JP2005057523A - Program additional information extracting device, program display device, and program recording device - Google Patents

Abstract

<P>PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To provide a program additional information extracting device that enables a user to efficiently retrieve/register a keyword and perform program retrieval using the keyword. <P>SOLUTION: The program additional information extracting device is equipped with a receiving circuit which receives a digital broadcast, a demodulating circuit which demodulates electronic program guide information transmitted in the digital broadcast, a memory which stores the demodulated electronic program guide information, a means of allowing the user to retrieve a keyword from the electronic program guide information, a means of allowing the user to register the keyword, a means of retrieving a program including the keyword from accumulated electronic program guide information, and an output circuit which outputs the retrieval result. Consequently, the user when performing the keyword retrieval needs to register a favorite keyword and a problem wherein complicated operation is needed is solved. <P>COPYRIGHT: (C)2005,JPO&NCIPI

Description

  The present invention relates to a program additional information extraction device used in a digital broadcast receiver that receives satellite digital broadcasts and terrestrial digital broadcasts, and in particular, in electronic program guide (EPG) information of digital broadcasts. The present invention relates to a program additional information extraction device that extracts and classifies necessary additional information from information included in a table called an EIT (Event Information Table).

  In digital broadcasting, information related to a broadcast program is transmitted as a so-called electronic program guide (EPG) transmitted by a broadcast station together with net broadcast contents.

  In this EPG, information such as the genre to which the program to be broadcast belongs, the detailed broadcast contents of the program, the performers of the program, the music to be played, etc. are included for one to two weeks.

  In conventional digital broadcast receivers, methods for searching for programs using keywords such as “performers” have been made public, but the user inputs keywords used for program searches using a user interface such as character input or voice input. It has been proposed for a device to do. In addition, a method of registering keywords in advance at the time of factory shipment and a method of downloading through the Internet have been proposed (see, for example, Patent Document 1 and Patent Document 2).

JP-A-10-215419 (page 7, FIG. 1) Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2002-300483 (page 4, FIG. 1)

  By the way, in digital broadcasting, the volume of EPG information to be transmitted is very large, such as the number of broadcast channels exceeds 100 channels, and the user uses keywords to store a large amount of EPG information. When searching for a program desired to be watched, it is necessary to register a favorite keyword in advance, and a complicated operation is required.

  The present invention has been made to solve such a problem, and a user can efficiently search and register a keyword for keyword search, and perform a program search using the keyword. An object of the present invention is to provide a possible program additional information extraction device.

  The apparatus according to the present invention includes means for extracting electronic program guide information of digital broadcast data from the digital broadcast data, means for storing the extracted electronic program guide information, and specifying in the stored electronic program guide information. Means for extracting program additional information relating to the attribute of the program, and means for storing the extracted program additional information.

  According to the present invention, a user can easily search and register a favorite keyword using the EPG information stored in the receiver, and efficiently search for a program to be viewed by using the registered keyword. can do.

  Hereinafter, the present invention will be specifically described with reference to the drawings showing embodiments thereof.

Embodiment FIG. 1 is a diagram showing a specific embodiment of the present invention.
The antenna 1 is an antenna that receives a digital broadcast signal such as terrestrial digital broadcast or satellite digital broadcast.

  A digital broadcast signal received by the antenna 1 is input to the tuner unit 2. The tuner unit 2 demodulates the modulated digital broadcast signal and outputs the demodulated signal to the decoder unit 3 and the EPG information extraction unit 4.

  The decoder unit 3 performs a decoding process on an encoded signal such as video and audio included in the demodulated signal and outputs the decoded signal to the output unit 7.

  The EPG information extraction unit 4 extracts EPG information included together with encoded signals such as video and audio output from the tuner unit 2.

  The extracted EPG information is output to the EPG decoding unit 5. The EPG decoding unit 5 decodes the EPG information, and classifies necessary program information (EPG information, keywords, etc.) as will be described later, and classifies the classified program information into a semiconductor memory device, a hard disk drive, or an optical disk. The data is accumulated in the data accumulating unit 6 constituted by the data accumulating device.

  The output of the EPG decoding unit 5 is sent to the output unit 7 for display on a video display element such as a CRT or LCD. The EPG processing unit 8 as a block for processing EPG information includes an EPG information extraction unit 4, an EPG decoding unit 5, and a data storage unit 6.

  The detailed operation of the digital broadcast receiver shown in FIG. 1 will be described below.

  The antenna 1 receives, for example, satellite digital broadcasts such as BS and CS, or modulated RF signals of terrestrial digital broadcasts, and outputs digital broadcast signals to the tuner unit 2.

  For example, in the case of digital broadcasting using a cable or the like, a digital broadcast signal transmitted from the cable may be directly input to the tuner unit 2.

The tuner unit 2 demodulates the digital broadcast signal.
Digital broadcast signals such as BS and CS are modulated by a modulation method such as TC8PSK and QPSK. In digital terrestrial broadcasting, modulation is performed by the OFDM method.

  There are various types of these digital broadcasting systems, but demodulation processing according to each modulation system (for modulation systems such as TC8PSK and QPSK, demodulation such as TC8PSK and QPSK, and modulation systems using OFDM) The tuner unit 2 is responsible for OFDM demodulation.

  In the current digital broadcasting, MPEG-2 is usually used as the encoding method in order to maintain the moving image compression efficiency and the compatibility of data handling.

  A data stream (stream) of digital data encoded and transmitted by the MPEG-2 encoding method is called an MPEG-2 transport stream. Hereinafter, a case where an MPEG-2 transport stream is used for a digital broadcast signal will be described.

  The decoder unit 3 receives an MPEG-2 transport stream including video and audio, and control information associated with the information, and performs decoding processing. As a result of this decoding processing, video signals such as RGB and audio signals are finally output.

Hereinafter, extraction of EPG information will be described.
The MPEG-2 transport stream is transmitted continuously in time with a transport stream packet (TSP: Transport Stream Packet) divided into 188 bytes as one unit.

  This TSP is a 32-bit TSP header, followed by an adaptation field (variable length additional information) and a payload that is net information transmitted by the TSP (this payload is variable length, A) video / audio -General data, and B) PSI / SI (which can be distinguished into Program Specific Information / Service Information).

  This PSI (Program Specific Information. Program Specific Information) indicates whether there is such a program in the received TSP and how to decode it, for example, a business number, a broadcast program number, Information such as stream type identification indicating the type of video / audio is included.

  In addition, SI (Service Information) includes information such as a service name and an event start time, for example, information such as a channel name and a program name.

  Information about the EPG is extracted from the MPEG-2 transport stream by the EPG information extraction unit 4.

  This EPG information is a table called SDT (Service Description Table) and EIT (Event Information Table, Event Information Table) included in SI (Program Arrangement Information; Service Information) in the MPEG-2 transport stream. It consists of information in

  The SDT includes information such as a channel name and a broadcasting company name (broadcasting station name) as information, and the EIT includes information such as an event (program) name, broadcasting date, start time and duration.

  Various information is multiplexed in the MPEG-2 transport stream. Here, an example in which information relating to the EPG characteristic of the present invention is mainly extracted from the EIT will be described below.

The EPG decoding unit 5 performs a decoding process (decoding) on the extracted EPG information.
Information about each program of EPG is transmitted including information for one week to two weeks or more, and includes information such as genre information, video format and copy control, and outline contents and detailed contents of the program. .

  The EPG decoding unit 5 extracts and classifies EPG information for each program, manages the EPG information, and compares the stored data stored in the data storage unit 6 so far with the newly transmitted EPG information. The latest EPG information is stored in the data storage unit 6 such as a memory.

  Genre information is one piece of program information. This genre information indicates what kind of genre the program belongs to, such as “news / report”, “sports”, “movie”, “drama”, etc. ”,“ Soccer ”,“ domestic drama ”,“ overseas drama ”,“ foreign film ”,“ Japanese film ”, etc., and are classified into genre categories (each of these genre categories and genre categories is referred to as an attribute).

  The outline description and detailed description of the program are transmitted by a descriptor called a short format event descriptor or an extended format event descriptor.

  Among them, the detailed explanation of the program includes items such as “performer” and “screenplay”, and the name of the performer can be extracted as a keyword using this information (each of these keywords is referred to as a keyword attribute). ).

  In the item of “performer” in the EIT output from the EPG decoding unit 5, for example, “(appearance) Miyaji Mao, Fujiyama Takashi, Sawada Atsuko, Miyagi Nobuko, Suzuyama Rina,... , Keyword attribute information indicating the attribute of subsequent data such as “appearance (or“ performer ”)”, followed by net data (keyword) belonging to the keyword attribute such as “Miyaji Mao, Takashi Fujiyama,…” Is described.

  From this information, the EPG decoding unit 5 extracts each performer name such as “Miyaji Mao”, “Takashi Fujiyama”, “Reiko Sawada”, “Nobuko Miyagi”, etc. as a keyword.

  Note that the description format in the EIT of the attribute information of “performer” here is not strictly defined. Therefore, for example, at the receiver side, each performer name such as “, (punctuation mark)” or “, (comma)” is extracted as one performer name.

  The extracted character string is temporarily stored in the data storage unit 6 to be registered and used as a search keyword as “performer name”. That is, the extracted character string is not a simple character string, but is stored as a search keyword to which the attribute “performer name” is added.

  In this example, “Miyaji Mao”, “Fujiyama Takashi”, “Reiko Sawada”, etc. are given the attribute “performer”. Of course, not only the “performer” but also a character string extracted from the EIT can be designated by an attribute such as “original (original author)” or “director”.

  The EPG decoding unit 5 further includes search means for searching for a program including a specific keyword once stored in the data storage unit 6.

  When a user registers a favorite performer, if the program in which the performer appears in advance is known, the program can be registered using the information of the program.

  However, there are cases where it is not known in which program the performer is appearing. In such a case, for example, if program search using genre search is used, convenience for the user is enhanced.

  For example, if the name of the performer to be registered is “Reiko Sawada” and this person is a movie actor, the genre is classified into a genre in the genre classification “Japanese movie” among the genre classification “movie” from the accumulated EPG information. Search for “performers” included in the program information of all the programs to which they belong.

  Of course, if the performer “Reiko Sawada” appears in multiple Japanese movies, “Reiko Sawada” is included multiple times in the search results.

  Usually, actors and other performers with the same name and name are very rare or rare. Therefore, since the performers that are duplicated in the search result are considered to be the same person, the duplication on the data is eliminated and the data is processed as one data.

  Through such processing, the detection result is presented to the user as a keyword that can be registered (ie, displayed on a display device such as a CRT as illustrated in FIG. 4).

  Of course, the keyword attributes that can be registered here are not necessarily limited to “performers”, but “original / screenplay” (or “original” and “screenplay” alone), “director / director” (or “director”). ”,“ Director ”),“ Music ”,“ Moderator ”,“ Song ”,“ Commentary ”,“ Guest ”,“ Announcer ”,“ Original Title ”, etc., needless to say.

  The user can select a keyword to be registered from the presented search results (keywords that can be registered), and can execute a program search using the keyword.

  FIG. 5 shows an example of a list of keywords that can be registered (in this example, 14 keywords are registered as registered data of performer attributes). In addition, it is displayed on a display device such as a CRT as illustrated in FIG.

  When a user searches for a program, keywords having the same attribute are collated in order for all program information stored in the data storage unit 6. This is, for example, to perform a collation process to determine whether or not the “cast performer” attribute data of each program includes “Reiko Sawada”.

  As a result of this collation processing, a display device such as a CRT is displayed as illustrated in FIG. The user can set viewing and recording reservations for a desired program while referring to the screen of the display example of FIG.

  Further, as described above, the electronic program guide information of the digital broadcast data is extracted, the extracted electronic program guide information is temporarily stored, and a specific information such as genre information in the stored electronic program guide information is stored. The program additional information related to the attribute is extracted, the extracted program additional information is stored, and the broadcast time information corresponding to the program additional information is stored, and the program selected by the user based on the program additional information is stored. It is also possible to configure a program display device having a function of controlling and displaying the output of broadcast data for the above, and a program recording device for recording the output of the broadcast data on a recording medium.

  The data storage unit 6 stores EPG information, keywords extracted as described above, and the like. Since the EPG information is sequentially updated as time passes as described above, the latest information is always obtained from the data output from the EPG decoding unit 5, and the latest information is updated and stored. Operate.

  In addition, the registered keyword information must not be lost even when the receiver is turned off, and can be stored in non-volatile semiconductor memories, hard disk drives, optical discs, etc. that can retain data regardless of power on / off. It is better to use a device.

  The output unit 7 is a display such as a liquid crystal or a CRT. The video signal and the audio signal output from the decoding unit 3 are displayed, and the display image of the EPG information output from the EPG decoding unit 5 is synthesized using an OSD (On Screen Display) technique and presented to the user.

  FIG. 2 is an example of a control flowchart when performing keyword registration in the present embodiment.

  When a new keyword search using EPG information is performed (that is, when a search is performed using a keyword different from the previously registered keyword), the receiver first confirms whether the search is for a new keyword. The

  Next, the user selects a genre. Here, for example, a genre such as “Japanese film”, “Domestic drama”, “Baseball” can be designated.

  When a genre is specified, the EPG information stored in the data storage unit 6 is searched for all of the specified genre, and all the program information belonging to the genre is extracted.

Further, all keywords included in those programs are extracted.
Finally, duplicate keywords are eliminated and search results are displayed. For example, when “domestic drama” is designated as the genre, names of performers of domestic dramas such as “Asako Atsuko”, “Naoko Iijima”, “Yuri Ishida”,... Are displayed as a list as illustrated in FIG.

  The user selects, for example, “Yuri Ishida” from the displayed results by operating the cursor key provided on the remote control or the like, and further selects the “Register” button to thereby select “Yuri Ishida” or the like. The performer name can be registered as a desired keyword.

  At this time, it is also possible to display the search results after sorting them by keyword attributes such as “performer” and “director”, and it is also possible to search sequentially after specifying the attributes first. .

  In addition, the data accumulation of the EIT accumulated in the data accumulation unit 6 described above is performed by acquiring EPG information in conjunction with pressing of an “EPG information acquisition button” provided on a remote controller, for example. The EIT information may be stored in the data storage unit 6, or while the receiver is not used, the tuner unit 2 and the EPG processing unit 8 are automatically started, and the reception channel in the tuner unit 2 is sequentially changed, EIT information in each channel may be acquired and EIT information may be stored in the data storage unit 6.

  Of course, a plurality of tuner units 2 for acquiring EPG information are provided, and another tuner unit is sequentially received by the tuner unit 2 in parallel with the tuner unit 2 used when the user is viewing. The EIT information may be accumulated in the data accumulation unit 6 by acquiring EPG information in each channel while changing the channel.

  If configured as described above, a digital broadcast can be received, and keywords can be registered by a simpler method in the program additional information extraction device, program display device, and program recording device. In particular, by using the configuration as described, a user can register a keyword without performing complicated character input or voice input, and can use it for program search.

It is a block diagram which shows the Example of this invention. It is an example of the flowchart in the Example of this invention. It is a figure which shows the example of a display at the time of the keyword search of an electronic program guide. It is a figure which shows another example of a display at the time of the keyword search of an electronic program guide. It is a figure which shows the example of a display of the registration keyword of an electronic program guide. It is a figure which shows the example of a display of the keyword search result of an electronic program guide.

Explanation of symbols

DESCRIPTION OF SYMBOLS 1 Ground antenna 2 Tuner part 3 Decoder part 4 EPG information extraction part 5 EPG decoding part 6 Data storage part 7 Output part 8 EPG processing part

Claims (5)

Means for extracting electronic program guide information of digital broadcast data from the digital broadcast data;
Means for storing the extracted electronic program guide information;
Means for extracting program additional information relating to a specific attribute in the stored electronic program guide information;
A program additional information extracting apparatus comprising: means for storing the extracted program additional information. 2. The program additional information extracting apparatus according to claim 1, further comprising means for designating a keyword attribute corresponding to the extracted program additional information. 3. The program additional information extracting apparatus according to claim 1, further comprising means for storing broadcast time information corresponding to a program selected based on the program additional information in association with each other. The program additional information extraction device according to any one of claims 1 to 3,
Means for controlling output of a program corresponding to the program additional information based on the program additional information stored in the program additional information extracting device;
A program display apparatus comprising: means for outputting broadcast data corresponding to the program in response to a control output from the means for controlling the output of the program. The program additional information extraction device according to any one of claims 1 to 3,
Means for controlling output of a program corresponding to the program additional information based on the program additional information stored in the program additional information extracting device;
A program recording apparatus comprising: means for recording broadcast data corresponding to the program on a recording medium in accordance with a control output from the means for controlling the output of the program.

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