WO1997049241A1 - Method and system for on the fly substitution of a section of a broadcast signal - Google Patents

Method and system for on the fly substitution of a section of a broadcast signal Download PDF

Info

Publication number
WO1997049241A1
WO1997049241A1 PCT/IL1997/000202 IL9700202W WO9749241A1 WO 1997049241 A1 WO1997049241 A1 WO 1997049241A1 IL 9700202 W IL9700202 W IL 9700202W WO 9749241 A1 WO9749241 A1 WO 9749241A1
Authority
WO
WIPO (PCT)
Prior art keywords
section
signal
source signal
time duration
broadcast
Prior art date
Application number
PCT/IL1997/000202
Other languages
French (fr)
Inventor
Gil Ben-Moshe
Amnon Antman
Moti Shender
Original Assignee
Ben Moshe Gil
Amnon Antman
Priority date (The priority date is an assumption and is not a legal conclusion. Google has not performed a legal analysis and makes no representation as to the accuracy of the date listed.)
Filing date
Publication date
Application filed by Ben Moshe Gil, Amnon Antman filed Critical Ben Moshe Gil
Publication of WO1997049241A1 publication Critical patent/WO1997049241A1/en

Links

Classifications

    • H—ELECTRICITY
    • H04—ELECTRIC COMMUNICATION TECHNIQUE
    • H04H—BROADCAST COMMUNICATION
    • H04H20/00—Arrangements for broadcast or for distribution combined with broadcast
    • H04H20/02—Arrangements for relaying broadcast information
    • H—ELECTRICITY
    • H04—ELECTRIC COMMUNICATION TECHNIQUE
    • H04N—PICTORIAL COMMUNICATION, e.g. TELEVISION
    • H04N21/00—Selective content distribution, e.g. interactive television or video on demand [VOD]
    • H04N21/40—Client devices specifically adapted for the reception of or interaction with content, e.g. set-top-box [STB]; Operations thereof
    • H04N21/43—Processing of content or additional data, e.g. demultiplexing additional data from a digital video stream; Elementary client operations, e.g. monitoring of home network or synchronising decoder's clock; Client middleware
    • H04N21/442—Monitoring of processes or resources, e.g. detecting the failure of a recording device, monitoring the downstream bandwidth, the number of times a movie has been viewed, the storage space available from the internal hard disk
    • H04N21/44213—Monitoring of end-user related data
    • H04N21/44222—Analytics of user selections, e.g. selection of programs or purchase activity
    • H—ELECTRICITY
    • H04—ELECTRIC COMMUNICATION TECHNIQUE
    • H04H—BROADCAST COMMUNICATION
    • H04H20/00—Arrangements for broadcast or for distribution combined with broadcast
    • H04H20/10—Arrangements for replacing or switching information during the broadcast or the distribution
    • H04H20/103—Transmitter-side switching
    • H—ELECTRICITY
    • H04—ELECTRIC COMMUNICATION TECHNIQUE
    • H04H—BROADCAST COMMUNICATION
    • H04H20/00—Arrangements for broadcast or for distribution combined with broadcast
    • H04H20/38—Arrangements for distribution where lower stations, e.g. receivers, interact with the broadcast
    • H—ELECTRICITY
    • H04—ELECTRIC COMMUNICATION TECHNIQUE
    • H04N—PICTORIAL COMMUNICATION, e.g. TELEVISION
    • H04N21/00—Selective content distribution, e.g. interactive television or video on demand [VOD]
    • H04N21/80—Generation or processing of content or additional data by content creator independently of the distribution process; Content per se
    • H04N21/81—Monomedia components thereof
    • H04N21/812—Monomedia components thereof involving advertisement data
    • H—ELECTRICITY
    • H04—ELECTRIC COMMUNICATION TECHNIQUE
    • H04N—PICTORIAL COMMUNICATION, e.g. TELEVISION
    • H04N7/00—Television systems
    • H04N7/002—Special television systems not provided for by H04N7/007 - H04N7/18
    • H—ELECTRICITY
    • H04—ELECTRIC COMMUNICATION TECHNIQUE
    • H04N—PICTORIAL COMMUNICATION, e.g. TELEVISION
    • H04N7/00—Television systems
    • H04N7/08—Systems for the simultaneous or sequential transmission of more than one television signal, e.g. additional information signals, the signals occupying wholly or partially the same frequency band, e.g. by time division
    • H—ELECTRICITY
    • H04—ELECTRIC COMMUNICATION TECHNIQUE
    • H04N—PICTORIAL COMMUNICATION, e.g. TELEVISION
    • H04N7/00—Television systems
    • H04N7/10—Adaptations for transmission by electrical cable
    • H—ELECTRICITY
    • H04—ELECTRIC COMMUNICATION TECHNIQUE
    • H04N—PICTORIAL COMMUNICATION, e.g. TELEVISION
    • H04N7/00—Television systems
    • H04N7/16—Analogue secrecy systems; Analogue subscription systems
    • H04N7/162—Authorising the user terminal, e.g. by paying; Registering the use of a subscription channel, e.g. billing
    • H04N7/165—Centralised control of user terminal ; Registering at central

Definitions

  • This invention relates to broadcasting from a transmitter site to a plurality of end receivers via at least one relay station such as is done in cable TV.
  • Cable TV companies transmit to their subscribers broadcasts which they in turn have received from a source transmitter.
  • broadcasts are received in real time and are relayed to the end receivers immediately on receipt without any pre-processing.
  • the broadcasts received from the source transmitter may include advertisements which may have little or no relevance to the local market to which the broadcast is ultimately relayed. This, of course, is particularly true when the source signal is broadcast to a foreign country wherein the advertised products may not be available and/or the advertisements may be in what is, to the end receiver, a foreign language.
  • the invention there is provided in a system for relaying broadcast signals from a transmitter site to a plurality of end receivers via an intermediate relay station, a method for locally processing on the fly a section having a known length of a broadcast source signal, the method comprising the steps of:
  • step (e) comprises transmitting the substituted section to the plurality of end re ⁇ DCvers instead of the source signal for the specified time duration.
  • the start and duration of the section corresponding to the section to be substituted may be encoded by means of a sequence of adjacent frames each having a color which, in combination, is characteristic of the specified time duration.
  • FIG. 1 is a block diagram of a system for employing the invention therein;
  • Figs. 2a to 2c are a flow diagram showing the principal steps associated with the method according to the invention.
  • Fig. 1 shows a system 10 comprising a remote broadcast station 11 for transmitting a TV broadcast signal (constituting a source signal) to a plurality of end receivers 12 (constituting cable TV subscribers) via a cable TV relay station 13.
  • the broadcast station 11 includes an encoder 14 for encoding a section of the broadcast signal corresponding to an advertise ⁇ ment so as to produce a sequence of different colored frames whose color combination is representative of the time duration of the advertisement section according to a predetermined color code.
  • the sequence of colored frames constitutes a code signal which is embedded within the source signal at the start of the advertisement section and thus whose presence is indicative of the start thereof.
  • the relay station 13 includes a receiving antenna 15 for receiving the source signal and is connected by a cable 16 to the end receivers 12 for relaying the processed source signal thereto.
  • the relay station 13 further includes a decoder 17 responsive to the received broadcast signal for detecting and decoding the code signal in order to determine the time duration of the advertisement section to be substituted.
  • a memory 18 within the relay station contains a database of substitute advertisements suitable for the local market and which may be substituted on the fly for foreign broadcasts embedded in the source signal.
  • the substitute advertisements in the database are indexed according to time duration and possibly according to other criteria, such as subject matter and audience suitability, etc.
  • the database may be accessed and a particular advertisement may be selected according to predetermined criteria so as to replace a section of the broadcast signal corresponding to an advertisement transmitted by the remote broadcast station 11.
  • Fig. 2 shows the orincipal steps according to the method of the invention carried out by the remote broadcast station 11 together with the intermediate relay station 13 for substituting the source advertisement on the fly with a substitute advertisement selected from the database.
  • a sequence of adjacent different colored frames is embedded into the source signal indicating the start of the advertisement signal and whose color combination is representative of the time duration according to a predetermined color code.
  • a sequence of several isolated colored frames displayed on the end receivers 12 will be transparent to the viewers thereof since they will flicker on the screen for too short a time duration to be registered by the optic nerves of the viewers.
  • the presence of an advertisement and its time duration in the source signal are encoded by the broadcast station in a manner which is transparent to the end receivers 12.
  • the signal Upon receipt of the encoded broadcast signal by the relay station 13, the signal is decoded by the decoder 17 so as to extract the code signal indicative of the start of an advertisement section.
  • the code signal is decoded so as to determine the time duration of the advertisement section which is then used as an index for accessing the database so as to select therefrom a suitable advertisement whose time duration is no greater than the source advertisement.
  • an advertisement section may be selected from the database according to other criteria in addition to time duration and such additional criteria may themselves be encoded within the code signal, as required.
  • the thus selected advertisement is now transmitted by the relay station 13 instead of the source signal which continues to be received from the broadcast station 11 but is simply ignored until the selected advertise ⁇ ment has been transmitted in its entirety. It may be that the selected advertisement is of slightly shorter duration than the source advertisement. In this case, in order to avoid a "hiccup" in the broadcast received by the end receivers 12, a fill-in image such as a test card and the like may be transmitted by the relay station 13 until the end of the decoded time duration, whereupon the source signal may again be broadcast until receipt by the relay station 13 of a subsequent code signal indicative of another advertisement section.
  • the invention provides for virtually instantaneous substitution of a section of a broadcast signal with an already existing replacement signal. There is no need to create the substitute section on the fly either by image-processing the source signal or by any other means, because the substitute section is already stored in memory ready for immediate broadcasting.
  • the only real-time processing which is therefore required is decoding the code signal and accessing the database, both of which impose very little premium on the transmission time and do not introduce any appreciable broadcast delay.

Abstract

A system (10) and method for on-the-fly substitution of a section of a broadcast signal which enables a broadcaster (11), for example, to transmit simultaneously several different commercials in different languages to different countries. The invention may operate on both digital and analog techniques.

Description

Method and system for on the fly substitution of a section of a broadcast signal
FIELD OF THE INVENTION
This invention relates to broadcasting from a transmitter site to a plurality of end receivers via at least one relay station such as is done in cable TV.
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
Cable TV companies transmit to their subscribers broadcasts which they in turn have received from a source transmitter. Typically, broadcasts are received in real time and are relayed to the end receivers immediately on receipt without any pre-processing. It is not unusual for the broadcasts received from the source transmitter to include advertisements which may have little or no relevance to the local market to which the broadcast is ultimately relayed. This, of course, is particularly true when the source signal is broadcast to a foreign country wherein the advertised products may not be available and/or the advertisements may be in what is, to the end receiver, a foreign language.
It would obviously be possible to capture the broadcast at the relay station and to process the source signal so as to detect the location of advertisements and then to substitute different advertisements more suitable to the local market. Such data capture and processing requires extensive memory and relatively complex processing which increases costs for the relay station and thus for the subscribers. SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
It is thus a primary object of the invention to allow sections of a broadcast signal transmitted from a source transmitter to a relay station to be substituted on the fly with different sections of substantially equal duration before being relayed to end receivers.
According to a broad aspect the invention there is provided in a system for relaying broadcast signals from a transmitter site to a plurality of end receivers via an intermediate relay station, a method for locally processing on the fly a section having a known length of a broadcast source signal, the method comprising the steps of:
(a) embedding in the source signal a code signal indicative of a start of said section and of its time duration in such a manner that it is transparent to the end receivers of the broadcast signal,
(b) transmitting the encoded source signal to the relay station, (c) re-transmitting the encoded source signal from the relay station to the plurality of end receivers until the code signal is received by the relay station, (d) decoding the code signal so as to determine the time duration of the section to be processed, (e) processing said section at the relay station and transmitting the processed section to the plurality of end receivers instead of the source signal for said time duration, and (f) repeating steps (c) to (e) as required for a remainder of the source signal. When it is desired to employ the invention for substituting on the fly a section of a broadcast source signal, corresponding for example to an advertisement, with a substituted section of substantially equal length, step (e) comprises transmitting the substituted section to the plurality of end re¬ ceivers instead of the source signal for the specified time duration. The start and duration of the section corresponding to the section to be substituted may be encoded by means of a sequence of adjacent frames each having a color which, in combination, is characteristic of the specified time duration. BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS
In order to understand the invention and to see how it may be carried out in practice, a preferred embodiment relating to substitution on the fly of an advertisement embedded within a broadcast signal by a substitute advertisement will now be described by way of non-limiting example only, with reference to the accompanying drawings, in which:
Fig. 1 is a block diagram of a system for employing the invention therein; and
Figs. 2a to 2c are a flow diagram showing the principal steps associated with the method according to the invention.
DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF A PREFERRED EMBODIMENT
Fig. 1 shows a system 10 comprising a remote broadcast station 11 for transmitting a TV broadcast signal (constituting a source signal) to a plurality of end receivers 12 (constituting cable TV subscribers) via a cable TV relay station 13. The broadcast station 11 includes an encoder 14 for encoding a section of the broadcast signal corresponding to an advertise¬ ment so as to produce a sequence of different colored frames whose color combination is representative of the time duration of the advertisement section according to a predetermined color code. The sequence of colored frames constitutes a code signal which is embedded within the source signal at the start of the advertisement section and thus whose presence is indicative of the start thereof. The relay station 13 includes a receiving antenna 15 for receiving the source signal and is connected by a cable 16 to the end receivers 12 for relaying the processed source signal thereto. The relay station 13 further includes a decoder 17 responsive to the received broadcast signal for detecting and decoding the code signal in order to determine the time duration of the advertisement section to be substituted.
A memory 18 within the relay station contains a database of substitute advertisements suitable for the local market and which may be substituted on the fly for foreign broadcasts embedded in the source signal. The substitute advertisements in the database are indexed according to time duration and possibly according to other criteria, such as subject matter and audience suitability, etc. By such means, the database may be accessed and a particular advertisement may be selected according to predetermined criteria so as to replace a section of the broadcast signal corresponding to an advertisement transmitted by the remote broadcast station 11.
Fig. 2 shows the orincipal steps according to the method of the invention carried out by the remote broadcast station 11 together with the intermediate relay station 13 for substituting the source advertisement on the fly with a substitute advertisement selected from the database. A sequence of adjacent different colored frames is embedded into the source signal indicating the start of the advertisement signal and whose color combination is representative of the time duration according to a predetermined color code. A sequence of several isolated colored frames displayed on the end receivers 12 will be transparent to the viewers thereof since they will flicker on the screen for too short a time duration to be registered by the optic nerves of the viewers. By such means, the presence of an advertisement and its time duration in the source signal are encoded by the broadcast station in a manner which is transparent to the end receivers 12.
Upon receipt of the encoded broadcast signal by the relay station 13, the signal is decoded by the decoder 17 so as to extract the code signal indicative of the start of an advertisement section. The code signal is decoded so as to determine the time duration of the advertisement section which is then used as an index for accessing the database so as to select therefrom a suitable advertisement whose time duration is no greater than the source advertisement. If desired, an advertisement section may be selected from the database according to other criteria in addition to time duration and such additional criteria may themselves be encoded within the code signal, as required.
The thus selected advertisement is now transmitted by the relay station 13 instead of the source signal which continues to be received from the broadcast station 11 but is simply ignored until the selected advertise¬ ment has been transmitted in its entirety. It may be that the selected advertisement is of slightly shorter duration than the source advertisement. In this case, in order to avoid a "hiccup" in the broadcast received by the end receivers 12, a fill-in image such as a test card and the like may be transmitted by the relay station 13 until the end of the decoded time duration, whereupon the source signal may again be broadcast until receipt by the relay station 13 of a subsequent code signal indicative of another advertisement section.
It is thus to be noted that the invention provides for virtually instantaneous substitution of a section of a broadcast signal with an already existing replacement signal. There is no need to create the substitute section on the fly either by image-processing the source signal or by any other means, because the substitute section is already stored in memory ready for immediate broadcasting. The only real-time processing which is therefore required is decoding the code signal and accessing the database, both of which impose very little premium on the transmission time and do not introduce any appreciable broadcast delay.
It will be appreciated that whilst the invention has been described with particular regard to a method and system for substituting on the fly an advertisement section of a broadcast signal with a replacement advertisement more suited to the local market, the invention is amenable to more general applications. Obviously, the substituted sections do not need to be advertisements: they could equally well be news items and other broadcast information not considered suitable for the local market. Likewise, the invention may find more general application wherever it is required to process an incoming broadcast signal on the fly prior to relaying to an end receiver.

Claims

CLAIMS:
1. In a system for relaying broadcast signals from a transmitter site to a plurality of end receivers via an intermediate relay station, a method for locally processing on the fly a section having a known length of a broadcast source signal, the method comprising the steps of:
(a) embedding in the source signal a code signal indicative of a start of said section and of its time duration in such a manner that it is transparent to the end receivers of the broadcast signal,
(b) transmitting the encoded source signal to the relay station, (c) re-transmitting the encoded source signal from the relay station to the plurality of end receivers until the code signal is received by the relay station, (d) decoding the code signal so as to determine the time duration of the section to be processed, (e) processing said section at the relay station and transmitting the processed section to the plurality of end receivers instead of the source signal for said time duration, and (f) repeating steps (c) to (e) as required for a remainder of the source signal.
2. The method according to Claim for substituting on the fly a section of a broadcast source signal with a substituted section of substantial¬ ly equal length, wherein step (e) comprises transmitting the substituted section to the plurality of end receivers instead of the source signal for said time duration.
3. The method according to Claim 2, wherein the substituted section is an advertisement.
4. The method according to Claim 3, wherein the substituted section is in a different language to that of the source signal.
5. The method according to any one of the preceding Claims, wherein the source signal is a TV broadcast signal and the code signal is a sequence of adjacent frames each having a color which, in combination, is characteristic of said time duration.
6. The method according to any one of Claims 2 to 5, wherein step (e) comprises the steps of:
(1) accessing a database of pre-stored program sections for selecting a section having a duration no greater than said time duration of the section to be substituted,
(2) transmitting the selected section in its entirety from the relay station to the end receivers, and
(3) upon completion of step (2) transmitting a fill-in broadcast signal, as required, for a remainder of said time duration.
7. The method according to Claim 6, wherein the database section is selected for other criteria in addition to the duration thereof.
8. A system comprising a remote broadcast station for transmitting a source signal to a plurality of end receivers via a relay station 13 so as to substitute on the fly a source section of the source signal with a substituted section of substantially equal length; wherein the broadcast station includes: an encoder for encoding the source section so as to produce a code signal representative of the time duration thereof, and means for embedding the code signal within the source signal at the start of the source section; and wherein the relay station includes: a receiving antenna for receiving the encoded source signal, a decoder responsive to the encoded source signal for detecting and decoding the code signal in order to determine the time duration of the source section to be substituted, a memory for storing a database of substitute sections being indexed according to at least time duration, database access means coupled to the decoder and to the memory and responsive to the time duration for accessing the database so as to select a substitute section, and a transmitting antenna coupled to the receiving antenna, to the memory and to the database access means for relaying desired components of the source signal and the selected section to the end receivers.
9. The system according to Claim 8, wherein the code signal is a sequence of adjacent frames each having a color which, in combination, is characteristic of said time duration.
10. The system according to Claim 9 or 10, wherein the substituted section is an advertisement.
PCT/IL1997/000202 1996-06-20 1997-06-19 Method and system for on the fly substitution of a section of a broadcast signal WO1997049241A1 (en)

Applications Claiming Priority (2)

Application Number Priority Date Filing Date Title
IL118687 1996-06-20
IL11868796A IL118687A0 (en) 1996-06-20 1996-06-20 Method and system for on the fly substitution of a section of a broadcast signal

Publications (1)

Publication Number Publication Date
WO1997049241A1 true WO1997049241A1 (en) 1997-12-24

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WO (1) WO1997049241A1 (en)

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