JP2003521174A - System and method for reference points for navigating in a program guide - Google Patents

Abstract

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION The present invention is a method and system that allows a user to quickly navigate a reference point established within a program guide by pressing a single button on remote control. The reference point is the last watched channel, the current time, and the like. Establishing a reference point provides the subscriber with a well-known location in the program information that can include weeks of time, thousands of channels, and broad categories or sorting methods. Subscribers who have traveled through channels of program information for very long periods of time are provided with a way to easily navigate to known criteria in the program information.

Description

Detailed Description of the Invention

CROSS REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS [0001] This application is filed in Jending et al.
enhanced Interactive Program Guide Use
r Interface for a Home Communication
US Provisional Patent Application No. 60 / 138,757, entitled "S Terminal," and "Hom," filed December 13, 1999, by Jerding et al.
e Communications Terminal Resident A
Claims priority to US Provisional Patent Application No. 60 / 170,302 entitled "Application".

FIELD OF THE INVENTION The present invention relates to television program guides for subscriber television systems and, more particularly, allows a user to quickly navigate to established reference points within the program guide. Regarding what to do. For example, the reference point is the program information related to the last channel and the current time the program information was viewed.

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION In subscriber television systems, television services have traditionally been associated only with analog broadcast image sources. However, recently, digital programming has come to be realized by home communication terminals ("HCTs"), otherwise known as set top boxes. The home communication terminal is a powerful computing device that accesses image services and is navigated by the user through a maze of available services. In addition to supporting traditional analog broadcast images and features, digital HCT (or "DHCT") is now also digital rather than analog; rather than being broadcast, both video-on-demand and the like. It is intended for communication; it supports the increase in the number of services, not data, but data that is handled by email or web browser. These are all incorporated into a host of other television services available to subscribers using DHCT. Examples of other television services mentioned above are voice and audio / visual programs, advanced navigation controls, impulse pay-per-view technology, and just a few so-called online commerce to.
name but a feed). The size of services that are increasingly available in the digital world is increasing by several orders of magnitude.

As additional services and applications are provided, the subscriber television system provides television program information to the HCT so that the subscriber can watch the program information on the television itself. This program information has traditionally been edited for presentation in a program guide format that presents guide information by time and channel only. The program guide was just a grid where the x-axis is the channel number and the y-axis is the time, and within that grid was the program information for the related program. The program guide, for example, automatically scrolls through the available TV channels,
As a result, the name and description of the program information starting within the time range set for the present and future (usually 1 hour and 1 hour and a half) can be presented.

With the advent of the program guide “browser”, which includes interactive program guides (IPGs), mini-guides, and browser banners used in subscriber television systems, subscribers are able to watch tuned channels while watching time and Channels allow program information to be scanned linearly. In analog systems offering a limited number of television channels, these browsers allow subscribers to easily scan one-to-one available programs in the order of channel numbers. The subscriber can generally scan the program information by using some buttons or keys on the remote control that scroll through the program. Each button press or each keystroke changes the time for the selected guide channel or unit. However, many digital subscriber television systems provide hundreds or even thousands of channels and many days or weeks of programming information for each of the many channels. In such a system, the program information to scan can, in turn, require hundreds of keystrokes by the subscriber and can consume a very long time. Moreover, identifying a particular program can be quite difficult if the subscriber does not yet know the channel number of the program they are searching for.

Moreover, conventional subscriber television systems are of a complex, graphically superior type and provide a more reputable interactive program guide application to more sophisticated customers using current digital systems. I couldn't. Subscriber television system operators need to provide program guides as user-friendly as possible to encourage purchase, access and use of additional programs and services identifiable by the subscriber through the program guide. Become. To help make the guide as user-friendly as possible, if subscribers get lost while navigating through all the program information available in the program guide, subscribers should have established criteria. It is useful to be able to easily navigate to the point. Even in the case of simple program guides, standard criteria are useful, and in the case of more complex and interactive program guides, standard criteria are essential.

Therefore, in a user-friendly subscriber television system program guide,
What is needed is an efficient method and system that allows a user to quickly navigate to established reference points within a program guide.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION The present invention relates to an efficient method and system that allows a user to quickly navigate to established reference points within a program guide. The reference point is program information related to the last channel watched and the current time. To help make the above guide as user-friendly as possible, the present invention provides
If the subscriber gets lost while navigating through all the program information available in the program guide, they can easily navigate to the established reference point for the subscriber by pressing a single button on the remote control. Provide a way to gate.

The present invention is best understood within the context of subscriber television systems. The subscriber television system and exemplary embodiments of the present invention will now be described with reference to the drawings, wherein like reference numerals refer to like elements throughout the several views.

FIG. 1 is a schematic diagram of a subscriber television system 100. In the subscriber television system 100, a headend 110 provides television programs and information for delivery to a subscriber location 150 via a transmission medium 130 such as a two-way digital hybrid fiber-coax (HFC) network. Receive and combine. Home Communication Terminal (HCT) 155 interfaces to transmission medium 130 and provides subscriber television services that are displayed on a display device such as television 156. The program information is transmitted from the headend 110 to the HCT 155. The program information is stored in the HCT 155. The information may be stored as a database such as an electronic program guide (EPG) database. The HCT 155 may display the program information on the television 156 by retrieving the program information from the EPG database. The display format such as the program guide is controlled by the HCT 155. The central processing unit (CPU) of the HCT 155 reads program information from the EPG database stored in the memory of the HCT 155. The CPU processes and formats the program information for display. The HCT 155 may be based on instructions downloaded from the headend 110, or based on instructions initially stored in the HCT 155 or downloaded to the HCT 155 during initial system start-up and initialization.
Set the variable to display the program information.

An example of a program guide used within a subscriber television system is "Method
for Searching Electronic Program Gu
No. 6,005,631, entitled "ides", which is incorporated herein by reference.

FIG. 2 shows a display associated with the program guide. The program guide display 200 includes several blocks of information organized so that a user can easily scan the program information and select the program information of interest. The blocks include an instruction block 202, a program title block 204, a time block 206, a channel identification block 208, a program description block 210, and a picture block 220. The viewer or subscriber navigates through the displayed programs by activating inputs from the front panel or an input device such as a remote control unit or keyboard, selects desired program information, invokes navigation,
Or call the navigation direction.

The information displayed on the EPG graphical user interface (GUI) indicates the program information stored in the memory of the HCT 155 such as the EPG database.
The information displayed on the EPG GUI indicates the machine state of the EPG software application executing on the HCT 155's computing resources such as CPU and memory. Alternatively, the EPG database may reside in whole or in part on a data storage device, such as an optical or magnetic hard drive that is part of HCT 155, or may be externally connected to HCT 155. In another embodiment, the EPG database resides on a data server located at the head end or node of the subscriber television system. The EPG database can be accessed via a network interface such as a channel tuner.

In FIG. 2, instruction block 202 is navigation information related to the program guide,
And, in this embodiment, the data is displayed. By pressing the A button on the remote control unit, the subscriber can select from a list of alternative display options in a pop-up dialog window. The data is user selectable, and the user may navigate to other dates as indicated by the date icon 203 by pressing the B button on the remote control unit. By pressing the B button, the subscriber can select from a pop-up date display window. Time block 206 displays highlighted time 207, PM 5:00 and the time range associated with highlighted time 207. The highlighted time 207 can be a time associated with entry into the program guide or it can be a user-selected time. The channel identification block 208 displays the highlighted channel 209 and the service provider, ESPN, associated with the highlighted channel 209. The highlighted channel 209 may be the channel associated with the entry into the program guide or the channel selected by the user. The program title block 204 is one program information associated with the highlighted channel 209, the highlighted time 207, and the instruction block 202.
Display the data shown in. Program description block 210 highlights program 2 associated with highlighted channel 209 and highlighted time 207.
05 additional program information is displayed. The picture block 220 is a scaled-down image of the currently tuned channel, a still picture, an image clip,
Raw image, information or highlighted program 205 of the last channel viewed
Display images related to, or information or images related to the program guide. Program guides are described in general language. There are a wide variety of other display formats for the program guide, and the particular format or content of the program guide is not a limitation of the present invention.

FIG. 3 illustrates an exemplary method 30 for navigating to established reference points within program information.
Indicates 0. Reference points are established at step 302 for display variables of the program information. The reference point is a set of variables related to the displayed program information such as the view the user has selected, the channel on which the HCT is tuned, the current time, the theme of the current program, the alphabetical title of the current program, etc. Is. The reference point is the EP related to the reference point.
It may be stored in the HCT155 memory as part of the G software application machine state. Storing machine state encompasses storing display variables, program information, and other data needed to recreate the machine state. The program information may be stored as a pointer to a record in the EPG database from which the information may be accessed and retrieved, or as an instance of an EPG record that is copied and stored in memory as data. It can be either. In one embodiment, the reference point is a machine state of information stored in memory, and in response to user input, the EPG software application and CPU execution retrieve, process, and recreate the machine state of the reference point. obtain. The criteria can be one variable such as time or a combination of variables such as time and channel. Typically, the system operator defines and establishes a reference point. At step 304, some of the program information is displayed in the form of a program guide. The subscriber may scroll through the program guide to view different pieces of programming information that are of interest to the subscriber. If the subscriber wants to go to the established reference point,
At step 306, the subscriber provides user input to the system. User input is
Usually by pressing a button on the remote control. After receiving the user input, the display is changed at step 308 to show a portion of the program information for the criteria. This is done, for example, by the CPU retrieving display variables and program information associated with a reference point previously stored in memory and displaying the data such that the presentation of the program guide corresponding to the reference point or the machine state of the reference point is displayed. Can be achieved by processing. Such a method 300 allows a subscriber to display program information associated with an established fiducial point by pressing one button.

In one embodiment, the present invention provides home icon 250 for instruction block 202.
Makes it possible to quickly navigate to program information associated with the reference point "home" established in the program guide, as shown in FIG. In this embodiment, the "home" criterion is the current time, the current date, and the channel number of the last channel viewed before displaying the program guide. Thus, if the user presses the C button on the remote control, the program guide display 200 will display highlighted channel 2 with highlighted time 207 being the current time on the current date.
09 is the channel number that was viewed before the program guide was displayed. The user can select the highlighted time 20 after navigating within the program guide.
Regardless of how many days 7 is and what channel number the highlighted channel 209 is, you can always return to this reference point by pressing the "C" button once.

The present invention also provides other methods of displaying program information, such as browser banners, barkers, to allow the user to quickly navigate to established reference points within the program information. ), Category window, pay-per-view guide, or the like. The browser banner allows the user to watch current and future programming for one channel or category. Still, with a single browser banner, the user can
m information days into the future). Providing subscribers with user-friendly navigation options by using one button to quickly return to program information at the current time.
The program information displayed by the theme may use the reference point associated with the current program theme at the current time and date, or the first alphabetical listing of the current program theme at the current program. Can be related to. The program information displayed by title may use the reference point associated with the first letter of the current program at the current time and date, or may be selected in alphabetical order and selection within that first title information. Can be the first title listed in.

Establishing and defining the reference point can be accomplished in a variety of ways. The system operator of the subscriber television system 100, located at the headend 110, has stated that the established reference point is before displaying the program guide, the last watched channel and the current time and date. Program guide variables may be set. The system operator using the system control variables may establish any of the various reference points in the program guide and other program information associated with the display method. Further, the established reference point may be defined by, or associated with, the subscriber's choice. The subscriber can select from a list of alternative fiducial points provided by system control variables, or the established fiducial points can be associated with favorite settings in the program guide. The favorite-related reference point will be related to the subscriber's selection of favorite channels rather than being directly selected by the subscriber. For example, the subscriber selects EPSN as his favorite channel. The established reference point can then be defined as the channel associated with the EPSN and the current time and date. Pressing the "C" button for remote control will always return the subscriber to EPSN program information at the current time and date while watching the program guide.

In another embodiment, pressing “C” or the home key produces a display of a menu of reference points that the user can select. The user can scroll up and down using the directional arrows on the remote control unit, making it possible to use the select button to select the highlighted reference point. The machine state of each reference point is stored a priori in memory to quickly determine the machine state of the reference point based on the selection.

Conclusion From the above it is clear that the present invention allows the user to quickly navigate to established reference points within the program guide. The reference points are the program information related to the last viewed channel, the current time, and the like.

The present invention has been described in relation to particular embodiments, which are intended to be illustrative and not limiting. For example, the exemplary reference point home may be substituted with any of various names such as jump, start, return, or current. The reference point can be any of a variety of points in the program information, including other combinations of time, channel, category, and position within the program guide. For example, the reference point may be the last channel watched at the last user-selected time (not the current time), or the favorite channel at the current time, before displaying the program guide,
Alternatively, it may be a single dimension parameter, such as a selected category of program information such as sports or movies.

The reference to the last watched channel or program, just before displaying the program information, in this case usually displays the program information and the HCT tunes that channel until another program is selected. While still remaining, it provides the criteria from the perspective of the subscriber.

Even though one of ordinary skill in the art does not describe the context of the icon in which the present invention displays the program information, the user can access the present invention through another method such as a separate display, help window, or instruction manual. It will be appreciated that the functionality is known and that in other embodiments no icon is required. Further, it may be a plurality of icons indicating different reference points.

In summary, although exemplary embodiments of the invention have been shown and described, it will be clear that the invention is not so limited. Alternative embodiments will be apparent to those skilled in the art without departing from the spirit or scope of the invention. Therefore, the spirit of the invention is defined by the appended claims rather than by the description of the invention described above.

[Brief description of drawings]

[Figure 1]   FIG. 1 is a schematic diagram of a subscriber television system.

[Fig. 2]   FIG. 2 is a diagram showing a display related to the program guide.

FIG. 3 is a diagram showing a method of navigating to a reference point established in program information.

─────────────────────────────────────────────────── ─── Continued Front Page (51) Int.Cl. ⁷ Identification Code FI Theme Coat (Reference) H04N 7/035 7/16 (72) Inventor Bunker, Robert Oh. United States Georgia 30040, Cumming, Chamblee Gap Road 1581 (72) Inventor Durden, Gregory Es. United States Georgia 30236, Jonesboro, Terri Lane 9407 (72) Inventor Rodriguez, Arturo Ay. United States Georgia 30092, Norcross, Abigail Lane 5315 F term (reference) 5C025 AA23 CA09 CB08 DA05 5C056 AA01 BA02 5C063 AB05 DA03 EB33 5C064 BA01 BC23 BD07

Claims (11)

[Claims] 1. A method for responding to user input displaying program information associated with a reference point established within the display of program information, the method being based on at least one variable associated with the display of the program information. Establishing the reference point; displaying a portion of the program information; receiving a user input requesting display of the program information associated with the reference point; Displaying the program information. 2. The method of claim 1, wherein the program information is displayed as a program guide. 3. The program information is displayed as a browser banner.
The method described in. 4. The at least one variable includes a current time, a current date, a channel number of the program watched immediately before a part of the program information is displayed, a favorite channel, and a title. The method of claim 1, wherein the variable is selected from a group of variables including a program theme category, a favorite category, a portion of program information related to the next day, and a portion of program information related to the previous day. Method. 5. The method of claim 1, wherein the reference point is established by a subscriber television system operator. 6. A method in response to user input displaying the program information associated with a reference point established in a program guide, the current time, the current date, and immediately prior to entering the program information. Establishing the reference point in the program guide based on the channel number associated with the program viewed on the screen, displaying the program guide, and requesting display of the program information related to the reference point. Receiving user input to perform, and displaying the program information associated with the reference point in the program guide. 7. The method of claim 6, wherein the reference point is established by a subscriber television system operator. 8. A subscriber television system responsive to user input for displaying program information related to a reference point established within the display of program information, the headend transmitting the program information and system control variables. A transmission medium on which the program information and the system control variable are transmitted, and at least one home communication terminal, which is associated with the display of the program information and the system control variable transmitted from the headend. Establishing a reference point within the display of the program information based on one variable, causing a portion of the program information to be displayed, and receiving a user input requesting display of the program information associated with the reference point; A home communication terminal operative to display the program information associated with the reference point. 9. The home communication terminal is further operative to be displayed with respect to a portion of the program information and to provide the user input requesting display of the program information with respect to the reference point. 9. The system of claim 8, which is an icon indicating a button on a remote control that the user presses. 10. The system of claim 8, wherein the user input is received from a remote control device. 11. The system of claim 8, wherein the reference point is established in response to a system control variable.