SIMPLIFIED SEARCHING FOR MEDIA SERVICES USING A CONTROL DEVICE

• US 20120330943A1
• Filed: 09/05/2012
• Published: 12/27/2012
• Est. Priority Date: 03/06/2003
• Status: Abandoned Application

• Current Assignee: Thomson Licensing SA (Vantiva SA)
• Original Assignee: Thomson Licensing SA (Vantiva SA)
• Inventors: Weber, Barry Jay, Kolar, Jennifer Lynn, Sahasrabudhe, Rajeev Madhukar
• Application Number:
  US13/604,512
• Publication Number:
  US 20120330943A1
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 707/723
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/41 Indexing; Data structures therefor; Storage structures
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/435 Filtering based on additional data, e.g. user or group profiles
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/4387 by the use of playlists
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/48 Retrieval characterised by using metadata, e.g. metadata not derived from the content or metadata generated manually
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 12/2805 Home Audio Video Interoperability [HAVI] networks
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 12/2809 indicating that an appliance service is present in a home automation network monitoring functionality H04L43/0817; discovery or management thereof, e.g. service location protocol [SLP] or web services, H04L67/51
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 12/2812 describing content present in a home automation network, e.g. audio video content retrieval from the Internet G06F16/95
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 2012/2849 Audio/video appliances

Abstract

A method and apparatus are disclosed for searching for a media content related to a selected media service. A selected media service, as selected by a user operable indicator, has related metadata that is used as the basis of a search query. Once the search query is formulated, the query is submitted to a search engine that returns search results of media content related to the selected media service. Media content then may be selected from the returned search results for rendering in a rendering environment.

Claims

1. A method for conducting a search using a computer comprising the steps of:

using at least one keyword to search a first and second metadata field in a database; and

a search result returned from searching said first metadata field is assigned a higher ranking than a search result returned from searching said second metadata field when searching for a media service.

2. The method of claim 1 where said ranking is determined in response to input from a user.

3. The method of claim 1 where a first set of metadata fields used as the first and second metadata fields are selected when searching for a type of media service.

4. The method of claim 3 where a different set of metadata fields are used as the first and second metadata fields when searching for a different type of media service.

5. The method of claim 3 wherein said first set of metadata fields used are selected in response to input from said user.