METHOD OF NAVIGATING ITEMS AT A MEDIA PLAYER

• US 20090178001A1
• Filed: 06/21/2007
• Published: 07/09/2009
• Est. Priority Date: 06/23/2006
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Koninklijke Philips Electronics N.V. (Koninklijke Philips N.V.)
• Original Assignee: Koninklijke Philips Electronics N.V. (Koninklijke Philips N.V.)
• Inventors: Verheyden, Karl Frans Mario
• Granted Patent: US 8,621,392 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 715/810
• CPC Class Codes: G11B 27/105 of operating discs
• CPC Class Codes: G11B 27/34 Indicating arrangements indicating means incorporated in magazine or cassette G11B23/046 and G11B23/0875; indicating measured values in general G01D

Abstract

A media player (10) stores, or has access to, a set of media items (12). The player presents (20) a first of the media items. The set of media items (12) are ordered (32) according to at least one criterion indicative of similarity of the media items to the first media item. The player determines (37) what amount of the first media item was presented before an input is received from a user control (51). A second media item is selected for presenting using the determined amount as a measure for selecting the second media item from the ordered set of media items. A single user input (e.g. from a single button 51) can be used both to control the selection of the next item, and to determine the similarity of the next item. The ordering (32) can be based on similarity of features or similarity of metadata.

Claims

1. A method of navigating a set of media items (12) comprising:

selecting a first item from the set of media items;

ordering (84) the set of media items according to at least one criterion indicative of similarity of the media items to the first media item;

presenting (85) the first media item and waiting for a user input (88) during presentation of the first media item;

upon receiving the user input, determining what amount of the first media item was presented before the input was received and selecting a second media item (95) for presenting using the determined amount as a measure for selecting the second media item from the ordered set of media items.

2. A method according to claim 1 wherein the step of selecting the second media item comprises using the determined amount to map to one of the media items in the ordered set of media items.

3. A method according to claim 2 wherein the mapping is non-linear.

4. A method according to claim 1 wherein the step of determining what amount of the first media item was presented determines a ratio of the time for which the first media item was presented, or the quantity of data used during presentation of the first media item, to the total length of the first media item.

5. A method according to claim 1 wherein the step of ordering (84) comprises ordering the set of media items according to one of:

similarity of features, similarity of metadata associated with the media items.

6. A method according to claim 1 further comprising maintaining a list of presented media items and removing said presented media items from the ordered set of media items.

7. A method according to claim 1 wherein the step of ordering (97) is performed after each selection of a media item.

8. A method according to claim 1 further comprising, on a subsequent iteration of the method, using the same ordered set of media items (98) if the relative positions of the second media item and the first media item in the ordered set of media items lie within a predetermined range.

9. A method according to claim 8 wherein, on a subsequent iteration of the method, the step of selecting the second media item uses a portion of the ordered set of media items beginning with the last selected media item.

10. A method according to claim 1 wherein, in the event of receiving no input from a user during presentation of the first media item, the media item which is most similar to the first media item, in the ordered set of media items, is selected as the second media item.

11. A method according to claim 1 wherein the set of media items is selected from a larger set of items stored on a storage medium.

12. Control logic arranged to perform the method according to claim 1.

13. A media player comprising:

a store for storing media items or an interface for accessing a store of media items;

a user interface for receiving user input; and

,

control logic (30) arranged to perform the method according to claim 1.

14. Software for performing the method according to claim 1.