JP2012014504A - Information selection device, server, information selection method, and program - Google Patents

Abstract

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To provide an information selection device which selects appropriate content including information relevant to a program which is broadcast.SOLUTION: The information selection device receives subtitle information showing a substance of the program which is broadcast with the program, extracts a theme word showing a theme of the subtitle information and a content word showing the substance of the subtitle information from words included in the received subtitle information, retrieves the content relevant to the subtitle information among contents which are disclosed on a network using a plurality of retrieval conditions generated by combining the theme word and the content word, calculates similarity showing correlation between text information included in the retrieved content and showing the substance of the content and the subtitle information, selects any one retrieval condition from among the plurality of retrieval conditions based on the calculated similarity, and outputs position information showing an area in which the retrieved content is stored using the selected retrieval condition.

Description

  The present invention relates to an information selection device, a server device, an information selection method, and a program.

In recent years, in order to integrate television broadcasting and Web content, research on a connection model based on a topic structure, which is a structure of information provided by television broadcasting, has been advanced.
For example, Non-Patent Document 1 describes a query-free search mechanism for searching a Web page that complements the content of a program provided by television broadcasting based on a combined model. . The technique described in Non-Patent Document 1 generates four queries based on the type of Web page to be searched. The query to be generated is generated by using the subject word and the content word included in the caption information transmitted together with the program, and the SD (Subject-Deepening), SB (Subject-Broadening), CD (Content-Deepening), and CB There are four queries of (Content-Broadening).

Here, the subject word is a keyword that frequently appears in the caption information and has a strong degree of directed co-occurrence with other words. The content word is a keyword that frequently appears in the caption information and has a high degree of undirected co-occurrence with the subject word.
SD is a query for searching for a web page whose subject word is included in text information indicating the body of the web page, and SB is a query for a web page whose content word is included in the body of the web page. A query for searching, CB is a query for searching a Web page whose subject word is included in the title of the Web page, and CD is a Web whose content word is included in the title of the Web page. A query for searching a page.

  In the above method, the web page is searched by four queries using the subject word and the content word, so that the web page similar to the content of the program is not simply searched, the program content is more detailed, or A Web page showing the contents of the program from another viewpoint is searched.

FIG. 6 is a flowchart showing a Web page (content) search process by the method of Non-Patent Document 1.
As shown in the figure, the subtitle information transmitted with the program is received (step S901), and the subject word and the content word are extracted from the received subtitle information (step S902). Using the extracted subject words and content words, queries for CD, CB, SD and SB are generated (step S903), and each generated query is transmitted to a search server (search engine) to search for a web page. This is performed (step S904). A URL that is information indicating the retrieved Web page is received (step S905).

  Using this method, for all topics included in the caption information, a URL of a Web page indicating detailed information that delves into the topic and information from a different viewpoint on the topic can be obtained. The information about can be searched exhaustively.

Ma Qiang, Katsumi Tanaka, “Search Mechanism for Integration of Broadcast and Web Content Based on Topic Structure”, Transactions of Information Processing Society of Japan: Database, Vol. 45 No. SIG10 (TOD23), pp. 18-36, 2004

  However, if a viewer (user) viewing the program on the TV screen together with the program displays a web page related to the content of the program obtained by the method of Non-Patent Document 1, the web page Due to the large number, it may not be possible to display everything on the television screen. In addition, since the Web pages related to the content of the program are comprehensively searched, a Web page that has a low degree of association with the content of the program may be included. May be included.

  That is, since the Web page (content) including information related to the program is exhaustively searched, the number of search results increases and content with a low degree of association with the content of the program is included. There is a problem that it may not be possible to select appropriate content related to the network from content on the network.

  The present invention has been made to solve the above problems, and an object of the present invention is to select an appropriate content including information related to a broadcast program, an information selection device, an information selection method, and a program. The present invention also provides a server device.

  In order to solve the above problem, the present invention provides a subtitle acquisition unit that receives subtitle information representing the content of the program broadcast together with the program, and the subtitles from words included in the subtitle information received by the subtitle acquisition unit. A subject word representing the subject of the information and a content word representing the content of the caption information are extracted and published on the network using a plurality of search conditions generated by combining the subject word and the subject word. A content search unit that searches for content related to the subtitle information among the content, text information indicating the content of the content included in the content searched by the content search unit for each of the plurality of search conditions, and the subtitle information A similarity calculating unit that calculates a similarity indicating a correlation with the similarity, and selects one search condition from the plurality of search conditions based on the calculated similarity, and the similarity Calculator is information selection device characterized by comprising an output section the contents searched outputs position information indicating a region stored with the selected search criteria.

  Further, the present invention is a vector indicating characteristics of the caption information on the basis of the appearance frequency of each of a plurality of words extracted in advance from caption information broadcast in the past in the invention described above. A subtitle feature amount calculation unit that calculates a subtitle feature amount, and a text feature amount calculation unit that calculates a text feature amount that is a vector indicating the feature of the text information based on the appearance frequency of each of the plurality of words in the text information The similarity calculation unit calculates the similarity from the caption feature quantity and the text feature quantity, and the output unit calculates an average value of the similarity calculated for each of the plurality of search conditions. The search condition with the highest similarity is selected, or the search condition for searching for the content with the highest similarity among the plurality of search conditions is selected, and the selected search condition is selected. And outputting location information corresponding to the contents searched by.

  Further, the present invention is the invention described in the above, wherein the caption feature amount calculation unit calculates the caption feature amount weighted by tfidf (Term Frequency & Inverse Document Frequency) using the plurality of words, The text feature amount calculating unit calculates the text feature amount weighted by tfidf using the plurality of words, and the similarity calculating unit calculates a cosine correlation value between the caption feature amount and the text feature amount. The similarity is calculated.

  Further, the present invention is the search server according to the above-described invention, wherein the content search unit searches for content satisfying a received condition among the content published on the network and returns the position information of the content In addition, by transmitting the plurality of search conditions, the content that satisfies the plurality of search conditions is searched, and the text feature amount calculation unit is configured to search for each of the plurality of search conditions among the contents searched by the content search unit. In addition, the text feature quantity is calculated for the top n (n ≧ 1) contents ranked by the search server.

  According to the present invention, in the above-described invention, the content that is disclosed on the network is searched for content in which the subject word is included in the text information and the content word is not included in the title. A second search condition for searching for a content in which the content word is included in the title and the subject word is not included in the text information, and the network. Among the contents published above, a third search condition for retrieving contents in which the content word is included in the text information and the subject word is not included in the title, and the content published on the network The content is searched for content in which the subject word is included in the title and the content word is not included in the text information. A query generation unit that generates the search conditions as the plurality of search conditions, and the content search unit transmits the first to fourth search conditions generated by the query generation unit to the search server. The content is searched, and the output unit selects any one of the first to fourth search conditions, and outputs the content searched according to the selected search condition.

  Further, the present invention provides the above-described invention, wherein, in the search using the first to fourth search conditions, the content search unit includes the search condition when the number of obtained contents is less than n. The content search is performed by reducing the number of words of the subject word or the content word used when generating the search word and generating the search condition again.

  Further, the present invention inputs the caption information of each of the information selection device in the above-described invention and a plurality of broadcast programs to the information selection device, and the position information output by the information selection device corresponds to the program A request information indicating any one of the plurality of programs is received, position information corresponding to the program indicated by the request information is read from the selection information storage, and the read position information is And a request processing unit that transmits the request information to a transmission source.

  In addition, the present invention provides a subtitle acquisition step for receiving subtitle information representing the contents of the program broadcast together with the program, and a subject representing the subject of the subtitle information from words included in the subtitle information received in the subtitle acquisition step. The subtitle information among the contents published on the network using a plurality of search conditions generated by extracting the word and the content word representing the content of the subtitle information and combining the subject word and the content word A content search step for searching for content related to the content, a similarity indicating a correlation between the subtitle information and the text information indicating the content of the content included in the content searched in the content search step for each of the plurality of search conditions A degree of similarity is calculated, and one of the plurality of search conditions is selected based on the calculated degree of similarity. Steps and, wherein the contents searched by using the selected search criteria in similarity calculation step is information selection method characterized by comprising an output step for outputting the position information indicating a region stored.

  Further, the present invention is included in a caption acquisition step for receiving caption information representing the contents of the program broadcast together with the program to a computer provided in the information selection device, and the caption information received in the caption acquisition step. A subject word representing the subject of the caption information and a content word representing the content of the caption information are extracted from the word, and a plurality of search conditions generated by combining the subject word and the subject word are used on the network. A content search step for searching for content related to the subtitle information among the published content; and text information indicating the content of the content included in the content searched in the content search step for each of the plurality of search conditions; , Calculating a similarity indicating a correlation with the caption information, and based on the calculated similarity, the plurality of search conditions A similarity calculation step for selecting any one search condition, and an output step for outputting position information indicating an area where the content searched using the search condition selected in the similarity calculation step is stored. This is a program to be executed.

According to the present invention, for each of a plurality of search conditions for searching for content including information related to the caption information of a program, the similarity between the content searched according to the search condition and the caption information is calculated, and the calculated similarity By selecting any one of the plurality of search conditions based on the degree, the optimum search condition can be selected from the plurality of search conditions.
As a result, out of a large number of contents searched using a plurality of search conditions, the content searched for under the optimum search condition that is the selected search condition is output, so that the optimum content related to the contents of the program can be obtained. It can be presented to the user.

It is a schematic block diagram which shows the utilization form of the information selection apparatus 1 in 1st Embodiment. It is a schematic block diagram which shows the structure of the information selection apparatus 1 in the embodiment. It is a figure which shows an example of the caption feature-value (vector) in the embodiment. It is a flowchart which shows the content selection process of the information selection apparatus 1 in the embodiment. It is a schematic block diagram which shows the structure of the information selection server 100 in 2nd Embodiment. It is a flowchart which shows the search process of a web page (content).

  Hereinafter, an information selection device, an information selection method, a program, and a server device according to embodiments of the present invention will be described with reference to the drawings.

(First embodiment)
FIG. 1 is a schematic block diagram showing a usage form of the information selection apparatus 1 in the first embodiment.
As shown in FIG. 1, the information selection device 1 is connected to a search server 4 and a plurality of content servers 5 via a network 6 and is also connected to a set top box 2.

  The set top box 2 is connected to a display device 3 that displays video. The set-top box 2 receives a broadcast signal including video information, audio information, and caption information of a broadcast program from an external transmission station, and converts the received video information and caption information into a video signal that can be displayed by the display device 3. Then, the audio information is converted into an audio signal that can be output by the display device 3, and the video signal and the audio signal are output to the display device 3. Here, the subtitle information is, for example, information by characters such as closed captioning or subtitle broadcasting, and is information representing the lines of the broadcast program and the contents of the program.

  Further, the set top box 2 receives the content distributed by the content server 5 via the network 6 based on the operation information input from the user, and displays it on the display device 3. Further, the set top box 2 sequentially transmits the received caption information to the information selection device 1. The set top box 2 may receive a broadcast signal via a wired line such as an optical fiber cable or a coaxial cable, or may receive a broadcast signal via a wireless line.

Based on the caption information received from the set top box 2, the information selection device 1 searches the content related to the content of the caption information using the search server 4, and indicates an area in which the searched content is stored. The position information is transmitted to the set top box 2. Here, the location information is information indicating a content server 5 such as a URL (Uniform Resource Locator) and an area in which the content distributed by the content server 5 is stored. .
The display device 3 decodes the input video signal and displays a video corresponding to the video signal. The display device 3 is, for example, a television receiver or a liquid crystal display.

  The search server 4 searches for content that satisfies the search condition to be received among the content distributed on the network 6 based on the search condition received via the network 6 and is searched based on the search condition. A search result including a list in which the contents are ranked is returned to the transmission source of the search condition. The ranking of the content is performed according to, for example, the degree of coincidence between the content and the search condition, the number of browsing times of the content, and the like. Examples of such a search server 4 are Google (registered trademark) and Yahoo! There is a search server (search engine) on a network operated by (registered trademark) or the like.

  The content server 5 is a server device that stores information on a Web page including text information whose contents are represented by text and a title of the text information, and publishes the stored Web page. In addition, when the content server 5 receives a request to browse a stored Web page, the content server 5 transmits information on the requested Web page to the request source. The network 6 may be a public network such as the Internet or a network limited to a specific user such as an intranet.

FIG. 2 is a schematic block diagram showing the configuration of the information selection device 1 in the present embodiment.
As shown in the figure, the information selection device 1 includes a word list storage unit 11, a caption acquisition unit 12, a URL acquisition unit 13, a text acquisition unit 14, a text feature amount calculation unit 15, a caption feature amount calculation unit 16, a similarity degree. A calculation unit 17 and a URL output unit 18 are provided.

The word list storage unit 11 stores list information including m (m ≧ 1) words in advance. The list information is, for example, a set of words generated in advance by extracting words having a high appearance frequency from subtitle information broadcast in the past and important words indicating the characteristics of each subtitle information. The word included in the list information is a noun or an adjective.
The caption acquisition unit 12 receives caption information from an external device, and outputs the received caption information to the URL acquisition unit 13 and the caption feature value calculation unit 16. In the present embodiment, the caption acquisition unit 12 receives caption information from the set top box 2.

  The URL acquisition unit 13 performs morphological analysis on the subtitle information input from the subtitle acquisition unit 12, divides the subtitle information into words according to parts of speech, and extracts the subtitle information from the words included in the subtitle information. A subject word representing the subject and a content word representing the content of the caption information are extracted. Then, the URL acquisition unit 13 searches for content related to the caption information among the contents published on the network 6 using a plurality of search conditions generated by combining the extracted subject words and content words, The position information of the searched content is output to the text acquisition unit 14 and the URL output unit 18. Hereinafter, a case where the location information is a URL will be described.

The URL acquisition unit 13 includes a keyword extraction unit 131, a query generation unit 132, and a content search unit 133.
The keyword extraction unit 131 performs morphological analysis on the input subtitle information, divides the subtitle information into words according to the part of speech, and extracts the subject words and content words of the subtitle information from the words included in the subtitle information The extracted subject words and content words are output to the query generation unit 132. At this time, for example, the keyword extraction unit 131 selects two subject words and selects three content words. The number of subject words and content words selected by the keyword extraction unit 131 may be changed according to the length of the caption information.
Moreover, the method of extracting a subject word and a content word is performed using the method described in the nonpatent literature 1, for example. Specifically, in the caption information, a word having a high appearance frequency and a strong co-occurrence relationship with another word is set as a subject word. In the caption information, a word having a strong co-occurrence relationship with the subject word is used as a content word.

  The query generation unit 132 generates four search conditions as the plurality of search conditions described above that combine the subject words and content words extracted by the keyword extraction unit 131 so that peripheral information related to the caption information can be searched. The data is output to the content search unit 133. Here, as a method for generating the four search conditions, for example, a method for generating a query (question) described in Non-Patent Document 1 is used.

  Here, the four search conditions generated by the query generation unit 132 are: (A) SD (Subject Deepening) for searching deeply the content of subtitle information by refining the content of subtitle information based on the subject word. Based on the search condition, (B) the content deepening (CD) search condition for searching deeply the content of the subtitle information by refining the content of the subtitle information based on the content word, and (C) based on the subject word SB (Subject Broadening) search condition for searching for information from a viewpoint different from the caption information by expanding the contents of the caption information, and (D) a viewpoint different from the caption information by expanding the contents of the caption information based on the content word CB (Content Broadening) search condition for searching the information.

Specifically, (A) SD search condition (first search condition) is that the subject word is included in text information (body text) indicating the content of the content in a sentence, and the content word is included in the title (heading). It is a condition to search for no content. Here, the content title is, for example, a word described in a title tag.
Further, (B) CD search condition (second search condition) is a condition for searching for content in which the content word is included in the title and the subject word is not included in the text.
The (C) SB search condition (third search condition) is a condition for searching for content in which the content word is included in the text and the subject word is not included in the title.
Further, (D) CB search condition (fourth search condition) is a condition for searching for content in which the subject word is included in the title and the content word is not included in the text.

  The content search unit 133 searches for content that matches each search condition using each of the four search conditions generated by the query generation unit 132. Specifically, the content search unit 133 transmits each of the four search conditions to the search server 4 via the network 6 and receives the search result of each search condition from the search server 4. Then, the content search unit 133 outputs the URLs of the top n (n ≧ 1) content among the search results of each search condition to the text acquisition unit 14 in association with the search condition. Here, n is a predetermined numerical value, and is determined in advance based on, for example, the number of contents that can be displayed on the display device 3 together with the video of the broadcast program, or the number of information indicating the outline of the contents.

The content search unit 133 reduces the conditions included in the search condition so that the number of URLs obtained by the search increases when the number of URLs obtained by the search condition generated by the query generation unit 132 is less than n. Search again. For example, the search condition is relaxed by reducing the negative condition included in the search condition one by one so that the feature of each search condition can be utilized, and the search is performed again. If the number of URLs obtained even when the negative condition is deleted is n or less, the positive condition is reduced one by one and the search is repeated so that n URLs are obtained.
For example, when the keyword extraction unit 131 relaxes the CD search condition when extracting the two subject words s1, s2 and the three content words c1, c2, c3 from the caption information, the content search unit 133 The content words c1, c2, and c3 are included in the title, and the subject words s1 and s2 are not included in the body text. The content words c1, c2, and c3 are included in the title, and the subject word s1 is included in the body text. Change the search condition to "No" and search again.

The text acquisition unit 14 receives text information included in the content from the content server 5 via the network 6 using URLs of n pieces of content corresponding to each search condition output by the content search unit 133. To do. Then, the text acquisition unit 14 associates the received text information of each content with the search condition corresponding to the content, and outputs it to the text feature amount calculation unit 15.
For example, in the case of content described in HTML, text information included in content is extracted from content data by selecting a sentence in a range indicated by a body tag. If the content is described in MHTML, the text information is extracted from the content data by selecting a document included in the original HTML file.

The text feature amount calculation unit 15 reads the list information stored in the word list storage unit 11 and weights the feature amount by tfidf (Term Frequency & inverse Document Frequency) using each word included in the read list information. Is calculated for each text information of the content input from the text acquisition unit 14.
Specifically, the text feature amount calculation unit 15 calculates a tfidf value for each of m words included in the list information for each text information of the content, and an m-dimension having the calculated m tfidf values as elements. Is calculated as a text feature amount.

  Here, tfidf is the reciprocal of the appearance frequency (Term Frequency; tf) of the character string α in a certain document (content) and the frequency of the number of documents in which the character string α appears in the entire document set (entire content set). It is calculated by the product of (Inverse Document Frequency; idf), and is one of indexes indicating that the character string α is more important as the calculated numerical value is larger.

Hereinafter, a method for calculating the text feature amount will be described in detail.
Among the searched contents, the tfidf value of the i (1 ≦ i ≦ m) -th word of the list information in the text information of the j (1 ≦ j ≦ 4n) -th content is expressed by the following equation (1). The

Here, tf _{i, j} is the number of occurrences of the i-th word in the text information of the j-th content. N is the total number of text information (= n × 4) included in the content whose text feature value is to be calculated. Also, df _i is the number of text information of the content including the i-th word among the text information (body) included in the content whose text feature value is to be calculated.
The vector t _j represented by the following equation (2) having the tfidf value calculated for each word as an element is used as the text feature amount for the text information of the j-th content.

Similar to the text feature value calculation unit 15, the caption feature value calculation unit 16 is a feature value weighted by tfidf using each word included in the list information stored in the word list storage unit 11. Is calculated for subtitle information input from the subtitle acquisition unit 12.
For example, when the next caption information is input, the tfidf value of the word “antarctic” in the caption information is calculated as “25.9”, and the tfidf value of the word “shirase” is calculated as “57.9”. The
(Subtitle information): “>> Now, an icebreaker that has been active in Antarctic observation for 25 years and retired last year. A new one built as a successor today departs for the first voyage to Antarctica. >> This is the new news, commonly known as the Antarctic observation ship, which is officially written as an icebreaker.

FIG. 3 is a diagram illustrating an example of caption feature quantities (vectors) in the present embodiment.
In the illustrated example, “0” (zero) is assigned to “head”, “once hand”, and “fifth” that do not appear in the caption information, and is calculated for “departure” that appears in the caption information. The tfidf value “7.530645” is assigned.
Thus, among the words included in the list information, “0” (zero) is assigned to an element corresponding to a word that does not appear in caption information, and tfidf is assigned to an element corresponding to a word that appears in caption information. A value is assigned. Also, the text feature amount calculated by the text feature amount calculation unit 15 for each piece of text information of the content is assigned a numerical value in the same manner as the caption feature amount.

  Returning to FIG. 2, the similarity calculation unit 17 uses the caption feature amount calculated by the caption feature amount calculation unit 16 and each text feature amount calculated by the text feature amount calculation unit 15 to use the caption information and the content. The similarity indicating the correlation with the text information is calculated, and based on the calculated similarity, the optimum search condition for searching the content including the text information similar to the caption information is selected from the four search conditions.

Specifically, the similarity calculating unit 17, a text feature quantity text feature amount is calculated (vector _{t j (1 ≦ j ≦ 4} × n)) and the following equation using the subtitle feature amount t _k (3 The cosine correlation value cos (t _j , t _k ) represented by

  In addition, the similarity calculation unit 17 calculates the similarity between each text feature quantity and the caption feature quantity, calculates the average value of the similarity in each of the four search conditions, and the average value of the similarity is the highest. The search condition is selected as the optimum search condition, and information indicating the selected search condition is output to the URL output unit 18.

  The URL output unit 18 includes information indicating the search condition input from the similarity calculation unit 17 and n pieces corresponding to each of the four search conditions (SB, SD, CB, CD) from the content search unit 133. URL is input. The URL output unit 18 also includes n URLs corresponding to information indicating the search condition input from the similarity calculation unit 17 from n URLs associated with each of the four search conditions from the content search unit 133. Is output to the outside (set top box 2).

FIG. 4 is a flowchart showing content selection processing of the information selection device 1 in the present embodiment.
When the subtitle acquisition unit 12 receives subtitle information from the set top box 2 (step S101), the subtitle acquisition unit 12 uses the keyword extraction unit 131, the subtitle feature amount calculation unit 16, and the subtitle acquisition unit 12 to receive the subtitle information. Output to.
The keyword extraction unit 131 extracts the subject words and content words in the caption information input from the caption acquisition unit 12, and outputs the extracted subject words and content words to the query generation unit 132 (step S102).

The query generation unit 132 generates search conditions for each of SD, SB, CD, and CB using the subject words and content words input from the keyword extraction unit 131, and outputs the generated search conditions to the content search unit 133. (Step S103).
The content search unit 133 transmits information requesting a search including the search condition generated by the query generation unit 132 to the search server 4 connected via the network 6 and receives a search result for each search condition. Then, the content search unit 133 extracts the URLs of the top n contents from the search results for each search condition, and outputs the URLs of the top n contents associated with the search conditions to the text acquisition unit 14. (Step S104).

The text acquisition unit 14 acquires the text information of each searched content using the URL input from the content search unit 133 (step S105), and the text feature quantity calculation unit 15 acquires the text acquisition unit 14 Using the text information of each content and the word list stored in the word list storage unit 11, the text feature amount for the text information of each content is calculated (step S106).
Further, the caption feature amount calculation unit 16 calculates the caption feature amount for the caption information using the caption information input from the caption acquisition unit 12 and the word list stored in the word list storage unit 11 (step S107). ).

The similarity calculation unit 17 calculates the similarity between the text feature amount for the text information of each content calculated by the text feature amount calculation unit 15 and the caption feature amount for the caption information calculated by the caption feature amount calculation unit 16 ( Step S108).
Also, the similarity calculation unit 17 calculates the average value of the similarity of each content corresponding to each of the four search conditions, outputs information indicating the search condition with the highest average value to the URL output unit 18, and outputs the URL The unit 18 outputs the URL searched by the search condition corresponding to the information input from the similarity calculation unit 17 to the set top box 2 (step S109).

Then, the set top box 2 displays information indicating the content of the input URL on the display device 3 together with the video information of the broadcast program.
As a result, content highly relevant to the content of the broadcast program is displayed on the display device 3 together with the program and provided to the user.

Through the above-described processing, the information selection device 1 allows the content of the program to be described in more detail according to the search conditions for SB, SD, CB, and CD generated based on the caption information, or the content of the program from different viewpoints. Search the listed content, and based on the similarity between the searched content and subtitle information, search by the search condition for searching for content with high similarity to subtitle information among the search conditions for SB, SD, CB, and CD The contents which were done were output.
As described above, after searching for content including peripheral information related to the content of the program using a plurality of search conditions, the content searched for content having a high similarity to the content of the program is used. By selecting a search condition that has been selected and narrowing down the searched content, it is possible to select a content with a higher degree of similarity to the content of the program. As a result, it is possible to provide the user with appropriate content related to the content of the program or the URL of the content.

In addition, the information selection device 1 uses m words extracted in advance from the caption information broadcast in the past for the calculation of the text feature amount and the caption feature amount. As a result, the text feature amount of the searched content is calculated using words that frequently appear in the caption information, so that the accuracy in calculating the similarity to the caption information can be improved.
In addition, the information selection device 1 calculates the text feature amount for the top n contents of each search condition among the searched contents, and calculates the similarity with the caption information. As a result, the processing time required to calculate the text feature amount and the similarity is suppressed within a certain time, and the optimal content related to the caption information updated at any time together with the contents of the broadcasted program is stored in the caption information. Can be output in response to updates.

  In the above-described first embodiment, the configuration in which the information selection device 1 transmits the selected URL to the set top box 2 has been described. However, without being limited to this configuration, the selected URL may be transmitted to a predetermined device via the network 6 or the like. Thus, a device other than the display device 3 displaying the broadcast program, for example, a content related to the program can be displayed on a device such as a portable information terminal, so that the content is displayed on the display device 3. The content can be displayed without being limited to the area that can be displayed. In addition, appropriate content related to the content of the program can be displayed on a portable information terminal or the like that does not have the processing ability to execute the above-described content selection processing.

  Moreover, in the above-described first embodiment, the case where the information selection device 1, the set top box 2, and the display device 3 are independent devices has been described. However, the configuration is not limited thereto, and the set top box 2 may include the information selection device 1, or the display device 3 may include the information processing device 1 and the set top box 2.

(Second Embodiment)
FIG. 5 is a schematic block diagram showing the configuration of the information selection server 100 in the second embodiment.
As shown in the figure, the information selection server 100 includes an information selection device 1, a broadcast reception unit 101, a selection information storage unit 102, and a request processing unit 103. The information selection device 1, the search server 4, the content server 5, and the network 6 in the present embodiment have the same configuration as the information selection device 1, the search server 4, the content server 5, and the network 6 in the first embodiment. The same reference numerals are given and the description thereof is omitted.

  The broadcast receiving unit 101 receives a plurality of broadcast signals including a broadcast program, and sequentially outputs the character information of the programs included in each broadcast signal to the information selection device 1 so that the program included in each broadcast signal Related URLs are sequentially output to the selection information storage unit 102. Also, the broadcast receiving unit 101 selects the selection information by associating the URL output by the information selection device 1 according to the character information and the channel information for identifying the broadcast signal corresponding to the character information output to the information selection device 1. The data is stored in the storage unit 102.

Also, the broadcast receiving unit 101 outputs subtitle information to the information selection device 1 for each predetermined period, and updates the URL associated with the channel information stored in the selection information storage unit 102.
The broadcast signal receiving unit 101 may receive a broadcast signal through a wired line such as an optical fiber or a coaxial line, or may receive a broadcast signal through a wireless line.

The information selection device 1 outputs n URLs related to the subtitle information to the selection information storage unit 102 based on the subtitle information input from the broadcast signal receiving unit 101.
The selection information storage unit 102 stores channel information indicating each of a plurality of broadcast signals received by the broadcast reception unit 101 and the URL output by the information selection device 1 in association with each other.

The request processing unit 103 is connected to a plurality of terminal devices 8-1 to 8 -N via the network 9. When the request processing unit 103 receives request information including channel information indicating any one of a plurality of broadcast signals from the terminal devices 8-1 to 8-N, the request processing unit 103 selects a URL corresponding to the received channel information as selection information. Response information including the read URL is read from the storage unit 102 and returned to the transmission source of the request information.
Here, the terminal devices 8-1 to 8-N are devices that can communicate with the information selection server 100 via the network 9, for example, a portable information terminal device, a notebook personal computer, a stationary personal computer, a set top. Such as a box.

As described above, the information selection server 100 stores the URL of the content related to the content of each program broadcast by a plurality of broadcast signals in association with the channel information for identifying the broadcast signal, and the terminal device 8- In response to the request from 1 to 8-N, the URL of the content related to the content of the broadcast program is transmitted to the terminal devices 8-1 to 8-N.
Thereby, even when the processing capability of the terminal devices 8-1 to 8-N is low, the terminal devices 8-1 to 8N can easily access the URL of the content related to the content of the broadcast program through the information selection server 100. Can be received. Further, for example, the user can browse the content indicated by the received URL by operating the terminal device 8-1, and can obtain more detailed information related to the content of the program.

  In the present embodiment, the network 6 that connects the search server 4 and the content server 5 and the information selection server 100, the network 9 that connects the terminal devices 8-1 to 8 -N, and the information selection server 100, Although different cases have been described, they may be connected via the same network.

  In the first and second embodiments described above, the configuration in which the information selection device 1 receives caption information from an external device has been described. However, the information selection device 1 receives a broadcast signal, and the received broadcast signal is Subtitle information may be obtained by demodulating and decoding.

Further, in the first and second embodiments described above, the configuration in which the similarity calculation unit 17 selects the search condition having the highest average value of the calculated similarity has been described. However, the content having the highest calculated similarity is described. You may make it select the search conditions used when searching.
As a result, the content having the highest similarity can be output without fail. In particular, in the first and second embodiments, when there is little content that can be presented to the user, for example, when the space for displaying the content on the display device 3 is narrow and only one or two can be displayed, appropriate content is presented to the user. Can be presented.

  The information selection apparatus 1 described above may have a computer system inside. In that case, the operation processes of the caption acquisition unit 12, URL acquisition unit 13, text acquisition unit 14, text feature amount calculation unit 15, subtitle feature amount calculation unit 16, similarity calculation unit 17, and URL output unit 18 described above are as follows. Are stored in a computer-readable recording medium in the form of a program, and the operation of each functional unit is performed by the computer reading and executing the program. Here, the computer-readable recording medium means a magnetic disk, a magneto-optical disk, a CD-ROM, a DVD-ROM, a semiconductor memory, or the like. Alternatively, the computer program may be distributed to the computer via a communication line, and the computer that has received the distribution may execute the program.

DESCRIPTION OF SYMBOLS 1 ... Information selection apparatus 2 ... Set top box 3 ... Display apparatus 4 ... Search server 5 ... Content server 6, 9 ... Network 8-1, 8-2, 8-N ... Terminal device 11 ... Word list memory | storage part 12 ... Subtitle Acquisition unit 13 ... URL acquisition unit 14 ... Text acquisition unit 15 ... Text feature amount calculation unit 16 ... Subtitle feature amount calculation unit 17 ... Similarity calculation unit 18 ... URL output unit 100 ... Information selection server 131 ... Keyword extraction unit 132 ... Query Generation unit 133 ... content search unit

Claims (9)

A subtitle acquisition unit for receiving subtitle information representing the content of the program broadcast together with the program;
A subject word representing the subject of the caption information and a content word representing the content of the caption information are extracted from words included in the caption information received by the caption acquisition unit, and generated by combining the subject word and the content word A content search unit that searches for content related to the subtitle information among the content published on the network using the plurality of search conditions
For each of the plurality of search conditions, a similarity indicating the correlation between the text information included in the content searched by the content search unit and indicating the content of the content and the caption information is calculated, and based on the calculated similarity A similarity calculation unit that selects any one search condition from the plurality of search conditions;
An information selection apparatus comprising: an output unit that outputs position information indicating an area in which the content searched using the search condition selected by the similarity calculation unit is stored. A subtitle feature amount calculation unit that calculates a subtitle feature amount that is a vector indicating the feature of the subtitle information, based on the appearance frequency in the subtitle information of each of a plurality of words extracted in advance from subtitle information broadcast in the past;
A text feature amount calculation unit that calculates a text feature amount that is a vector indicating the feature of the text information based on the appearance frequency of each of the plurality of words in the text information;
The similarity calculation unit calculates the similarity from the caption feature quantity and the text feature quantity;
The output unit selects a search condition having the highest average value of the similarity calculated for each of the plurality of search conditions, or a search condition for searching for content having the highest similarity among the plurality of search conditions The information selection apparatus according to claim 1, wherein position information corresponding to the content searched according to the selected search condition is output. The caption feature amount calculating unit calculates the caption feature amount weighted by tfidf (Term Frequency & Inverse Document Frequency) using the plurality of words;
The text feature amount calculating unit calculates the text feature amount weighted by tfidf using the plurality of words;
The information selection apparatus according to claim 2, wherein the similarity calculation unit calculates a cosine correlation value between the caption feature quantity and the text feature quantity as the similarity degree. The content search unit searches the content that satisfies the received condition among the contents published on the network and transmits the plurality of search conditions to a search server that returns the position information of the content. Search for content that satisfies the plurality of search conditions,
The text feature amount calculation unit is configured to perform the text feature on the top n (n ≧ 1) content ranked by the search server for each of the plurality of search conditions among the content searched by the content search unit. The information selection device according to claim 2, wherein an amount is calculated. A first search condition for searching for content that includes the subject word in text information and does not include the content word in the title, among the contents published on the network;
Of the content published on the network, the content word is included in the title, and the second search condition for searching for the content not including the subject word in the text information and the content published on the network Of the content, a third search condition for searching for content in which the content word is included in text information and the subject word is not included in the title;
A fourth search condition for searching for content whose title is included in the title and whose content word is not included in the text information among the contents published on the network;
A query generation unit that generates the plurality of search conditions as a plurality of search conditions,
The content search unit searches the content by transmitting the first to fourth search conditions generated by the query generation unit to the search server,
5. The output unit according to claim 1, wherein the output unit selects any one of the first to fourth search conditions, and outputs the content searched based on the selected search condition. The information selection device according to any one of the above. In the search using the first to fourth search conditions, the content search unit, when the number of obtained contents is less than n, the subject word or the content used when generating the search condition The information selection apparatus according to claim 5, wherein the number of words is reduced and a search condition is generated again to search for content. The information selection device according to any one of claims 1 to 6,
A selection information storage unit that inputs subtitle information of each of a plurality of broadcast programs to the information selection device and stores position information output by the information selection device in association with the program;
A request for receiving request information indicating one of the plurality of programs, reading position information corresponding to the program indicated by the request information from the selection information storage unit, and transmitting the read position information to a transmission source of the request information A server apparatus comprising: a processing unit. A subtitle acquisition step of receiving subtitle information representing the content of the program broadcast together with the program;
A subject word representing the subject of the caption information and a content word representing the content of the caption information are extracted from words included in the caption information received in the caption acquisition step, and generated by combining the subject word and the content word A content search step of searching for content related to the subtitle information among the content published on the network using the plurality of search conditions set;
For each of the plurality of search conditions, a similarity indicating the correlation between the text information indicating the content of the content included in the content searched in the content search step and the caption information is calculated, and based on the calculated similarity , A similarity calculation step of selecting any one search condition from the plurality of search conditions;
And an output step of outputting position information indicating an area in which the content searched using the search condition selected in the similarity calculation step is stored. A subtitle acquisition step of receiving subtitle information representing the contents of the program broadcast together with the program to a computer provided in the information selection device;
A subject word representing the subject of the caption information and a content word representing the content of the caption information are extracted from words included in the caption information received in the caption acquisition step, and generated by combining the subject word and the content word A content search step of searching for content related to the subtitle information among the content published on the network using the plurality of search conditions set;
For each of the plurality of search conditions, a similarity indicating the correlation between the text information indicating the content of the content included in the content searched in the content search step and the caption information is calculated, and based on the calculated similarity , A similarity calculation step of selecting any one search condition from the plurality of search conditions;
An output step of outputting position information indicating an area in which the content searched using the search condition selected in the similarity calculation step is stored.

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