Information providing apparatus, broadcast receiving terminal, information providing system, information providing method and program

• US 20090235313A1
• Filed: 03/13/2009
• Published: 09/17/2009
• Est. Priority Date: 03/14/2008
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Plat-Ease Corporation, Sony Corporation (Sony Group Corp.)
• Original Assignee: Plat-Ease Corporation, Sony Corporation (Sony Group Corp.)
• Inventors: Maruyama, Testuo, Sumita, Tetsu, Wada, Kaori
• Granted Patent: US 8,365,226 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 725/46
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/42201 biosensors, e.g. heat sensor for presence detection, EEG sensors or any limb activity sensors worn by the user input arrangements for interaction with the human body based on nervous system activity detection G06F3/015
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/44213 Monitoring of end-user related data arrangements for monitoring the users' behaviour or opinions in broadcast systems H04H60/33
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/466 Learning process for intelligent management, e.g. learning user preferences for recommending movies services using the results of monitoring in broadcast systems H04H60/61
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/4668 for recommending content, e.g. movies
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/4755 for defining user preferences, e.g. favourite actors or genre retrieval personalisation and generation of user profiles for the retrieval of video data G06F16/739; user profiles in network data switching protocols H04L67/306
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/4826 using recommendation lists, e.g. of programs or channels sorted out according to their score

Abstract

There is provided an information providing apparatus that can be connected to a broadcast receiving terminal that displays electronic contents guide (ECG) information including attribute information expressing contents of a program, including an ECG information storage part that stores ECG information, a viewer EID processing part that processes viewer emotional identification (EID) information as emotional information expressing a program preference of a viewer, a program EID processing part that creates a program EID as emotional information corresponding to contents of the program; an ECG unit constitution part that constitutes an ECG unit by correlating the ECG information with the program based on the attribute information and correlates the program EID with the ECG unit, an EID conformity determination part that determines the ECG unit provided to the broadcast receiving terminal and an ECG unit providing part that provides the determined ECG unit to the broadcast receiving terminal.

Claims

1. An information providing apparatus, which can be connected via a communication network to a broadcast receiving terminal that displays electronic contents guide (ECG) information including attribute information expressing contents of a program, comprising:

an ECG information storage part that stores the ECG information;

a viewer EID processing part that processes viewer emotional identification (EID) information as emotional information expressing a program preference of a viewer of the broadcast receiving terminal;

a program EID processing part that processes program EID as emotional information corresponding to the contents of the program;

an ECG unit constitution part that constitutes an ECG unit by correlating at least one of the ECG information with the program expressed by the attribute information, and correlates the program EID corresponding to this program with the ECG unit;

an EID conformity determination part that determines one or more ECG units provided to the broadcast receiving terminal, based on the program EID correlated with the ECG unit and the viewer EID; and

an ECG unit providing part that provides the determined one or more ECG units to the broadcast receiving terminal via the communication network.

2. The information providing apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the viewer EID processing part includes a viewer EID acquisition part that acquires the viewer EID created by the broadcast receiving terminal.

3. The information providing apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the viewer EID processing part includes a viewer EID creation part that creates the viewer EID.

4. The information providing apparatus according to claim 3, wherein the viewer EID processing part includes a viewing log acquisition part that acquires from the broadcast receiving terminal, a viewing log including a viewing record stored in the broadcast receiving terminal, and the viewer EID creation part creates the viewer EID based on the viewing log.

5. The information providing apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the program EID is a basic EID created based on emotional information set by a provider of the ECG information according to contents of the program.

6. The information providing apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the program EID is a consumer EID created based on emotional information expressing an emotion of an unspecified viewer towards contents of the program.

7. The information providing apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the program EID is created by combining a basic EID created based on emotional information set by a provider of the ECG information according to contents of the program, and a consumer EID created based on emotional information expressing an emotion of an unspecified viewer towards contents of the program.

8. The information providing apparatus according to claim 6 or 7, wherein the ECG unit constitution part ranks a plurality of ECG units displayed in the broadcast receiving terminal, by correlating evaluation information expressing evaluation given by an unspecified viewer towards the program with the ECG unit.

9. The information providing apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the viewer EID and the program EID include color information corresponding to the emotional information.

10. A broadcast receiving terminal, which can be connected via a communication network to an information providing apparatus constituting an ECG unit including at least one piece of electronic contents guide (ECG) information correlated to a program, and a program EID (emotional identification) as emotional information corresponding to contents of the program, comprising:

a viewing log processing part that processes a viewing log including a viewing record stored in the broadcast receiving terminal, for creating viewer emotional identification (EID) information as emotional information expressing a program preference of a viewer;

an ECG unit acquisition part that acquires from the information providing apparatus, the ECG unit including the program EID that conforms to the viewing EID, out of one or more aforementioned ECG units constituted by the information providing apparatus, via the communication network; and

a display controlling part that controls display of the ECG unit.

11. The broadcast receiving terminal according to claim 10, wherein the viewing log processing part includes a viewing log transmission part that transmits the viewing log to the information providing apparatus via the communication network.

12. The broadcast receiving terminal according to claim 10, wherein the viewing log processing part includes a viewer EID creation part that creates the viewer EID based on the viewing log, and a viewer EID transmission part that transmits the created viewer EID to the information providing apparatus via the communication network.

13. The broadcast receiving terminal according to claim 10, wherein the viewer EID and the program EID include color information corresponding to the emotional information, and the display controlling part controls the ECG information constituting the ECG unit so as to be displayed in the broadcast receiving terminal with a color corresponding the color information set as a background.

14. An information providing system, including an information providing apparatus that provides electronic contents guide (ECG) information regarding a program, and a broadcast receiving terminal that can be connected to the information providing apparatus via a communication network, so that picture information and the ECG information of the program are acquired and displayed,

the information providing apparatus comprising:

an ECG information storage part that stores the ECG information including attribute information expressing contents of the program;

a viewer EID processing part that processes viewer emotional identification (EID) information as emotional information expressing a program preference of a viewer of the broadcast receiving terminal;

a program EID processing part that creates a program EID as emotional information corresponding to the contents of the program;

an ECG unit constitution part that constitutes an ECG unit by correlating at least one of the ECG information with the program based on the attribute information, and correlates the program EID regarding the program to the ECT unit;

an EID conformity determination part that determines one or more ECG units provided to the broadcast receiving terminal, based on the program EID correlated to the ECG unit and the viewer EID; and

an ECG unit providing part that provides the determined one or more ECG units to the broadcast receiving terminal via the communication network, and

the broadcast receiving terminal including;

a viewing log processing part that processes a viewing log including a viewing record stored in the broadcast receiving terminal, for creating the viewer EID;

an ECG unit acquisition part that acquires the ECG unit from the information providing apparatus via the communication network; and

a display controlling part that controls a display of the ECG unit.

15. An information providing method, for providing information via a communication network, to a broadcast receiving terminal that displays electronic contents guide (ECG) information including attribute information expressing contents of a program, comprising the steps of:

storing ECG information;

processing viewer emotional identification (EID) information as emotional information expressing a program preference of viewer of the broadcast receiving terminal;

creating a program EID for processing a program EID as emotional information corresponding to contents of the program;

constituting an ECG unit by correlating at least one of the ECG information to the program based on the attribute information, and correlating the program EID corresponding to the program with the ECG unit;

determining EID conformity for determining one or more ECG units provided to the broadcast receiving terminal, based on the program EID correlated to the ECG unit and the viewer EID; and

providing the ECG unit for providing the determined one or more ECG units to the broadcast receiving terminal via the communication network.

16. A program applied to an information providing apparatus that can be connected via a communication network, to a broadcast receiving terminal that displays an electronic contents guide (ECG) information including attribute information expressing contents of a program, for making a computer function as:

an ECG information storage section that stores the ECG information;

a viewer EID processing section that processes viewer emotional identification (EID) information as emotional information expressing a program preference of a viewer of the broadcast receiving terminal;

a program EID processing section that processes a program EID as emotional information corresponding to contents of the program;

an ECG unit constituting section that constitutes an ECG unit by correlating at least one of the ECG information to the program based on the attribute information, and correlates the program EID corresponding to the program with the ECG unit;

an EID conformity determination section that determines one or more ECG units provided to the broadcast receiving terminal, based on the program EID correlated to the ECG unit and the viewer EID; and

an ECG unit providing section that provides the determined one or more ECG units to the broadcast receiving terminal, via the communication network.

17. A program applied in a broadcast receiving terminal that can be connected via a communication network, to an information providing apparatus constituting an ECG unit including at least one electronic contents guide (ECG) information correlated with a program, and a program emotional identification (EID) as emotional information corresponding to contents of the program, for making a computer function as:

a viewing log processing section that processes a viewing log including a viewing record stored in the broadcast receiving terminal, for creating viewer emotional identification (EID) information as emotional information expressing a program preference of a viewer;

an ECG unit acquiring section that acquires the ECG unit including the program EID that conforms to the viewer EID, out of one or more ECG units constituted by the information providing apparatus, from the information providing apparatus via the communication network; and

a display controlling part that controls a display of the ECG unit.