Identifying a received programme stream
First Claim
1. A method of identifying a programme which has been broadcast to a television receiver location as part of a programme stream and displayed by a television receiver receiving the stream at said location, the method comprising:
- (a) at a remote station, monitoring the broadcast programme stream by measuring a predetermined parameter of the stream repetitively and storing the resulting measurements as reference data;
(b) determining and storing as part of said reference data, time data for defining the time of broadcast of those portions of the stream from which said measurements have been obtained;
(c) at the location of the television receiver measuring the same parameter of the displayed programme stream repetitively and at a rate less than that at the remote station, and recording the resultant measurements as local data,(d) determining and recording as part of said local data, time data defining time of receipt at the location of those portions of said displayed programme stream from which said same parameter has been obtained;
(e) transmitting the recorded local data from said location to a remote station; and
(f) comparing the transmitted local data with the reference data to identify a correlation therebetween.
1 Assignment
0 Petitions
Accused Products
Abstract
A system for identifying a program stream being displayed at a receiver location comprises means at a central station for measuring the relative luminance of a plurality of predetermined areas in each frame and recording that data with their times of occurrence for each of a plurality of program streams as reference data, and means at a receiver location to measure the relative luminance of the same areas but at a repetition rate less than that at the central station for a given time after a channel change and thereafter at an even lower repetition rate and storing the measurements at the receiver location with times defining corresponding broadcast times, and means for transmitting the stored data to the central station for correlating the measured and reference data using the recorded times to access the corresponding measured values of the recorded and reference data.
264 Citations
35 Claims
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1. A method of identifying a programme which has been broadcast to a television receiver location as part of a programme stream and displayed by a television receiver receiving the stream at said location, the method comprising:
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(a) at a remote station, monitoring the broadcast programme stream by measuring a predetermined parameter of the stream repetitively and storing the resulting measurements as reference data; (b) determining and storing as part of said reference data, time data for defining the time of broadcast of those portions of the stream from which said measurements have been obtained; (c) at the location of the television receiver measuring the same parameter of the displayed programme stream repetitively and at a rate less than that at the remote station, and recording the resultant measurements as local data, (d) determining and recording as part of said local data, time data defining time of receipt at the location of those portions of said displayed programme stream from which said same parameter has been obtained; (e) transmitting the recorded local data from said location to a remote station; and (f) comparing the transmitted local data with the reference data to identify a correlation therebetween. - View Dependent Claims (2, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 26, 27, 28, 29)
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3. A method of determining usage of a receiver for selectively receiving a plurality of broadcast programme streams, the method comprising:
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(a) providing reference data comprising a sequence of values of a programme stream parameter of a given programme stream, those values relating to known positions throughout a segment of the stream and the reference data including time information defining the times of broadcast of said positions of the stream; (b) receiving a programme stream at the receiver; (c) monitoring the programme stream being received by the receiver and making local measurements of said parameter at at least some of said known positions of the programme stream being monitored; (d) recording local time data defining the time of broadcast of each stream position relating to the local measurements; and (e) comparing each local measurement with that one of said measurements of said reference data having the same position in the stream and substantially the same time of broadcast to identify a correlation therebetween.
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20. A TV programme stream encoding process for encoding a TV video signal comprising stream sections defined by TV sync signals, the process comprising;
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(a) the step at a central data collection site of measuring a programme stream property at each of a set of known, but irregularly spaced, positions throughout a stream section defined by the TV sync signals, (b) said set being measured in each section at the central data collection site to define that programme stream, there being n measurements per section; (c) the step of providing time-of-receipt data from which the time-of-receipt pertaining to each measurement can be obtained; and (d) carrying out steps (a) and (c) at a local receiver at which the stream is displayed using a lesser measurement rate of n/x measurements per section, averaged over a plurality of said sections, where x is relatively large compared with n. - View Dependent Claims (21, 22, 23, 24, 25)
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30. A system for identifying a programme displayed by a television receiver comprising:
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(a) means at a remote station for monitoring a programme stream by measuring a predetermined parameter of the stream repetitively and storing the resulting measurements as reference data; (b) means at said remote station for obtaining time data defining the time of receipt the remote station of those portions of the stream from which said measurements are obtained and for storing said time data as part of said reference data; (c) means at the location of the television receiver for measuring the same parameter of the displayed programme stream repetitively and at a rate less than that at the remote station, and for recording the measured parameters and time data defining time of receipt at said location of those portions of said displayed programme stream from which the said same parameters are obtained; (d) means for transmitting the measurements and time data from said location to a remote station; and (e) means for comparing the transmitted measurements and time data with the reference data to identify a correlation therebetween. - View Dependent Claims (31)
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32. A system for determining usage of a receiver for selectively receiving a plurality of broadcast programme streams, the system comprising:
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(a) means for providing reference data comprising a sequence of values of a programme stream parameter of a given programme stream, those values relating to known positions throughout a segment of the stream and the reference data including time information defining the times of broadcast of the said positions of the stream; (b) means for monitoring a programme stream when being received by the receiver and for making local measurements of said parameter at at least some of said known positions of said monitored programme stream; (c) means for recording time data defining the time of broadcast of each stream portion relating to the local measurements; and (d) means for comparing each of the local measurements with that one of said measurements of said reference data having the same position in the stream and substantially the same time of broadcast to identify a correlation therebetween.
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33. An apparatus, for encoding a programme stream which comprises a video signal defining television receiver screens, comprising means for defining n distinct screen positions of a segment of the stream, and means for measuring the signal of the stream to define values corresponding to selected ones of said screen positions so as to collect a sequence of substantially complete sets of n values corresponding to respective ones of the n positions, where, on average over the sequence, there are n values every x segments, where x is not less than n.
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34. An apparatus for monitoring a receiver coupled to a combination receiving and recording device for receiving a transmission comprising a programme stream, the apparatus comprising:
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means for encoding the programme content of said programme stream during its receipt; timing means for including current time-of-receipt data in the encoded data; insertion means for coupling to the device to insert into the signal received by the device device time-of-receipt data so that the device time-of-receipt data will be recorded with any recording of the signal; and means for deactivating the inclusion of the current time-of-receipt data in the encoded data when earlier device time-of-receipt data is found in a signal from the recording device so that the data extracted will include original time-of-receipt data. - View Dependent Claims (35)
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Specification