JP2005191816A - Television program searching method and television program searching apparatus - Google Patents

Abstract

<P>PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To provide a television program searching method and a television program searching apparatus searching a program substantially congenial to a user without being affected by a frequency of viewing of the user. <P>SOLUTION: An EPG processing section 1 extracts EPG information and thereafter a storage device 3 sequentially stores history of each operation from an operation supply section 2. Extract sections 4, 6 obtain a vector by each program from program information read from the storage device 3 and program information of other stations and supply the vector to a generation section 5. The generation section 5 generates vectors the number of which corresponds to the supplied number and supplies the vectors to a searching section 8. The searching section 8 calculates the similarity by the vector of each history, extracts the history with the highest similarity, and gives it to a discrimination section 7. The discrimination section 7 discriminates a recommended program from a group of searching object programs on the basis of a view channel in the supplied history. <P>COPYRIGHT: (C)2005,JPO&NCIPI

Description

  The present invention learns a user's viewing tendency from past operation histories (program viewing, recording, playback, etc.) in an apparatus for receiving a television broadcast, and automatically extracts a user's favorite program based on the information. The present invention relates to a television program search method and a television program search apparatus for the above.

  With the widespread use of cable TV and digital broadcasting, a full-channel era has been put into practical use in Japan, and it is not easy for users to find a desired channel. In view of this, a program information guide called EPG (Electronic Program Guide) added to television broadcasting has been proposed to automatically record after extracting a favorite program based on a user's viewing history (for example, , See Patent Document 1.).

JP-A-5-62283

By the way, the method proposed in Patent Document 1 analyzes the user's preference from the viewing time of a program. However, there are a lot of ways to see general television programs, and they are watching the same program casually, and there are surprisingly few programs that are consciously trying to watch the program.
In the conventional method, the degree of preference is increased because the viewing frequency of such a program is high, and conversely, the degree of preference is low because a program that is really interesting to watch occasionally is low in viewing frequency. There was a problem.

  The present invention has been made in view of the above points. A television program search method and a television program search apparatus capable of searching for a program corresponding to the user's original preference without being influenced by the user's viewing frequency. The purpose is to provide.

In order to solve the above-mentioned problems, the present invention comprises means described in the following 1) to 2).
That is,
1) A television program search method for receiving a television broadcast and searching for the user's favorite program based on the television broadcast program information and user operation history information,
A first extracting step of extracting each program information of selectable programs broadcast at a predetermined time from the program information of the television broadcast;
A second extraction step of extracting information of a program viewed at the predetermined time from the user operation history information;
Generating a program selected by the user as predetermined pattern information from a selectable program at the predetermined time by the first extracting step and the second extracting step;
Based on the pattern information generated from the generation step and the pattern division determination similar to this pattern information, a search step for searching for information having the highest similarity from the pattern information of the television program group scheduled to be broadcast;
A determination step of determining a program selected based on the pattern information having the highest similarity searched in the search step as a recommended program to the user;
A television program search method characterized by comprising:
2) A television program search device that receives a television broadcast and searches for the user's favorite program based on the program information of the television broadcast and user operation history information,
First extraction means for extracting each piece of program information of selectable programs broadcast at a predetermined time from the program information of the television broadcast;
Second extraction means for extracting information of a program viewed at the predetermined time from the user operation history information;
Generating means for generating, as predetermined pattern information, a program selected by the user from selectable programs at the predetermined time by the first extracting means and the second extracting means;
Search means for searching for information having the highest similarity from the pattern information of the television program group scheduled to be broadcast based on the pattern information generated from the generating means and the same pattern division determination as the pattern information;
Determination means for determining a program selected based on the pattern information having the highest similarity searched by the search means as a recommended program to the user;
Notification means for notifying the user of the recommended program determined by the determination means;
A television program search device comprising:

According to the “television program search method and television program search device” of the present invention, it is possible to calculate a preference level that is not influenced by the user's viewing frequency, and to search for a program that is close to the user's original preference. A John program search method and a television program search apparatus can be provided.
In addition, since a program search is performed using a broadcast-specific characteristic that a program to be watched is determined by selecting one of programs broadcast at a predetermined time, it is closer to the user's preference. It is possible to provide a television program search method and a television program search apparatus that can search for a program.
Furthermore, since the user's viewing tendency is learned from the operation history of viewing, recording, playing, etc. of the television program, the television program searching method and television program that can search for a program closer to the user's preference A search device can be provided.

Hereinafter, the best mode for carrying out the invention of a television program search method and a television program search apparatus according to the present invention will be described with reference to preferred embodiments.
FIG. 1 is a schematic block diagram showing the configuration of a television program search apparatus applied to this embodiment. As shown in the figure, the television program search device 9 includes an EPG acquisition unit 1, a history processing unit 2, a storage device 3, extraction units 4 and 6, a generation unit 5, a determination unit 7, and a search unit 8. .

  The EPG information sent together with the television broadcast is supplied to the EPG processing unit 1 and sequentially stored in the storage device 3 in the device. Further, according to the operation from the operation supply unit 2, the history of each operation is sequentially stored in the storage device 3. The extraction unit 4 reads the program information of the program scheduled to be searched from the program information in the storage unit 3 and the program information of the program of another station broadcast at the same time from the storage device 3 and obtains a vector for each program. It supplies to the production | generation part 5. The generation unit 5 generates vectors corresponding to the number of combinations of programs from each supplied program and supplies the vectors to the search unit 8. At the same time, the extraction unit 6 reads the history from the operation history in the storage unit 3, vectorizes it together with the program information of the program broadcast at the same time as the history, and supplies it to the search unit 8. The search unit 8 calculates vectors and similarities for the number of combinations to be searched for each vector of the history, extracts a history with the highest similarity, and supplies the extracted history to the determination unit 7. The determination unit 7 determines a recommended program from the search target program group based on the viewing channel for the supplied history.

  The program information actually handled in the television broadcast includes information such as a title name, a genre name, a performer name, and a program content commentary as shown in FIG. These pieces of information may be obtained from what is multiplexed with broadcast and sent as EPG information, or may be obtained from the Internet. In the future, it is also considered to be sent as more detailed data as metadata.

  In the present invention, the user's preference is determined based on the past operation history of the user and the degree of similarity between these pieces of information. Generally, the document unit (the present invention) is used when searching a document on the WEB. In this case, instead of making a determination based on the degree of similarity in units of programs), a program suited to the user's preference is extracted with higher accuracy by utilizing the unique characteristics of broadcasting.

  In general, when watching a television broadcast, an arbitrary program is not seen at an arbitrary time, and a program to be viewed is determined by always selecting one of the programs being broadcast at a certain time. . That is, for example, if a program as shown in FIG. 3 is broadcast at a certain time, only one of the three types of programs can be viewed. In addition, the selection method is often performed by relative comparison. Even if the variety shown in FIG. 3 is seen, the program shown in FIG. 8 is always watched at another time. It is common to watch baseball without watching variety.

Therefore, the present invention is characterized in that a process is performed for each combination of programs in order to determine a favorite program based on the similarity in units of program combinations rather than the similarity in units of programs.
Specific processing will be described below with reference to the flowchart of FIG.

  Program information of each program broadcast at a certain time is acquired from EPG information and the like and stored in the storage device 3. The extraction unit 4 reads program information of a program group broadcast in the time zone to be searched from the storage device 3 (STEP 1). Next, elements representing program characteristics are extracted from the program information for each supplied program (STEP 2). For example, as shown in FIG. 2, elements such as a title name, a genre name, a performer name, and a commentary that are decomposed into morphemes can be considered.

  Next, each program is expressed as a vector with dimensions corresponding to the number of elements obtained by excluding duplicate elements from the elements of all supplied programs. In the case of FIG. 3, all elements that do not overlap are “news”, “variety”, and “drama”, so there are three elements and they are represented by a three-dimensional vector. The vector representation of each program is 100 for channel 1, 010 for channel 2, and 001 for channel 3 (STEP 3).

  Next, the first history is acquired from the operation history acquired in advance, and the program information of each program broadcast at the time corresponding to the history is acquired from the EPG information stored in advance, and the extraction unit 6 (STEP 4). The extraction unit 6 uses the extracted elements to vectorize each program broadcast at the time corresponding to the history in the dimension obtained in STEP 3 (STEP 6). For example, in the example of the history shown in FIG. 4, it can be seen that the channel 1 was viewed from 19:00 to 20:00 on the day of month X. From FIG. 4, at the same time corresponding to the history, as shown in FIG. You can see that the program was broadcast. If each of these programs is expressed by a vector of dimensions generated in STEP 3, channel 1 is 100, channel 2 is 000, and channel 3 is 000.

  Next, the generation unit 5 obtains all combinations of the programs scheduled to be broadcast (channel 1, channel 2, channel 3). The combinations are (Channel 1, Channel 2, Channel 3), (Channel 1, Channel 3, Channel 2), (Channel 2, Channel 1, Channel 3), (Channel 2, Channel 3, Channel 1), (Channel 3, Channel 1, channel 2), (channel 3, channel 2, channel 1).

Next, the search unit 8 calculates the inner product of the program group vectors for the number of combinations with the program group vectors generated from the history (STEP 6 to STEP 9), and sets the largest one as the similarity to the history (STEP 10). . For example, each inner product for the above history is
(100010001) * (100000000) = 1
(100001010) · (100000000) = 1
(010100001) ・ (100000000) = 0
(010001100) · (100000000) = 0
(0011100010). (100000000) = 0
(001010100) · (100000000) = 0
Thus, the similarity is 1 when the sequence of programs is (channel 1, channel 2, channel 3) or (channel 1, channel 3, channel 2).

  Similarly, for the next history, when the similarity is obtained (STEP 11) and the arrangement order is (channel 2, channel 1, channel 3), the similarity is (010100001) · (010100001) = 3.

  In this way, the similarity is obtained for all the histories, and by finding the history having the maximum similarity, the history most similar to the broadcast-scheduled program group to be determined and its combination can be found (STEP 12). ~ 13).

In the determination unit 7, since the program viewed at that time from the history with the highest similarity obtained by the search unit 8 is “Channel 2”,
(Channel 1, Channel 2 , Channel 3) History list
↓ ↓ ↓
(Channel 2, Channel 1 , Channel 3) It is determined that the program most likely to be watched in the program group scheduled to be broadcasted is “Channel 1” based on the relationship of the search target (STEP 14).

  Further, considering that there is a program group as shown in FIG. 8 on another scheduled broadcast date, the vector elements of each program at that time are “news”, “variety”, and “baseball”. 100, channel 2 is 010, and channel 3 is 001. If these are processed in the same manner as in the previous example, the similarity to the third history in FIG. 4 is the highest, and the arrangement order at that time is (program 1, program 2, program 3). Since the program viewed from the third history is found to be “channel 3”, it is determined that the program most likely to be viewed in the broadcast scheduled program group is “channel 3”.

  Thus, according to the present invention, there is provided a television program search method and a television program search device that can determine a user's preference more accurately regardless of viewing frequency. Also, a television broadcast receiving apparatus having a function for guiding a user to quickly select a program searched by the television program searching method and the television program searching apparatus according to the present invention, or a searched program It is also possible to construct an automatic recording device that always records a user's favorite program by automatically recording

It is the schematic block diagram which showed the structure of the television program search apparatus applied to a present Example. It is the figure which showed the example of the program information used for television broadcasting. It is the figure which showed the example of the program currently broadcast at the predetermined time. It is the figure which showed an example of the user's viewing history. It is the figure which showed the example of the program currently broadcast at the predetermined time. It is the figure which showed the example of the program currently broadcast at the predetermined time. It is the figure which showed the example of the program currently broadcast at the predetermined time. It is the figure which showed the example of the program which is scheduled to be broadcast at predetermined time. It is the figure which showed an example of the flowchart which showed the television program search method applied to a present Example.

Explanation of symbols

DESCRIPTION OF SYMBOLS 1 ... EPG acquisition part 2 ... History processing part 3 ... Accumulation apparatus 4,6 ... Extraction part 5 ... Generation part 7 ... Determination part 8 ... Search part 9 ... Television program search apparatus

Claims (2)

A television program search method for receiving a television broadcast and searching for the user's favorite program based on the television broadcast program information and user operation history information,
A first extracting step of extracting each program information of selectable programs broadcast at a predetermined time from the program information of the television broadcast;
A second extraction step of extracting information of a program viewed at the predetermined time from the user operation history information;
Generating a program selected by the user as predetermined pattern information from a selectable program at the predetermined time by the first extracting step and the second extracting step;
Based on the pattern information generated from the generation step and the pattern division determination similar to this pattern information, a search step for searching for information having the highest similarity from the pattern information of the television program group scheduled to be broadcast;
A determination step of determining a program selected based on the pattern information having the highest similarity searched in the search step as a recommended program to the user;
A television program search method characterized by comprising: A television program search device that receives a television broadcast and searches for the user's favorite program based on the television broadcast program information and user operation history information,
First extraction means for extracting each piece of program information of selectable programs broadcast at a predetermined time from the program information of the television broadcast;
Second extraction means for extracting information of a program viewed at the predetermined time from the user operation history information;
Generating means for generating, as predetermined pattern information, a program selected by the user from selectable programs at the predetermined time by the first extracting means and the second extracting means;
Search means for searching for information having the highest similarity from the pattern information of the television program group scheduled to be broadcast based on the pattern information generated from the generating means and the same pattern division determination as the pattern information;
Determination means for determining a program selected based on the pattern information having the highest similarity searched by the search means as a recommended program to the user;
Notification means for notifying the user of the recommended program determined by the determination means;
A television program search device comprising:

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