CONTENT SURFING, PREVIEW AND SELECTION BY SEQUENTIALLY CONNECTING TILED CONTENT CHANNELS

• US 20170269804A1
• Filed: 03/15/2016
• Published: 09/21/2017
• Est. Priority Date: 03/15/2016
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Saturn Licensing LLC (Sony Group Corp.)
• Original Assignee: Sony Corporation (Sony Group Corp.)
• Inventors: RICHMAN, STEVEN MARTIN, CLEMENT, JASON
• Granted Patent: US 10,455,270 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/0482 Interaction with lists of selectable items, e.g. menus
• 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 21/42224 Touch pad or touch panel provided on the remote control
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/4312 involving specific graphical features, e.g. screen layout, special fonts or colors, blinking icons, highlights or animations
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/4316 for displaying supplemental content in a region of the screen, e.g. an advertisement in a separate window
• 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 21/472 End-user interface for requesting content, additional data or services; End-user interface for interacting with content, e.g. for content reservation or setting reminders, for requesting event notification, for manipulating displayed content end-user interfaces for retrieving video data from a database G06F16/739; network services for supporting unicast streaming H04L65/612
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/4782 Web browsing , e.g. WebTV
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/4823 using a channel name
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/64322 IP

Abstract

A multi-window user interface (UI) is presented in various configurations and operational uses to leverage the relatively large display canvas afforded by large screen display devices such as 4K or 8K displays. Along with the various “Multiview” aspects, content delivery techniques, content selection techniques, and level of service techniques also are presented.

Claims

1. A device comprising:

at least one computer memory that is not a transitory signal and that comprises instructions executable by at least one processor to;

present on a display a user interface (UI) comprising plural tiles each being associated with a respective content; and

responsive to a screen focus on a first tile of the UI, playing video in the first tile and presenting only still images in tiles of the UI other than the first tile.

2. The device of claim 1, further comprising the at least one processor.

3. The device of claim 1, further comprising the at least one display device, the at least one display device including a high definition or ultra-high definition video display.

4. The device of claim 1, wherein the instructions are executable to scroll tiles on and off the display in a carousel format responsive to a user-input scroll command.

5. The device of claim 1, wherein second tiles in the UI represent respective TV channels, and third tiles in the UI represent one or more of:

software applications, web pages, graphical data feeds.

6. The device of claim 4, wherein a tile becomes in focus by virtue of the user-input scroll command rotating the carousel until the first tile is in a central portion of a tiled view of the UI.

7. The device of claim 1, wherein the UI includes two horizontally-arranged carousels of tiles, a first carousel having tiles representing underlying assets from local or cloud-based storage, and a second carousel having tiles representing underlying TV channels, the first carousel being rotated independently of the second carousel.

8. The device of claim 1, wherein the UI includes a video carousel of tiles each representing a respective video, the tiles of the video carousel being stacked vertically, with a top tile being completely shown and tiles underlying the top tile shown only at edges of the tiles underlying the top tile, the top tile being in focus.

9. The device of claim 1, wherein the UI includes a video carousel of tiles each representing a respective video, the tiles of the video carousel being depicted as being in a sequence along a Z-dimension perpendicular to the display.

10. A method for establishing a carousel of tiles for a user interface (UI) presentable on a display, comprising:

presenting a column of tiles on the display;

presenting an assignment list next to the tiles;

receiving user association signals associating a tile with a content source type in the list to thereby associate the tile with a carousel of tiles associated with the content source type.

11. The method of claim 10, comprising establishing first and second carousels of tiles each being associated with a respective content source type.

12. The method of claim 10, wherein the content source types in the list include a TV channel source, a web page source, a disk-based source, and a data structure recording recently viewed content.

13. The method of claim 11, comprising presenting the first and second carousels on the display simultaneously with each other.

14. An apparatus comprising:

at least one display;

at least one processor; and

at least one computer memory with instructions executable by the at least one processor to present a carousel of tiles in a user interface (UI) on the display, the UI comprising a current video presented adjacent the carousel, the carousel being presented as if the tiles were arranged on a disk, such that a center-most tile appears larger than tiles in the carousel other than the center-most tile, which become progressively smaller from the center-most tile outward.

15. The apparatus of claim 14, wherein the instructions are executable to:

present video in the center-most tile responsive to the center-most tile being in focus by virtue of being the center-most tile.

16. The apparatus of claim 15, wherein the instructions are executable to:

present no video in tiles other than the center-most tile.

17. The apparatus of claim 14, wherein the instructions are executable to:

cause the carousel to appear to rotate responsive to a scroll command such that the center-most tile moves away from a center-most location and a second tile moves into the center-most location and becomes in focus, in which a still image is replaced with video in the second tile.