MXPA00006657A - Video program guide apparatus and method - Google Patents

Abstract

A system and a related method for selecting a program for viewing is described. A plurality of programs and associated program information are received from a remote source. A program from said plurality of programs is first selected in response to a user input. Rating information for this selected program is input by a user locally. Another program may then be selected, based on the input rating information and the associated program information.

Description

METHOD AND DEVICE OF VIDEO PROGRAM GUIDE FIELD OF THE INVENTION The present invention relates to a video program guide method and apparatus, and in particular, to an apparatus and method for enabling a user to classify a selected program. BACKGROUND OF THE I NVENTION The act of selecting a television program to watch it has become more complicated since the number of available channels has increased dramatically recently. For example, RCA® DSS® direct-transmission satellite receivers provide a selection of up to 150 channels. Therefore, a user who would like to see "what's going on" could simply consult a printed television program in their local newspaper in the hope that eventually they would find a program that would arouse their interest. This practice can work well when there are only a few television channel schedules to examine; however, it is unlikely that a viewer will be able to examine the full schedules for 150 television channels, only to see "what is happening" at a given time. This task would be intimidating even if all the programs were listed by category. A viewer may find that there are only a few programs of interest to him from the vast number of programs available. Therefore, it is considered that as the number of channels increases, the chances of successfully locating a desirable program in a short period of time becomes more and more unlikely. An Electronic Program Guide (EPG) can partially solve the problem. An Electronic Program Guide is an interactive screen display feature that displays information analogous to television listings found in local newspapers and other print media. Additionally, an Electronic Program Guide also includes information needed to correlate and decode programs. An Electronic Program Guide provides information about each program in the time tables covered by the Electronic Program Guide, which commonly goes from the next hour up to seven days. The information contained in an Electronic Program Guide includes programming features such as channel number, program title, start time, termination time, elapsed time, remaining time, classification (if available), topic, topic, and a brief description of the content of the program. Commonly the Electronic Program Guides are arranged in a two-dimensional table or a grid format similar to the printed television guide, with time information on one axis and channel information on the other axis. Unlike the non-interactive guides, which reside in a dedicated channel and simply pass through the current programming in the other channels for the next 2 to 3 hours, the Electronic Program Guides allow viewers to select any channel at any time during some period in the future, for example, up to seven days later. Additionally, the functions of the Electronic Program Guide include the ability to highlight individual cells in the table containing program information. Once highlighted, the viewer can perform functions on the selected program. For example, the viewer could instantly change to that program if it is being broadcast at that moment. Viewers could also program a one-touch videotape recorder or similar if the television is properly configured and connected to a recording device. These Electronic Program Guides are known in the art and are described, for example, in the United States Patent Serial Number 5,353, 121; U.S. Patent Serial No. 5,479,268 and U.S. Patent Serial Number 5, 479,266 granted to Young and co-inventors and assigned to StarSight Telecast, Inc. In addition, US Pat. No. 5, 515, 106 to Chaney and co-inventors, and assigned to the same assignee of the present invention, discloses in detail an exemplary embodiment including the data packet structure necessary to carry out an exemplary program guide system. The exemplary data packet structure is designed so that the channel information (e.g., channel name, call letters, channel number, type, etc.) and the program information (e.g., title, classification, star, etc.) relating to a program can be transmitted from a program guide database provider to a receiving apparatus efficiently. Currently, systems are known to monitor what a user has previously seen, and then suggest similar programming based on the user's television habits. This is described, for example, in the Accepted Patent Application of the United States of America Number 08/573, 1 13, filed on 12/15/95, in the name of Wehmeyer and co-inventors, and assigned to the same assignee as this invention However, these known systems do not allow the user to modify the monitoring process in accordance with the user's preferences. That is, the user can not indicate whether the program pleased or not the user, and therefore, the monitoring / suggestion function can not consider this information when making program suggestions to the user. BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE I NNED ION The present inventor recognizes that it is convenient to obtain feedback about a selected program so that any suggested program can be more like the observation habits or tastes of a user. Therefore, a system and a related method are described to select a program to view it. A program of said plurality of programs is selected first in response to a user input. The user inserts locally the classification information for this selected program. Then, another program can be selected, based on the input classification information and the associated program information. BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE ID B UJOS PC Figure 1 is an illustration of an on-screen display that shows an Electronic Program Guide. Figures 2A and 2B are illustrations of an exemplary screen display for a user to classify a selected program. Figure 3 is a flow diagram useful in understanding the invention. Figure 4 is an illustration in block diagram form of an apparatus suitable for use with the invention. DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE I NVENTION Television systems such as the direct transmission satellite system RCA® DSS® transmit channel guides for display on subscriber television receivers. Figure 1 shows an on-screen display of Electronic Program Guide 1 10 that can be produced, for example, by a RCA® DSS® direct transmission satellite receiver system, manufactured by Thomson Consumer Electronics, Inc. Indianapolis, IN . A user selects a television program from a Program Guide to view it, by moving a cursor (via the operation of, for example, direction control keys up, down, right and left, on a remote control device 450R of Figure 4) to a cell of the on-screen display of the program guide containing the name of the desired program. When a SELECT key is pressed, for example, on the remote control 450R, the current position x and y of the cursor is evaluated to derive the virtual channel and program time information. In this example of Figure 1, a particular television program, FILM SATURDAY NOCTURNAL FILM: ZULU in cell 105 has been highlighted for selection by using the cursor keys on a remote control unit (e.g., 450R of Figure 4). The highlight is illustrated by the dark box that underlines the title in Figure 1. Normally, by pressing the SELECT key, the relevant programming data is transferred to a programming unit. It should be noted that an auxiliary text display 120 is also displayed. The auxiliary text display 120 provides additional program data related to the highlighted television program. Further use of the data provided by the program guide screen 110 and the display of auxiliary text 120 will be described below in accordance with aspects of the present invention. In addition, once a program has been highlighted, as shown in Figure 1 and described above, a user can also press a CLASSIFICATION key on a remote control unit 450R, for example, to provide evaluation input for a particular program that you have been viewing, in accordance with an aspect of the invention. This exemplary CLASI FICACTION key can also be pressed during the observation of a program as shown in Figure 2A. once this key is pressed, the user can insert as input how much he enjoyed the program. As shown in Figure 2A, a modality is shown in which the phrase "I LOVED this program" is displayed first. This can be, for example, the highest rating that a user can give to a program. If the user agrees with this classification, then the user can press, for example, the CLASI FICACTION key again to confirm the classification for this program. The user can also insert a different classification for this program by selecting the left arrow 205 or the right arrow 206. The displayed classification will be changed, for example, to "I DETEST this program", as shown in Figure 2B. Figure 3 shows an exemplary flow diagram of a subroutine program that can be executed by exemplary microprocessor 415R (shown in Figure 4) to implement aspects of the present invention. The program is inserted in step 300. Then, the microprocessor determines whether the "Classification Mode" has been requested by a user in step 305 for a selected program. Again, as previously described, the "Classification Mode" can be invoked by pressing a key such as CLASI FICACON on a user input device, such as the remote control unit 415R. Once the user has requested to classify a program, the microprocessor 415R will facilitate the entry of the user's classification. As shown in step 310 and also as mentioned above, an exemplary embodiment for obtaining the user's classification information is to display a first classification such as "I LOVED this program", as shown in Figure 2A. In steps 315 and 320, the subroutine will also display another classification for the user to select, if the user requests another classification as shown in Figure 2B. The steps 310-320 show a user input mode of classification information. Another exemplary embodiment may include asking the user to insert a number such as 1 to 5 with 5 either as the highest or lowest rating. Another mode allows the user to insert a letter such as A, B, C, D, with A either as the highest or lowest rating, for example.

Once the classification information is inserted by the user, the program allows the user to confirm the classification information in step 323, for example, by pressing a key, such as the CLASI FICATION key as mentioned above. As shown in step 330, once the user confirms the information, this information is stored in, for example, the memory 421 R of Figure 4, along with other programming information associated with the selected program, as shown. , for example, in block 120 of Figure 1. In step 335, the user can then request the system to suggest programs based on the classification information inserted by the user. The user can request this, for example, by highlighting a SUGERI R 106 icon, as shown in Figure 1. Once requested, the system will suggest programs comparing the classification information inserted by the user with the program guide information as shown in step 335. Several methods can be implemented based on the classification information inserted by the user. the user and the program guide data received remotely. A simple suggestion algorithm can be, for example, to suggest to a viewer all the programs that have the same characteristics as a program that has received the highest rating from the user, based on the program information of the program guide. In other words, the system can suggest to the viewer all the programs that may have the same actor, producer, and / or theme, for example. Another method may comprise concentrating on a particular aspect of the programming information such as TEMA. The user ratings can then be used to create a histogram for each type of TEMA to see if there is any preference trend for that viewer. If a preference trend is detected, then a program that has that particular theme is suggested. Other methods of suggestion may include having some weighting factors for each programming feature of a classified program. Those skilled in the art can readily recognize that many methods can be developed to take advantage of the user's input classification information of programs viewed in the received program guide information to suggest new programs to the user. As mentioned above, the program guide information used by the controller of the apparatus mentioned in accordance with the aspects of the present invention can be received from a satellite television communication system. Figure 4 shows a satellite television communication system in which a 400S satellite receives a signal representing audio, video or data information from a ground-based transmitter 400T. The satellite amplifies and retransmits this signal to a plurality of 400R receivers, located in the residences of consumers, via receiver-transmitters that operate at specified frequencies and have given bandwidths. This system includes an uplink transmission portion (earth to satellite), a satellite reception and transmission unit that orbits the earth (satellite to ground) that includes a receiver located in the user's residence. In a satellite system of this type, the information necessary to select a given television program is not fixedly programmed in each receiver but is downloaded from the satellite continuously in each transmitter-receiver. The television program selection information comprises a series of data known as the Master Program Guide (M PG), which relates TV program titles, their start and end times, a virtual channel number that will be displayed to the user, and information assigning virtual channels to transmitter-receiver frequencies and to a position in the data stream multiplexed in time transmitted by a particular transmitter-receiver. In this system, it is not possible to tune any channel until the first master program guide is received from the satellite, because the receiver (IRD, or Integrated Receiver Decoder) literally does not know where any channel is located, in terms of frequency and position (it is say, data time interval) in the data stream of any transmitter-receiver. A master program guide is preferably transmitted on all transmitters-receivers with the television program audio and video data, and is repeated periodically, for example, every 2 seconds. The master program guide, once received, is kept in a memory unit in the receiver, and is updated periodically, for example every 30 minutes. The retention of the master program guide allows the instantaneous selection of television program because the necessary selection data is always available. If the master program guide is to be discarded after use to select a television program, then a delay of at least two seconds will be incurred while a new program guide is acquired, before new program selections can be made additional television Once the channel transmitter-receiver carrying a desired television program is tuned, the data packets containing the audio and video information for that program can be selected from the data stream received from the transmitter-receiver by examining the packets. of data for the 12-bit code of SCI D (Service Component Identifier) suitable. If the Service Component Identifier of the currently received data packets matches the Service Component Identifier of the television program listed in the program guide, then the data packet is routed to the appropriate data program sections of the receiver . If the Service Component Identifier of a particular packet does not match the Service Component Identifier of the desired television program listed in the program guide, then that packet of data is discarded. Now a brief description of a system computing device suitable for carrying out the aforementioned invention is presented below. In Figure 4, a transmitter 400T processes a data signal from a source 401 (e.g., a program signal source) and transmits it to a 400S satellite that receives and retransmits the signal to a receiving antenna 400A that applies the signal to a 400R receiver. The transmitter 400T includes an encoder 410T, a modulator (i.e., direct error modulator / correction (FEC)) 420T, and an uplink unit 430T.

The encoder 410T compresses and encodes signals from the source 401 in accordance with a predetermined standard such as M PEG. M PEG is an international standard developed by the Group of Experts of Cinematographic Films of the International Standards Organization for the encoded representation of cinematographic films and associated audio stored in a digital storage medium. A coded signal from the 410T unit is provided to the direct error modulator / correction (FEC) 420T, which encodes the signal with error correction data, and the Quaternary Phase Shift Key (QPSK) modulates the coded signal in a carrier . The uplink unit 430T transmits the compressed and coded signal to the 400S satellite, which transmits the signal to a selected geographic reception area. The signal from the satellite 400S is received by an antenna dish 400A coupled to an input of a so-called receiver on top of the apparatus 400R (i.e., an interface device located on top of a television receiver). The 400R receiver includes a demodulator (demodulator / direct error correction (FEC)) 410R to demodulate the signal and decode the error correction data, an IR receiver 412 to receive IR remote control commands, a 415R microprocessor, which operates interactively with the demodulator unit / direct error correction 410R, and a transport unit 420R for transporting the signal to an appropriate decoder 430R in the unit 400R depending on the content of the signal, i.e. audio or video information. An NTSC 440R Encoder encodes the decoded signal into a format suitable for use by signal processing circuits in a standard NTSC consumer video tape recorder 402 and a standard NTSC consumer television receiver 403. The microprocessor (or microcontroller, or microcomputer) 415R receives infrared (IR) control signals such as the presses of the SELECT, CLASSI FICTION keys as mentioned above, of the remote control unit 450R, and sends the control information to the video cassette recorder 402 via an IR 418R link. The microprocessor 415R also generates the on-screen display signals (OSD) necessary to present the display screen of the Electronic Program Guide of confirmation or interactive shown for example in Figures 1, 2A or 2B, to the user. The microprocessor 415R also receives and interprets the information of the cursor key X and Y to control the highlighting and selection of user selections on the screen display screens, in addition, the microprocessor 415R executes the program subroutine as represented by the flow chart of Figure 3 to provide the functions in accordance with the aspects of the present invention. Although the invention was described with reference to a satellite television system, it is also applicable to ground-based, digital and analogue television transmission systems, a box receiver on top of the apparatus, or any other electronic devices capable of receiving and processing electronic program guide information. It will be understood that those skilled in the art can make various changes in the details, materials, and configurations of the parts that have been described and illustrated herein to explain the nature of this invention without departing from the principle and scope of the invention as it is established in the following claims.

Claims (13)

1. CLAIMS 1. A method for controlling a signal processing system, comprising the steps of: receiving from a remote source a plurality of programs and associated program information; selecting a first program of said plurality of programs in response to a user input; insert as input classification information for said first selected program; and selecting a second program in response to said input classification information and such associated program information. The method of claim 1, wherein said classification information indicates user preference for said first selected program. 3. The method of claim 2, wherein said Classification information comprises at least one numeric character. The method of claim 3, wherein said classification information comprises at least one alphabetic character. The method of claim 1, further comprising the step of saving said classification information in memory. 6. A method for processing program guide information, comprising the steps of: receiving said program guide information from a remote source; save the mentioned guide information of programs in memory; obtain a local classification for a selected program; and associate the mentioned classification with said selected program. 7. The method of claim 6, wherein said classification indicates user preference for said pro- gram. The method of claim 7, further comprising the step of: storing said classification with said program only with a portion of said program guide information associated with said program. 9. An apparatus for suggesting a program for viewing, comprising: means for receiving from a remote source a plurality of programs and associated program information; means for selecting a first program of said plurality of programs in response to a user's input; means for inserting local classification information as input for said first selected program; and means for selecting a second program based on said classification information and such associated program information. The apparatus of claim 9, wherein said classification information indicates user preference for said first selected program. eleven . The apparatus of claim 10, wherein said classification information comprises at least one numeric character. The apparatus of claim 1, wherein said classification information comprises at least one alphabetic character. The method of claim 1, wherein the step of inserting said classification information as input is performed locally.