for knowing the genre of the program may be selectively included in the program rank information for transmission.

The receiving step is characterized by displaying the program ranking information and the corresponding program information on the screen, regardless of genre.

The receiving step is characterized by displaying the program ranking information and the corresponding program information for each genre on the screen.

In accordance with another aspect of the present invention, a broadcast receiver includes: a received signal processor configured to tune and demodulate a broadcast service of a specific channel; A decoder for separating and filing a channel including program rank information and program guide information from the broadcast service demodulated by the received signal processor; And an EPG processing unit for parsing and storing program rank information from the channel and program guide information file output from the decoder, and displaying the program rank information on the screen together with the corresponding program information according to a request signal. It is done.

Other objects, features and advantages of the present invention will become apparent from the following detailed description of embodiments taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENTS Hereinafter, preferred embodiments of the present invention will be described with reference to the accompanying drawings. At this time, the configuration and operation of the present invention shown in the drawings and described by it will be described as at least one embodiment, by which the technical spirit of the present invention and its core configuration and operation is not limited.

In addition, the term used in the present invention was selected as a general term widely used as possible, but according to the emergence of a new technology, the term that the applicant deemed most appropriate in the present invention was arbitrarily used, and the meaning of the term in the corresponding description. Will be clearly explained. Therefore, in the understanding of the present invention, it is intended that the present invention should be understood as the meaning of terms rather than simple names of terms.

In general, in a mobile broadcast, an EPG is composed of an epg element containing program / program group-specific information and a service information element containing broadcast station and channel information. That is, the EPG is represented by program information and service information. The program information has an epg element as a top element, and the service information has a serviceInformation element as a top element.

The present invention is to transmit, receive and service the program ranking information through the EPG.

In particular, the present invention is to transmit, receive and service the program rank information through the epg element.

In this case, the program ranking may be a comprehensive program ranking irrespective of the genre or may be a program ranking by genre.

The ranking information may be a viewing rank, a popularity ranking, or anything that may indicate other rankings. In addition, the ranking information may be determined based on the viewer rating, or in the bidirectional case, based on the channel and program information recommended by the user or the preferred channel or program information registered in the receiver. The source and method of determining the type and rank of the ranking information may be applied to a wider variety of applications, and thus the present invention will not be limited to the example.

FIG. 2 is a diagram illustrating the structure of the serviceInformation element shown to facilitate understanding of the present invention, and includes one or more ensemble elements. The serviceInformation element is a container for an ensemble element and includes a schedule generation time, a generator, a service provider, an ensemble position, and frequency information.

In this case, each ensemble element may have a plurality of service elements. Here, the ensemble element refers to a signal transmitted at one physical frequency, and a service element has the meaning of an individual channel of a broadcast.

In the ensemble element of FIG. 2, the frequency information of the ensemble is stored in the frequency element, and the short, medium, and long names for the ensemble are stored in the serviceNameGroup element. The description and logo for the ensemble are stored in the mediaDescription element, and conditional access (CA), keywords, and link information are stored in the corresponding element.

Like the ensemble element, the service element includes a serviceNameGroup, mediaDescription, CA, keywords, and link elements.In addition, the service ID (serviceID), genre of the service, and language of the service (epgLanguage) can be uniquely identified. Information about is stored.

3 is a diagram showing the structure of an epg element according to the present invention, in which program information is stored.

The epg element does not include any of schedule, program, programGroups, alternateSource, and genreRanking elements, or includes at least one or more when included.

The Schedule element stores various information including a time range covered by the schedule information and start and end time information of each program within the time range.

The program element stores detailed information such as genre, description, start and end time as information about a program. That is, in the program element, information about the location (location), conditional access (CA), program event (programEvent), title information (scheduleNameGroup), description (description) and logo (logo), genre for the corresponding program (Genre), keywords (keywords), memberOf (memberOf) of which program is a member, and link information (link) information is stored in the lower element.

The programGroups element is used as a container of group elements.

The alternateSource element is used when the EPG is transmitted through a transport network other than DMB (or DAB).

The genreRanking element is used to transmit the program ranking information according to the present invention, and is not dependent on the schedule element or the program element. That is, the genreRanking element is positioned as a lower element of the epg element.

4 illustrates an embodiment in which the structure of the genreRanking element according to the present invention is expressed in XML.

The genreRanking element is defined as genreRankingType, and the genreRankingType includes a ranking element that can know the ranking of the corresponding program. The genre attribute 'href', which knows the genre, is optional. That is, the genre attribute is used for the genreRanking element when the program ranking information is to be transmitted for each genre, and the genre attribute is not used in the genreRanking element when the program rank is to be comprehensively transmitted regardless of the genre.

In the genre attribute, a genre identifier (h) of 'href' classifies the genre of each program using a type of termReferenceType. The termReferenceType includes information for identifying the genre of the corresponding program included in the ranking element.

FIG. 5 illustrates an embodiment in which the termReferenceType structure is expressed in XML, and since it is a known technology, detailed description thereof will be omitted.

The ranking element can have a value from 1 to infinity and must include two attributes 'id' and 'order'. Here, the ranking element has different values of minOccures and maxOccures according to the range of values to be expressed, and FIG. 4 is only one embodiment.

The id attribute identifies content using a type called CRIDType, which is a content identifier, and the order attribute indicates ranking information using a type called positiveInteger. The content reference ID (CRID) is a value that can uniquely distinguish each content (ie, a program), and has a unique value for all content (ie, all programs) regardless of a broadcasting station or an ensemble.

The id attribute and the order attribute are repeated by the number of programs (that is, contents) to display the ranking. In this case, the programs included in the repeated id attribute and the order attribute may be programs of the same ensemble (or broadcaster) or programs of different ensemble (or broadcaster).

6 illustrates an embodiment in which the CRIDType structure is expressed in XML, and since it is a known technology, detailed description thereof will be omitted.

The positiveInteger type means that it can have an infinite value from 1. Similarly, the order attribute may use another type instead of the positiveinteger type in the range of values to be expressed, and FIG. 4 is only an embodiment.

As described above, the href attribute of FIG. 4 shows the genre of the program included in the corresponding ranking element, the id attribute in the ranking element shows what the program is, and the order attribute shows the id attribute. You can find out the ranking of the program. Therefore, if the genreRanking element includes an href attribute in FIG. 4, program ranking information is transmitted for each genre, and if the href attribute is not included, comprehensive program ranking information is transmitted. In other words, when the href attribute is included, the programs included in the ranking element are programs corresponding to the genre represented by the href attribute. On the other hand, if the href attribute is not included, programs included in the ranking element are not limited to the genres.

FIG. 7 illustrates an embodiment in which the epg element of FIG. 3 is expressed in XML, and it can be seen that the 'genreRanking' element according to the present invention is located in a lower element of the epg element. In this case, the 'genreRanking' element may not be included in the epg element, and may be included in at least one when included.

8 is an XML document structure showing an example of transmitting popular program information of the first to the third place according to each genre. Referring to FIG. 8, the program ranks of the first to third positions for the two genres are shown. That is, the genre urn: tva: metadata: cs: ContentCS: 2002: 3.6.9 includes id attributes of '1234', '2456' and '4567' and order attributes of 1,2,3.

9 illustrates an example in which a program parser expresses a program rank on a screen by genre when the program rank information is transmitted through the aforementioned 'genreRanking' element. Referring to FIG. 9, only a specific genre is extracted from the various genres, and shows programs ranging from 1 to 3 for each genre. At this time, the genre information may be extracted from a genre attribute called href in the genreRanking element, or may be extracted from a lower genre element in a program element known as a CRID of an id attribute.

Referring to FIG. 9, the program information in each ranking shows a title of a corresponding program, broadcast time information, and the like. If the program ranking information is transmitted with information indicating the ratio of the ranking of the program, the ratio of the ranking may be displayed together in each program information of FIG. 9.

Herein, the content of the displayed information may be changed by the designer, and thus the present invention will not be limited to the above-described embodiment.

At this time, the ranking of each genre may be displayed for only one ensemble or broadcasting station, or the overall ranking for each genre may be displayed by integrating all ensemble or broadcasting stations. For example, in the genre news, 9:00 news broadcasted by an ensemble (or broadcaster) called MBC is ranked first, 8:00 news broadcasted by an ensemble (or broadcaster) called SBS is ranked 2nd, and ensemble (or broadcaster) called KBS. The 9 o'clock news broadcasted by is ranked in the top three. As another example, in the genre of drama, My girl is ranked first, Gung is second, and Golden Apple is ranked third.

In addition, as shown in FIG. 9, the present invention may display program rankings by at least one or more genres, or display only program rankings of a specific genre designated by a user. You can also display overall program rankings regardless of genre.

10 illustrates an embodiment of a broadcast receiver according to the present invention, and includes a tuner 101, a demodulator 102, a DAB decoder 103, a memory 104, a first audio decoder 105, and a reed solomon ( RS decoder 106, MPEG2 demux 107, second audio decoder 108, video decoder 109, Object Descriptor (OD) decoder 110, and Binary Format for Scenes (BIFS) decoder It consists of 111. The RS decoder 106, the MPEG2 demux 107, the second audio decoder 108, the video decoder 109, the OD decoder 110, and the BIFS decoder 111 may also be referred to as a DMB decoder. In addition, the packet decoder 112, the data group decoder 113, the multimedia object transfer (MOT) decoder 114, the binary EPG parser 115, the EPG engine 117, and the EPG browser 119). Here, an XML EPG parser 116 may be included between the binary EPG parser 115 and the EPG engine 117. That is, the XML EPG parser 116 may or may not be included depending on the EPG processing method at the receiver. At this time, the above-described XML EPG is encoded and transmitted as a binary EPG at the transmitting side.

In the broadcast receiver configured as described above, the tuner 101 tunes a frequency corresponding to an ensemble including a DMB service selected by a user, lowers the baseband to a baseband, and outputs the demodulator 102. The demodulator 102 performs an inverse modulation scheme, that is, OFDM demodulation, and outputs a transmission frame composed of a synchronization channel, an FIC, and an MSC to the DAB decoder 103.

The DAB decoder 103 decodes the FIC and the MSC with reference to the synchronization channel in the demodulated transmission frame. If the FIC is decoded, channel information, ie, an ensemble label, a service label, and a virtual channel number assigned to the service can be extracted from the MCI, and a channel map is generated from the extracted channel information and stored in the memory 104. do.

When the MSC is decoded, the actual data can be extracted. If the extracted data is an audio signal, the data is output to the first audio decoder 105, and if the data is a data stream, the MSC is output to the RS decoder 106 in the DMB decoder.

The first audio decoder 105 decodes and outputs the compressed coded audio signal by a masking pattern adapted universal sub-band integrated coding and multiplexing (MUSCAM) scheme.

The RS decoder 106 performs further error correction on the data stream and outputs it to the MPEG2 demux 107.

The MPEG2 demux 107 performs transport stream depacketizing, packetized element stream (PES) depacketizing, and sync layer (SL) depacketizing on an error corrected data stream. After separating the audio, video, OD, BIFS and output to each decoder (108 ~ 111).

The decoders 108 to 111 decode audio, video, OD, and BIFS with a corresponding algorithm and output the decoded data. As an example, the second audio decoder 108 decodes the audio signal with the BSAC decoding algorithm, and the video decoder 109 decodes the video signal with the H.264 decoding algorithm.

The packet decoder 112 decodes the MSC data transmitted in the packet mode and outputs the decoded MSC data to the data group decoder 113. That is, the packet decoder 112 is located at the bottom of the protocol stack when data is transmitted in the packet mode and can be transmitted in several designated sizes. The data group decoder 113 groups the data processed by the packet decoder 112 and outputs the grouped data to the MOT decoder 114. The MOT decoder 114 collects the grouped data, processes them in file units, and outputs the grouped data to the binary EPG parser 115.

In general, the MOT protocol is a transfer algorithm for transmitting information through various DAB (or DMB) data channels, and enables an interaction between a data service and an application type. At this time, the EPG service is also transmitted as an object through the MOT protocol. The EPG service object is divided into segments and transmitted in packet mode to facilitate data management during transmission.

Therefore, the MOT decoder 114 collects segments of the EPG service delivered in the form of an object, forms an EPG file, and outputs the EPG file to the binary EPG parser 115.

The binary EPG parser 115 may parse the binary EPG syntax transmitted from the MOT decoder 114 to extract channel and program related information, or convert the parsing result into an XML EPG file compatible with the XML EPG standard. have.

If channel and program related information is extracted from the binary EPG parser 115, the result is directly output to the EPG engine 117, in which case the XML EPG parser 116 may be omitted. In addition, when converted into an XML EPG file, the XML EPG file is output to the XML EPG parser 116.

The XML EPG parser 116 parses the XML EPG file to extract channel and program related information and outputs the information to the EPG engine 117.

The EPG engine 117 stores the input program and channel related information in a storage medium 118 such as a memory, or displays it on the screen in a graphic form having a user interface (UI) function through the EPG browser 119 if necessary. do. At this time, the program ranking information according to the present invention is extracted from the binary EPG parser 115 or the XML EPG parser 116, and displays comprehensive program ranking or program ranking information by genre according to a user's request.

On the other hand, the terms used in the present invention (terminology) are terms defined in consideration of the functions in the present invention may vary according to the intention or practice of those skilled in the art, the definitions are the overall contents of the present invention It should be based on.

The present invention is not limited to the above-described embodiments, and as can be seen in the appended claims, modifications can be made by those skilled in the art to which the invention pertains, and such modifications are within the scope of the present invention.

According to the data structure, method, and broadcast receiver for program guidance according to the present invention described above, by providing the program ranking through the EPG service, the user can know the viewer rating ranking or popularity ranking of each program. . In particular, the present invention provides a program ranking for each genre, and thus, the viewer rating ranking or popularity ranking of the program for each genre can be known. As a result, the user can consider not only the subjective judgment but also the objective judgment when selecting the program, and thus, the user can determine the program selection more advantageously.

It will be apparent to those skilled in the art that various modifications and variations can be made in the present invention without departing from the spirit or scope of the invention.

Therefore, the technical scope of the present invention should not be limited to the contents described in the embodiments, but should be defined by the claims.

Claims (14)

Receiving and demodulating a broadcast signal including program guide information and program identification information; Separating the program guide information from the demodulated broadcast signal; Extracting program rank information from the program guide information using the program identification information; And Storing the program ranking information on a storage medium; And extracting the program rank information is performed by parsing binary program guide information. delete The method of claim 1, The extraction of the program ranking information is performed by the binary program guide information parsing and XML program guide information parsing. The method of claim 1, The program guide information includes genre information, And storing the program ranking information together with the genre information in a storage medium. 5. The method of claim 4, And matching the stored program ranking information with the genre information to display the rank of the program for each genre on the screen. A reception signal processor configured to receive and demodulate a broadcast signal including program guide information and program identification information; A decoder for separating the program guide information from the demodulated broadcast signal; A program guide information parser for extracting program ranking information from the program guide information using the program identification information, the program guide information parser including a binary program guide information parser; And And a program guide information engine for storing the program ranking information in a storage medium. delete The method of claim 6, The program guide information parser further comprises an XML program guide information parser. The method of claim 6, The program guide information includes genre information, And the program guide information engine stores the program ranking information together with the genre information in a storage medium. The method of claim 9, The program guide information engine is configured to match the stored program ranking information and the genre information to display a program ranking for each genre on a screen. delete delete delete delete

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