TELEVISION DECODING UNIT WITH MULTIPLE WIRELESS ACCESS MODULES

• US 20120185893A1
• Filed: 03/28/2012
• Published: 07/19/2012
• Est. Priority Date: 09/30/2009
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Nagravision SA (Kudelski SA)
• Original Assignee: Nagravision SA (Kudelski SA)
• Inventors: Wendling, Bertrand
• Granted Patent: US 8,955,008 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 725/28
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 21/10 Protecting distributed programs or content, e.g. vending or licensing of copyrighted material protection in video systems or pay television H04N7/16 ; Digital rights management [DRM]
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 2221/2137 Time limited access, e.g. to a computer or data
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 2221/2149 Restricted operating environment
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 12/6418 Hybrid transport
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 63/10 for controlling access to devices or network resources
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/41265 having a remote control device for bidirectional communication between the remote control device and client device unidirectional remote control device H04N21/42204
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/4181 for conditional access
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/42684 Client identification by a unique number or address, e.g. serial number, MAC address, socket ID network arrangements, protocols or services for addressing or naming H04L61/00
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/43637 involving a wireless protocol, e.g. Bluetooth, RF or wireless LAN [IEEE 802.11] arrangements for wireless networking or broadcasting of information in indoor or near-field type systems H04B10/114
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/441 Acquiring end-user identification , e.g. using personal code sent by the remote control or by inserting a card
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/44222 Analytics of user selections, e.g. selection of programs or purchase activity monitoring of user selections in data processing systems G06F11/34; arrangements for monitoring the user's behaviour or opinions in broadcast systems H04H60/33
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/4751 for defining user accounts, e.g. accounts for children
• 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 7/163 by receiver means only

Abstract

The present invention proposes a system comprising a television decoding unit and a plurality of access modules, said access modules comprising wireless communication means with the television decoding unit, a memory comprising an identification of said module, said television decoding unit comprising means for detecting the presence and to receive the identification of an access module, means to apply a filter on events displayed on the television unit, said filter being defined with pre-defined filter category attached to the identification, and means to record the events consumption while the access module is detected by the television unit.

Claims

1. System comprising a television decoding unit to receive broadcast events, a display unit to display the received broadcast events and a plurality of wireless access modules, said wireless access modules comprising wireless communication means and a memory comprising an identification of said module, said system further comprising telecommunication means for detecting the presence and to receive the identification of a wireless access module within a detection area and means to apply a filter on events displayed on the display unit, said filter being defined with pre-defined filter category attached to the identification, wherein said detection area is predetermined with respect to the display unit.

2. The system according to claim 1, wherein the telecommunication means is comprised in the display unit.

3. The system according to claim 1, wherein the telecommunication means is comprised in the television decoding unit and the television decoding unit is attached to the display unit.

4. The system according to claim 1 wherein it comprises means to enforce the viewing policy in term of watching time.

5. The system according to claim 1 wherein the wireless access module is a conditional access module and means to receive control messages related to the broadcast content, means to decrypt these message and means to return the keys allowing the decryption of the broadcast content.

6. The system according to claim 1 characterized in that the wireless access module is a passive electronic tag such as RFID.

7. The system according to claim 1 wherein the telecommunication means is able to detect simultaneously the presence of a plurality of access modules, the system further comprising means to elect one access module among the detected access modules according to predefined criteria, and means to configure the filter with pre-defined filter category attached to the elected access module.

8. The system according to claim 1, wherein the television unit is configured to switch to a power-down mode when no access modules are detected.

9. The system according to claim 5, wherein the memory comprises an initial credit and a current credit value pertaining to the detected access module, said credits representing watching units per period, the memory further comprising at least two weighting values representing watching units per time, the first weighting value being applied while the television unit is displaying broadcast events for a first category and the second weighting value being applied while the television unit is displaying broadcast events for a second category, the television unit comprising means to decrement the current credit according to the first of the second weighting values, means to reload the current credit to the initial credit while the period is over and means interrupt the display of broadcast events when the current credit is over.

10. The system according to claim 1, wherein it comprises a first and a second television unit, the television units are connected to the broadcast system in charge of broadcasting the events, the first television unit sending a suspend command to the broadcast system while the selected access module leave the detection area of the first television unit, and the second television unit send a resume command to the broadcast system while the selected access module join the detection area of the second television unit.

11. The system according to claim 1, wherein it comprises a first and a second television unit, the television units are connected to the broadcast system in charge of broadcasting the events, the first television unit storing the current channel broadcasted while the access module leaves the detection area of the first television unit, the second television unit retrieving the current channel broadcasted while the access module is detected within the detection area of the second television unit, said second television unit reading the current channel relating to the detected access module and assigning said channel to the second television unit.

12. The system according to claim 11, wherein the first and the second television unit are connected to a local network, the current channel of said access module being transmitted from the first to the second television unit via the local network.

13. The system according to claim 11, wherein the first and the second television units comprise means to write data into the access module, the first television unit writing the current channel into the access module, said second television unit reading the current channel from the access module.

14. The system according to claim 1, wherein the telecommunications means is configured to operate according to an ISO/IEC 18092 standard.