RU2301503C2 - Method for setting up a personal channel in multi-channel digital television - Google Patents

Abstract

FIELD: engineering of client receiving systems for multi-channel digital television, in particular, automated system for setup and demonstration of personally preferred television broadcasts.

SUBSTANCE: in accordance to method, on basis of combined consideration of one or several available information sources - user preferences concerning viewing of television broadcasts, measurements of actual viewings of television broadcast, recommendations of broadcaster concerning the viewing of television broadcasts - a set of broadcasts is continuously created with denoting of numeric preference value for each broadcast, while for consideration of actual television broadcast viewings a viewing history database is created. On basis of data about preferred program schedule, digital television broadcast receiver under control of module for setting up personal channels continuously records most interesting broadcasts to hard disk. Personal channel is created - an automatically updated video buffer containing broadcasts of the last few hours which are most interesting for the user. At any time by means of friendly interface the user may choose a personal channel for viewing preferred broadcasts.

EFFECT: improved setup quality of preferred program schedule.

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Description

The invention relates to the field of subscriber reception systems for multi-channel digital television, in particular, to an automated system for the formation and display of personally preferred television broadcasts.

In its development, modern television is aimed at the transition to digital multi-channel broadcasting, which can give the viewer not only a wide variety of information, but also confront the problem of choosing the most preferred television programs. To date, various systems are known that are aimed at simplifying the procedure for selecting TV shows for viewing. In some of them, the term “virtual channels” is used, which means the TV viewing mode, when you select it (as opposed to choosing the real channels), the user’s receiver automatically switches to the broadcasting channel whose current broadcast is closest to the interests of this user.

A known system and method (US patent No. 6088722), which consists in creating virtual channels. Virtual channels are formed from transmissions of broadcast channels according to user preferences on the side of the broadcaster. This means that virtual channels are not stored in receiver memory. Responsibility for their relevance rests with the broadcaster. The user switches between virtual and real channels in a familiar manner. The interface is simplified. The number of switchings is reduced. However, this method does not allow to take advantage of the storage of transmissions in the receiver's memory. For example, re-watch the program during the evening.

A known system and method (US patent No. 6725215), which consists in the fact that virtual channels are located on the hard drive and informally complement the usual broadcast channels. Virtual channel transmissions have a broadcast schedule on the real time axis. In other words, virtual channel transmissions have a start time and an end time in the same way as broadcast channel transmissions. The user interface is designed so that differences in navigation when viewing conventional and virtual channels are minimized. However, complete identity cannot be achieved. The user must distinguish between switching from channel to channel from switching inside a virtual channel. These differences complicate the user interface; moreover, virtual channels may contain programs that have lost their relevance.

Other systems, known on the market as personal digital recorders, allow the user to schedule recording of future transmissions to the receiver’s hard disk using an electronic program guide (EPP) and view them at a convenient time. A known system and method (US patent No. 6721954), selected as a prototype, according to which the expansion of the functionality of a digital tape recorder is the use of a library of gears for preferred viewing. This method allows you to create personal library of programs according to the results of the search for programs in the EPG, which is carried out in accordance with the specified criteria. The criterion can be explicitly specified by the user or determined based on user activity. For a transmission that meets the criterion, it is planned to record it at a given time. The time is monitored, and at the set time, the transmission is recorded and placed in the transfer library so that the user can select the recorded transfer from the library and view it at a convenient time.

The disadvantage of this approach is that television broadcasts quickly lose their relevance. Often this happens before they are viewed by the user from the library.

In general, well-known systems do not save the viewer from the need to switch between channels (virtual or real) or library sections while watching TV. At the same time, in the concept of a personal library and virtual channels, it is difficult to implement a friendly user interface that contains a single list of current preferred programs that have been broadcast by the beginning of TV viewing, programs that are being broadcast at a given time, and programs that will be broadcast in the near future time.

One of the most important problems facing the formation of virtual or personal channels is the accurate formation of user profiles, that is, the exact definition of user preferences. Typically, the user is asked to answer a series of questions about his favorite shows, genres, artists, and so on, and check the corresponding menu items. Such a “manual” procedure for generating user preferences requires a rather large amount of time from the user and often causes considerable difficulties. The user may not finish it. In addition, it is known that the user's answers to various questions contained in the questionnaires further do not always correspond to his real audience preferences.

In this regard, there is a need to develop methods for automatically generating user profiles. U.S. Patent No. 6,088,722 mentioned above proposes such a procedure for this purpose. A certain time interval is preset. Then it is noted whether the user watched a particular program or not. If the real time of viewing the program turned out to be more than the above-mentioned time interval, then such a program is among the “favorites”. In the future, analyzing the characteristics of “favorite” shows, it is automatically determined which characteristics of the shows (their genres, directors, actors, themes, etc.) are most preferable for a given user. This technique allows you to significantly improve the process of forming a user profile compared to its "manual" formation, but it also has a significant drawback. The fact is that with this procedure, all programs are divided into only two categories: programs “favorite” and other programs. This procedure is too crude and does not take into account the fact that in reality there is a finer division of programs into categories of varying degrees of preference. For example, it is impossible to equally evaluate a program from which the user viewed only the first ten minutes and a program that the user viewed from the beginning to the end.

Another important issue is updating the personal channel. For a number of reasons, transmissions recorded in a personal channel must be deleted. Such a need arises, for example, when the entire volume of the information storage device allocated to the personal volume is exhausted. It is necessary to delete obsolete records that have lost their relevance. And all this is desirable to do automatically.

US Pat. No. 6,324,338 describes an example of an automatic updating system. The programs with the lowest priority level and / or the oldest programs are deleted from the personal channel. The disadvantage of such an update system is that it does not take into account the fact that different programs lose their relevance for different periods of time. For example, yesterday’s news release today may no longer be of interest to the user, while an interesting feature film may not lose its relevance in a week.

Thus, there is an urgent need to develop a method of forming a personal channel that would allow

- firstly, automatically determine the user's real preferences based on a quantitative analysis of the history of viewing television programs,

- secondly, automatically select the most interesting programs for the user to record,

- thirdly, to automatically select for removal from a personal channel the programs that have lost their relevance and / or have a priority lower than the programs that are candidates for recording.

The presented invention solves these problems.

The presented invention is a method for implementing a personal channel. The personal channel contains the most interesting programs for the user that have already been broadcast on the moment of the start of watching TV, are broadcast at the given moment and those that will be broadcast in the near future. Thus, to view the user is given a set of the most interesting programs.

The claimed method is implemented using the device for the formation and display of a personal channel in multi-channel digital television, presented in figure 1, which includes:

a media component 100 connected to a source of broadcasting metadata 40 and to a source of audio-video channels of broadcasting 50, and connected in series with it

view control module 200,

400 browsing history database,

user profile database 500,

a module for generating a preferred program guide 600,

a personal channel forming module 700 and a personal channel database 800 connected to it by a control connection, also connected by a two-way communication with a media component 100, wherein

the metadata database 300 is connected to the media component 100, to the browsing history database 400, to the user profile database 500 and the preferred program guide generating unit 600,

the personal channel generating module 700 is connected by a control connection to the media component 100 and to the personal channel database 800,

the media component 100 is connected to a video signal display device 20,

in addition, the viewing control module 200 is connected by a control link to the media component 100, and

the remote control device 30 is connected by a control link to a viewing control module 200, a metadata database 300, and a user profile database 500.

The listed components are necessary and sufficient to determine the architecture of the set-top box of the user 10 that implement the functionality of the personal channel.

Figure 1 shows a diagram of the interaction of functional modules, data streams and controls for implementing the claimed method of forming and displaying a personal channel (PC) on a user terminal. The user terminal is a digital interactive television receiver, which is the final electronic digital device of the television broadcasting system located in the user's house, connected to communication channels and displaying the received audio and video information on the TV screen. A user terminal may be a set top box 10 connected to a television 20 and / or other similar audiovisual display device. Alternatively, the set-top box components can be integrated directly into the television 20, thereby eliminating the set-top box 10. In addition, the set-top box functions can be equivalently implemented in a PC-TV personal computer configuration. All features of the implementation of the present invention are concentrated in the set-top box and can be easily extended to other types of user terminals, so the further discussion equally applies to all of these devices.

The user can interact with the terminal using a remote control device, which may preferably be an infrared or other wireless remote control (RC) 30 or a keyboard. In addition, you can use the control device on the front of the console or TV, as well as the mouse and keyboard for a personal computer. To interact with the console software, a browser program is used, with which the window interface of the corresponding software module is called up through the menu, and the remote control commands are translated into control commands for this module.

The software architecture of a modern set-top box includes several levels: the lower - various levels of the hardware interface, then the level of the operating system, "middleware" - middleware and, finally, the upper level of user applications that, thanks to middleware, can operate on various platforms, regardless of the operating room system. Since the essence of the present invention is concentrated in functional features that are implemented in application software, the present invention can be used on any software and hardware platform of the set-top box.

In this regard, up to conventions that are understandable to a specialist, and for simplicity of description, the hardware of the set-top box 10 is represented by a single media component 100. The functional features in accordance with the claimed method are implemented by software modules and databases stored in the memory of the media component.

As the media component of the set-top box, you can use the known hardware platforms of the interactive digital receiver, as a rule, including:

- several digital tuners,

- built-in hard drive,

- random access memory (RAM),

- flash memory for storing the real-time operating system (RTOS),

- single or dual processor system,

- receiver commands of the remote control device,

- smart card receivers of conditional access and / or payment for services,

- return channel

- audio-video outputs to the display device,

- Interfaces for connecting peripheral devices (as an option).

The media component is designed to receive compressed digital television signals, demodulate them, demultiplex them to individual television channels, extract audio, video and metadata streams, decode the streams of the selected channel and display them on the TV screen. The preferred feature of the media component is the simultaneous processing of several input transport streams, which, after being split into separate television channels, are transferred to the hard disk to implement the functions of a personal channel or, when the user selects one of them, it is sent to the display device. To implement the function of a personal channel, the hard disk interface must provide the bandwidth necessary for simultaneously recording the available input television channels and reading the recorded transmissions of a personal channel for display on a display device.

The metadata broadcast source 40 transmits the metadata to the local metadata database 300 at certain time intervals. Metadata 40 represents information about the expanded program schedule: television channels and characteristics of programs (name, start and end time of the show, genre, brief announcement, information about parental control, names of actors and directors, an array of time "presence" of actors in the program, recommendations of the broadcaster on viewing programs, etc.). Updated metadata can be received regularly via a broadcast channel based on one or more alternative communication methods (via the Internet, from a satellite, from a cable or terrestrial broadcasting station) with or without subscription. In a preferred embodiment, the database 300 metadata is stored on the hard disk. Alternatively, it can be stored on a remote server.

Audio and video broadcasting channels 50 are received over any broadcast medium: satellite, cable, over-the-air, or a combination thereof. The user through the interface of the viewing control module 200 using the remote control 30 selects to watch one of the many real television broadcast channels or assigns a personal channel for viewing, the transition to which is possible through the same interface. The module for generating a personal channel 700 according to the data of the EPP's preferred program guide from module 600 plans to record preferred programs and manages the current resources of the tuners when they are written to the PC 800 buffer database. If real channels are not viewed by the user (for example, in standby mode), tuner resources are fully tuned to the formation of a personal channel. If the user selects real channels for viewing, then the involved tuner resources are excluded from consideration when forming a personal channel.

The formation of the EPP 'preferred program guide in module 600 consists in the automatic combined accounting of one or several available sources of information about viewing future programs: declared user preferences, measurements of the user's actual views and recommendations of the broadcaster.

Interacting with the set-top box using the remote control 30, the user through the graphical window interface of the user profile database 500 indicates his name, which is subsequently used as the user identifier on the terminal. Here he indicates his demographic data, declares his interests in leisure activities, preferences in watching TV shows, buying goods and other information. The viewing preference settings interface is based on a two-level classifier of transmission genres and is shown in FIG. 2. Here, on the basis of the thematic classifier of transmissions, the user selects the preferred genre of transmissions in windows 502 and 504 and then indicates the corresponding preferred channels in window 506. At the same time, the names of typical programs of the selected channel and genre are shown to the user in window 508. This contributes to a better understanding by the viewer of the selected genre / subgenre. On other pages of the viewing preference settings interface, the user can similarly indicate his favorite actors, presenters, time and country of movie release and other characteristics (essence) of television programs. Based on the results of the user selecting the characteristics (entities) of the television programs, the corresponding a priori numerical values of preferences are determined, which are stored in the user profile database 500.

To determine the user's actual preferences for viewing programs, module 200 measures the time of switching channels and the time of viewing programs and their characteristics (entities). This is the main source of information about user preferences. The viewing history database 400 forms the next measurement, “connecting” the characteristics (entities) of the viewed shows from the metadata database 300 with information about the actual viewing times of the shows from module 200. User preferences are generated and saved for each characteristic (essence) of the viewed show as real broadcast channel and personal channel.

Based on the accumulated measurements and information on a priori preference values in the database 500, a quantitative assessment of the user's preferences is made for all characteristics (entities) of the watched shows for the entire viewing history. When measurements are not yet available in the initial viewing period, the estimate will contain only a priori information about the user's preferences. Moreover, a priori information, not confirmed by measurements, each time reduces its value. If the viewer watches programs that do not have a priori information about preferences, then the assessment of preferences will be based on incoming measurements of the actual views of the programs. Thus, in the database 500 of the user profile, a real picture of his preferences will be formed.

Further, in the module 600, the preferred EPP 'program guide is generated taking into account the generated estimates of the user's preferences according to the characteristics (entities) of the programs. To do this, using metadata from the database 300 and an assessment of user preferences for each transmission characteristic from the database 500, the total preference value is determined for each transmission in accordance with the list of its characteristics (entities).

Another source of information about user preferences in the module 600 is the EPG interface associated with the database 300, which involves the user entering with the remote control one-time and periodic transmissions into a subset of EPG '. When the user is working with the EPG interface, as a result of the search, he explicitly indicates the transmission that he wants to be sure to watch. If this is a one-time transmission, then it is directly entered into the EPG 'array of module 600 with the maximum value of preference. If the transmission is periodic (daily, weekly, etc.), then after the user selects the “periodic recording” option in the pop-up menu, the characteristics of this transmission are stored in the user profile database 500. Recording of the periodic transmission in a subset of the EPG 'module 600 will be made taking into account the user's actual views of this transmission. The first time the preference value is set to the maximum, and then either remains the same if the program is watching, or decreases and is reduced to zero if there are no views of this program.

Thus, in the module 600, according to the stated preferences and the actual viewing of the programs, the user generates the preferred EPG 'program guide as a subset of the full EPG program guide. It also takes into account the recommendations for viewing transmissions from the metadata database 300 that come from the broadcaster. These recommendations relate to individual programs, are numerical, divided by user demographic groups and include information for parental control. Consideration of recommendations can be made in different ways. They can be combined with the user's preference for a given program within the scope of his preferences, enhancing or suppressing his preferences, and / or expand his viewing area outside the preference area. It is significant that taking weighted estimates of the broadcaster into account can improve the quality of the formation of the preferred program guide, eliminating the randomness of choice with insufficient knowledge of the user's preferences. It is clear that in the absence of user preferences, the formation of the set of preferred EPG 'programs will be carried out only on the recommendations of the broadcaster.

The formation of the preferred EPG program guide according to this invention takes into account the combination of all possible sources of preferences, which is necessary for more flexible subsequent planning of the personal channel in module 700. This allows you to reliably provide the required amount of PC buffer, take into account the clearly expressed habits of watching, and at the same time does not require the user to manually form their preferences.

The implementation of the module for generating a personal channel 700 involves cyclically sequentially performing three procedures by a computer system: scheduling 720, updating 750, and writing 710 preferred transfers to the buffer of the personal channel. Figure 3 shows a functional diagram of the module forming a personal channel according to the invention.

The essence of the planning procedure 720 is to draw up a recording plan for the preferred broadcasts in the personal channel, taking into account the time resources of the tuners - the broadcast channel processing system. As the initial information, the procedure uses the preferred EPG 'program guide generated in module 600.

A recording plan is formed for the nearest time interval, including one or more transmissions from the EPG 'within each broadcast channel. This interval defines the considered subset of the EPG 'and is called the planning window. The procedure begins with a search within the transmission planning window with the maximum preference value. The first step is the selected program is scheduled. Next, the transmission with the closest preference is searched. If the selected program does not conflict in time with the already scheduled programs and the tuner's temporary resources are not exhausted, then it is included in the recording plan. In the event of a conflict, a transfer with less preference is excluded from consideration. The process is repeated until all preferred transfers in the current planning window are considered. Next, the update procedure 750 works, which removes irrelevant transfers from the PC buffer and decides to record the next scheduled transfers to the PC buffer. After that, a transition is made to the procedure for recording transmissions, according to which a decision was made to record. At the end of the recording of the current transmission, the scheduling procedure starts again. As a result of the implementation of the personal channel planning procedure, a plan is constantly being created for recording preferred programs in the personal channel for the near future, which necessarily includes the most preferred program from the planning window.

The update procedure 750 is intended to maintain the content of the personal channel in the current state - to ensure the content of the most preferred programs during their lifetime in the personal channel. The transmission lifetime is the period of demand for transmission by the user for viewing, this is the maximum time the transmission was in the personal channel, after which the transmission is deleted from the personal channel. The transmission lifetime can be selected based on various considerations. For example, based on the subjects of the programs. For news, this time can be one or two hours, for films - more than 7 days, and so on. It is possible to determine the lifetime of transmissions based on the limitations of the terminal's available disk memory. It is considered most justified to take the lifetime of the programs in the personal channel equal to the days based on the natural rhythm of a person’s life. Another aspect of limiting the buffer size of a personal channel is the total time of actual transmissions in terms of the user's physical capabilities. With the unlimited technical capabilities of the storage facilities, the user will not be physically able to view the stored amount of personal channel transmissions in the allotted leisure time and will also be forced to spend his time on the tedious selection of transmissions for viewing. Therefore, the maximum amount of transmissions offered by a personal channel is set by the user himself in his personal profile.

So, the update procedure of 750 personal channel comes into operation when the planning procedure 720 is completed - it frees up the PC buffer from irrelevant transfers and decides whether to place the candidate transfer in the PC buffer that is in the recording queue, or to refuse to place the candidate transfer in the buffer PC. Thus, the update procedure ensures the content in the personal channel of the most preferable and relevant programs at each time point when a user accesses to view it.

Figure 3 illustrates the process of managing the recording of scheduled transmissions to a personal channel in the generalized case in order to discuss the fundamental features of the method in question. The scheme can be easily modified by a specialist for the case of recording management using several tuners without changing the features under consideration. The record management procedure starts at step 702 after a decision is made to record the candidate transfer at the exit from the update procedure. The time is monitored in step 704 to determine in step 706 the time of the recording of the transmission. In the case of the recording time, at step 710, the candidate transmission is recorded. After the recording of the program is finished on one of the tuners, according to the results of planning and recording the preferred programs, at step 712, a personal channel program list is formed, which includes already recorded programs, recorded programs and programs scheduled for recording in the near future. This list is stored in the PC 800 buffer database and is used to control viewing of the personal channel in block 200. Then, in step 708, the planning window is shifted to the current time and the subsequent transition to the planning procedure 720.

The planning-updating-recording cycle is repeated continuously until the power of the set-top box is turned off. As you can see from the diagram shown in Figure 1, the formation of a personal channel does not end even when the user stops watching TV, for example, in standby mode. Indeed, in the absence of current views, the module 600 will still generate EPGs' from the available information from the user profile database 500 generated from previous views. A module 700, respectively, will form a plan for writing to the PC buffer of the preferred programs and send all the resources of the existing tuners to the recording. Thus, at any time, the user, turning on the set-top box and the TV, can select a personal channel and watch preferred programs from the PC 800 buffer or directly from the broadcast source 50.

The channel for viewing by the user using the remote control can be selected from various interfaces. As a rule, this is the remote control itself, on which the digital buttons for selecting the channel are located, or it is a graphical user interface with a list of channels where the channel is selected using the navigation buttons. Figure 4 shows a functional diagram of the control module viewing 200 personal channel. Implementation begins at step 202 with the selection of the channel to watch. At step 204, a decision is made to select a channel for viewing. If the user selects one of the television broadcast channels in step 210, the selected channel is displayed. A personal channel can be called up for viewing by selecting it directly from the channel list using the navigation buttons on the control panel, or by pressing a specific button for calling up a personal channel on the control panel (for example, button 0).

After selecting a personal channel at step 206, a decision is made on how to view it. If the user selects automatic playback of the personal channel transmissions from the list, ranked by preference, procedure 220 is implemented. If the user decides to select the programs for the user to independently view from the personal channel list, then procedure 250 is implemented. In accordance with this procedure, the user can sort the list personal channel according to the selected criterion (genre, actor, preferences, etc.), select the programs to watch, set the order of their viewing and proceed to viewing. A combination of these procedures is possible: 1) after the user selects a transmission genre, the programs are shown sequentially within a given genre, 2) when a program is shown sequentially, the user can go to the list of programs (by communication 240) and, having made a choice, continue watching.

It should be noted that the process of displaying television programs of broadcast channels or programs of a personal channel is accompanied by the process of forming a personal channel described above. The status of the personal channel is updated all the time, which is taken into account when constructing the procedures for displaying the personal channel. At the same time, modules 210, 220, and 250 collect information about user’s views, which is then transferred to the 400 browsing history database.

Claims (1)

A method for generating a personal channel in multichannel digital television, in which, in a combined manner, a preferred program guide is formed from one or more steps, in accordance with which a user watches the time of the selected transmission of a real channel or transmitting a personal channel, the user preferences are formed based on the characteristics of the preferred programs where, along with the choice of a genre / subgenre of programs, the user indicates the corresponding Preferred channels with a demonstration of the names of typical programs of the selected channel and genre determine the quantitative assessment of user preferences based on measurements of the viewing time of the programs taking into account the predefined preferences, receive metadata from the broadcast source containing information about the television channels and characteristics of the programs, including the recommendations of the broadcaster on viewing future broadcasts, receive from the user information about a one-time or periodic recording in the personal channel of specific broadcasts and, as a result, form a preferred program guide indicating the numerical value of preference for each transmission based on a combined account of one or more available sources of information from sources such as the recommendations of the broadcaster, user wishes to record specific programs, and evaluating user preferences based on measurements and / or pre-specified preferences, and the process of forming the preferred program guide is continuous, form the person channel based on constantly arriving information about the preferred program guide, including scheduling recordings to the personal channel from the preferred program according to the criterion of maximum preference, taking into account the available resources of the broadcast channel processing system, maintaining the current content and volume of the personal channel by deleting recorded programs with less preference than the candidate transmission, and with an expired lifetime, where the volume of the personal channel is set by the user in his personal profile, recording a candidate candidate channel for a personal channel and organizing a personal channel transmission list for viewing, moreover, the computing system cyclically sequentially performs recording scheduling procedures, updating a personal channel, and managing recording to a personal channel continuously and ensures the guaranteed availability of a personal transmission channel with the maximum value of preferences.

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