FR2855352A1 - Component e.g. digital TV service identifier, selecting method, involves identifying component adjacent to another component that does not appear in sub-list, and displaying another sub-list comprising highlighted components - Google Patents

Abstract

The method involves identifying a component adjacent to another component that does not appear in a sub-list. Another sub-list comprising the two components is displayed. The identification and displaying of the sub-list occurs after predetermined time. Components in a list are successively highlighted by an audiovisual receiver according to defined order. An independent claim is also included for an audiovisual receiver for reproduction of audiovisual document.

Description

The invention relates to a method for selecting elements from a

  list of elements accessible using an audiovisual receiver, and an audiovisual receiver provided with a user interface for selection.

  In a broadcast television system, the number of channels available becomes very large. In the field of digital television, hundreds of services are currently presented in the form of a list displayed on a screen, the user navigates within this list to select the one which interests him. The user actuates the direction keys 10 to point to a service identified by its name which is then visually distinguished from the other services. The services can also be presented in the form of icons, representing the logo of the service. This visual distinction, commonly called "focus" generally results in a difference in color, gray level, or contrast compared to other services. The visualization of the audiovisual content of the service is then controlled by pressing a validation key (OK). Due to the very large number of accessible services, the user must launch numerous navigation commands to finally put the focus on the desired service and select it.

  Patent application FR 2 805 698 filed by the applicant and published on August 31, 2001 describes a method for selecting a channel or a service from a displayed list. This request describes the continuous scrolling of elements grouped in a list, the element in the center of the screen is always the one with the focus, so it suffices to wait for the desired service to scroll and position itself in this position for the select and activate it at the same time. The element in the center of the screen is surrounded on both sides by the following and previous elements so that the user can easily locate this element within the list. This request makes it possible to considerably simplify the remote control and by the automatic scrolling of the services on the screen, to significantly limit the number of commands that the user must carry out before reaching the correct service.

  We recently noticed that this method of presenting elements on a screen confuses some users. These remain very attached to manual operation o any change on the screen is caused by an order and do not like having to keep a continuous attention on the content of the screen so as not to miss the passage of the desired service on the screen.

  Another method is to display a page of a certain number of elements extracted from the list. The page is arranged vertically and the direction commands "arrow up" and "arrow down" allow you to navigate within this page and move the focus, the elements of page 5 do not change place. The user can of course change the page displayed either by pressing a "previous page" or "next page" key, or by positioning the focus on the last element at the bottom of the page and pressing 4, or by positioning the focus on the first element at the top of the page and pressing 4. When the user uses the commands + or 10, t by causing a change of page, the element having the focus is at the beginning or at the end of the new page. The user then finds it difficult to locate it in the list. If a long enough time elapses following the last command, the user no longer remembers whether the item with the focus is the first in the list (if it is placed at the top of the page) or the last (s 'it is placed at the bottom of page 15). The location within the list is not precise, the user does not have a good understanding of the actual situation of the element within the list of elements.

  The present invention relates to a method of selecting a service from a list which makes it possible to locate precisely the element which can be selected by the user, and the receiver making it possible to select a service in this way.

  The subject of the present invention is a method of selecting elements in an audiovisual receiver comprising a first step of drawing up an ordered list of elements available within the receiver, a step 25 of displaying a first sub- list extracted from the list comprising a first element highlighted at one end of the displayed sub-list, characterized in that it comprises the following steps: - identification of a second element adjacent to the first element not appearing in the first sublist, - display of a second sublist comprising at least the first element and the second element highlighted.

  In this way, navigation is carried out thanks to sublists displayed on a screen and following the identification of the new element having the focus, it is visually surrounded by at least two elements 35 accessible by each of the keys. navigation available. Thus, the user can locate this new element and possibly return to the previous element which is also displayed.

  According to a first improvement, the identification step is triggered by a command from the user received by the receiver. The latter can thus navigate at will in the list of elements. According to a variant, the steps of identifying and displaying a second sublist 5 take place after a determined time, the elements of the list being successively highlighted by the receiver according to the defined order. In this case, the receiver controls the scrolling of the elements on the screen.

  According to another refinement, the elements are identifiers of services broadcast by a digital television network. According to a variant, the elements are identifiers of events broadcast by a television network.

  According to another improvement, the method comprises a step of displaying an indicator associated with the services or events displayed, the presence of the indicator signaling that the service or the associated event 15 is not broadcast by the same satellite than the currently selected channel.

  Thus, the user can see if the selection of the service or of the event associated with this indicator requires a change of satellite by activation of a motorized antenna, and therefore a certain time to display the selected element. This indicator is presented when in its configuration of the receiver, the latter has integrated by an appropriate means the presence of a motorized antenna.

  The present invention also relates to an audiovisual receiver for the reproduction of audiovisual documents comprising a means of drawing up an ordered list of elements available within the receiver and a means of displaying a first extracted sublist. of the list comprising a first element highlighted at one end of the displayed sub-list, characterized in that it comprises a means of identifying a second element adjacent to the first element not appearing in the first sub-list, said display means 30 displaying a second sublist comprising at least the first element and the second element highlighted.

  Other characteristics and advantages of the invention will become apparent from the description of a nonlimiting exemplary embodiment of the invention, explained with the aid of the appended figures, among which: - Figure 1 is a block diagram of a digital television reception system according to the present exemplary embodiment; - Figure 2 is an example of representation on the screen of a user interface page displaying two sublists displayed before and after the execution of a navigation command +; - Figure 3 is an example of a screen appearance following the execution of a navigation + command and displaying a sublist of 11 elements, - Figure 4 is an example of an appearance of screen following the execution of a navigation command f by navigating through a page of ten services; - Figure 5 is an example of a screen appearance following the execution of a navigation command - to successively view sublists of 10 services; - Figure 6 is an example of a screen appearance following the execution of a navigation command - when the list limit is reached.

  The receiver can be an interactive television, but also a receiver intended for the reception of digital video data or else provided for connection to a two-way network, Internet for example.

  Figure 1 is a block diagram of a digital television reception system. The receiver 1 of FIG. 1 is connected to a display screen 2, an antenna, itself connected to a reception means 4 which comprises: a tuner which supplies a signal to a demodulator, the data received are corrected by a circuit corrector and transmitted to a demultiplexer. The demultiplexer includes a certain number of filters programmed by a central unit 3 as a function of the various applications supported by the receiver 1. The filters correspond to identification information present in the header of the packets of the demodulated signal.

  The audio or video sections or packets filtered by the demultiplexer 30 are stored in predefined areas of a data memory 9 for the attention of these applications. If necessary, the information is firstly decrypted by a decrypting circuit according to the rights of the user, before being stored in the data memory 9. The receiver also includes an audio / video decoding logic 10 for the generation of the 35 audiovisual signals sent to the television screen 2, and possibly an interface 5 for communication with a local high-speed digital bus 6 making it possible to receive audio / video data from a bidirectional network with storage in the memory 9. This network is for example an IEEE 1394 network. An executable program memory 12 contains the receiver operating software and specific applications. According to the present example, the memory 12 contains at least five applications: an audio decoder 5, a video decoder, a Teletext decoder, an access control assembly, as well as a user interface module called "Browser". For clarity of the diagram, the memory 12 is represented in the form of a single block, but includes both random access memory, read-only memory and reprogrammable persistent memory (for example of the 'Flash' type).

  The receiver also includes an infrared interface 7 of a remote control 8, said interface also being connected to the microprocessor 3.

  The remote control has the direction keys O, k, - and - and "OK" and "Menu" whose function we will see later.

  A character generator 11, often called an OSD circuit, from the English "On Screen Display" (literally meaning "display on the screen") allows the generation of command menus or graphics relating to the parameters of the receiver or to a particular application. The video signal generated by this character generator is multiplexed with one of the video signals coming from the reception means 4 or from the interface 5 with the digital network to a first SCART socket (SCART socket in English) connected to the viewing screen 2.

  The exemplary embodiment takes place in the context of a digital television broadcasting system, for example of the DVB (for “Digital Video Broadcast”) type. The invention is not limited to this framework, and can be used in other environments where ordered lists of items are presented to a user. The user interface includes an electronic program guide sub-application. This guide allows the user to access descriptive information concerning the services as well as present and future events broadcast by these services. This information is derived from 30 data also broadcast on the network. According to the present example, these data are DVB service data, described in more detail in the document "EN 300 468 Digital Video Broadcasting; Specification for Service Information (SI) in DVB systems". This document is published by ETSI ("European Telecommunications Standards Institute"). These data are transported in the multiplexed stream received by the receiver in packets having identifiers identified in a known manner by the demultiplexer of the reception circuit 4 under the control of the microprocessor 3 and recovered by the latter in a part of the data memory 9 , for use by the user interface application. The data relating to the electronic program guide are organized in 'tables' describing in a hierarchical manner the objects of the flow. A description of the services available can be obtained in a known manner, in particular from a table labeled “SDT”. The hierarchy of the tables as well as the identifiers of the corresponding packets are described in the document DVB which has just been cited. For the extraction of the packets containing the various tables, the filters of the demultiplexer are programmed in an appropriate manner.

  Initially, the packets containing the services are grouped in order to draw up a list of the services available at the level of the receiver. This list is stored in a part 13 of the data memory 9. As this list contains many elements, the receiver displays sublists which are parts of the global list, the number 15 of elements of a sublist being determined by the receiver. In the background, the receiver sends the video content of the current service that the user can select with the "program +" and "program -" keys. The number and / or the text identifier of the current service is displayed in a small window on the screen, independently of the sublists displayed.

  FIG. 2 is a simplified diagram of two examples of screen appearances showing the user interface generated by the device in FIG. 1 and presenting a sublist. This screen appearance is controlled following a navigation in functions accessible by the "menu" key. The top screen shows a list of services numbered from 20 to 29, service 29 is in focus, ie if the user selects it with his remote control, he will be able to view the content broadcast. Suppose that the user presses the command +, in the order of the list it is the service 30 which is then highlighted. The screen appearance at the bottom of Figure 2 is displayed, service 29 (not service 30) starts the list at the top. In this way, the user who sees this screen appearance and who does not know the history for arriving there, can thus know the two services accessible from the service having the focus. According to a refinement of the present exemplary embodiment, the sublist displayed contains the ten services of which the unit number begins at "0" and ends at "9". But insofar as the service 29 35 appears, 11 services are presented on this screen page. In this way, the rule to always display ten or so 10-by-10 services is respected.

  the user who would quickly scan the first dozen services to reach the one that interests him, can navigate from 10 services to 10 services.

  If he wishes, for example, to reach service 125, he knows that he must press the page change key 12 times to display the sublist presenting the services from 120 to 129.

  Figure 3 is a simplified diagram of two examples of screen appearances when the user uses the command, t from the screen appearance of Figure 2. The top screen shows a list of numbered services from 29 to 39, the user has placed the focus on service 29 with the o, command. Suppose that the user presses the command 1, 10 once again in the order of the list, service 28 is then highlighted.

  The screen appearance at the bottom of FIG. 3 is displayed, the service 29 starts the sublist from the bottom and the service 20 from the top. The sublist displayed does indeed include 10 services whose unit numbers start at 0 and end at 9. In this way, the user in view of this screen appearance, 15 can thus know the services accessible from the service in the focus: service 27 with the + command and service 29 with the & command.

  Figure 4 is a simplified diagram of two examples of screen appearances when the user uses the o command from a standard screen appearance. The top screen shows a list of ten services numbered 20 from 20 to 29, the user has put the service 20 in focus using one or more O commands. Suppose that the user presses again command +, in the order of the list, service 19 is then highlighted. The screen appearance at the bottom of FIG. 4 is displayed, the service 20 starts the sublist from the bottom and the service 10 from the top, therefore 11 25 services are displayed. The displayed sublist does indeed include at least the 10 services whose unit digits start at 0 and end at 9. In this way, the user in view of this screen appearance, can thus know the services accessible from of the service in focus: service 18 by command + and service 20 by command 4.

  FIG. 5 is a simplified diagram of two examples of screen appearances showing the navigation of 10 to 10 services. The top screen shows a list of ten services numbered from 20 to 29, the user has put the service 25 in focus using one or more commands 4 or O. Suppose the user presses the command +, then the browser understands that the user wishes to display the following sublist by increasing the number of services by 10. The screen appearance at the bottom of FIG. 5 is then displayed, the service 30 begins the sublist from the top and the service 39 from the bottom, the service in focus is the tenth service after the service 25 so the service 35. In this way, the user can very quickly navigate from pages of 10 services to pages of 10 services. The command - works in the same way but in reverse, following this command the service in focus is the tenth service before the service previously highlighted.

  FIG. 6 is a simplified diagram of two examples of screen appearances showing the appearance of navigation when the end of the list is reached.

  The top screen shows a list of ten services numbered from 30 to 39, the user has put service 37 in focus. Suppose that the user presses 10 on command 4, to jump to the next tenth service. But the total number of services at 45. The screen appearance at the bottom of FIG. 6 displayed following this command shows a sublist starting with the service 40 in accordance with the rule of displaying a sublist from the service. whose unit digit is "0". The service whose number is 37 + 10 = 47 does not exist 15, so it is the service with the closest number which is put in the focus, ie service 45. If the user send a command 4- to return to the previous sublist, service 37 will be in focus.

  An alternative embodiment consists in that the highlighting of the services on the screen is effected by automatic scrolling. The receiver highlights for a determined period, for example three seconds, each item in the list. This automatic scrolling is described in patent application FR 2 805 698 cited in the preamble. The variant applies the method of the invention by automatically displaying a new sublist comprising the previous element placed in focus and the second element which did not appear previously. In this way, the user no longer needs to press the navigation keys, he can wait for the focus to position himself on the service he wants, and then press the "OK" key . At any time, the user can reverse the direction of scrolling by pressing the 4 or - button.

  An improvement visible in FIG. 6 consists in associating certain information with the service identified in the list. This information concerns the fact that the identified service is not on the same satellite as the current service and therefore, if the user selects it then it will have to reach a certain time that the antenna is positioned correctly. During this operation, the screen is frozen except for the flashing icon. This information is interesting for the user who might wonder why his receiver takes so long to present the service he has just selected. The test of belonging or not to the same bouquet sent by a satellite is carried out by comparing the service data of the current service with that of the services in the list. If the information specifying the satellite is the same, there is no need to position the antenna, otherwise it will have to be done and the icon is displayed for this service. In the sublists in Figure 6, services 30, 34, 37, 40 and 43 are not on the same satellite as that of the current service.

  Although the embodiment presented above concerns the lists of services, the invention also applies to lists of other elements, such as events or even audio, video or data files.

Claims (9)

claims   1. A method of selecting elements in an audiovisual receiver 5 comprising a first step of drawing up an ordered list of elements available within the receiver, a step of displaying a first sublist extracted from the list comprising a first element highlighted at one end of the displayed sublist, characterized in that it comprises the following steps: - identification of a second element adjacent to the first element not appearing in the first sublist, - display a second sublist comprising at least the first element and the second element highlighted.   2. Method for selecting elements according to claim 1, characterized in that the identification step is triggered by a command received by the receiver.   3. Method for selecting elements according to claim 1, characterized in that the steps of identifying and displaying a second sublist take place after a determined time, the elements of the list being successively highlighted by the receiver in the order defined.   4. Method for selecting elements according to any one of the preceding claims, characterized in that the elements are service identifiers broadcast by a digital television network.   5. Method for selecting elements according to any one of the preceding claims, characterized in that the elements are event identifiers broadcast by a television network.   6. Method for selecting elements according to claim 4 or 5, characterized in that it includes an indicator display step associated with displayed services or events, the presence of the indicator signaling that the service or the associated event is not broadcast by the same satellite as the currently selected channel.   7. Audiovisual receiver (1) for the reproduction of audiovisual documents comprising a means of drawing up an ordered list of elements (13) available within the receiver and a means of display (3, 11, 12) of a first sublist extracted from the list comprising a first element highlighted at one end of the displayed sublist, characterized in that it comprises an identification means (3, 12; 3, 8) of a second element adjacent to the first element not appearing in the first sublist, said display means displaying a second sublist comprising at least the first element and the second element highlighted.   8. Audiovisual receiver according to claim 7, characterized in that it comprises means for receiving a command (8) to activate the means for identifying the second element.   9. Audiovisual receiver according to claim 7 or 8, characterized in that it comprises a means for developing (3,4,12) a list of service identifiers broadcast by a digital television network.