Method and apparatus for detecting time-compressed broadcast content

• US 6,901,606 B2
• Filed: 05/20/2003
• Issued: 05/31/2005
• Est. Priority Date: 05/20/2003
• Status: Expired due to Term

• Current Assignee: Nielsen Company (US), LLC
• Original Assignee: Nielsen Media Research, Inc. (Nielsen Holdings plc)
• Inventors: Wright, David H., Philippe, Marie
• Primary Examiner(s): Miller, John
• Assistant Examiner(s): Manning, John
• Application Number:
  US10/442,411
• Publication Number:
  US 20050010944A1
• Time in Patent Office: 742 Days
• Field of Search: 725/107, 725/100, 725131-134, 725139-142, 725/22, 725/32, 725 34- 36, 725/151, 725152-153, 348192-193, 348/518, 386/1, 386/33, 386/83, 386111-112, 375/240.26, 375/240.25
• US Class Current: 725/151
• CPC Class Codes: H04H 20/14 for monitoring programmes
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/2407 Monitoring of transmitted content, e.g. distribution time, number of downloads arrangements for monitoring programmes for broadcast or for distribution combined with broadcast H04H20/14
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/2547 Third Party Billing, e.g. billing of advertiser
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/44008 involving operations for analysing video streams, e.g. detecting features or characteristics in the video stream arrangements characterised by components specially adapted for monitoring, identification or recognition of video in broadcast systems H04H60/59
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/44204 Monitoring of content usage, e.g. the number of times a movie has been viewed, copied or the amount which has been watched monitoring of user activities for profile generation for accessing a video database G06F16/739; protecting generic digital content where the protection is independent of the precise nature of the content G06F21/10; arrangements for monitoring the use made of the broadcast services in broadcast systems H04H60/31
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/812 involving advertisement data advertising per se G06Q30/02
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/8352 involving content or source identification data, e.g. Unique Material Identifier [UMID]
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 7/0806 the signals being two or more video signals H04N7/0803, H04N7/081 take precedence
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 7/0887 for the transmission of programme or channel identifying signals
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 7/17327 with deferred transmission or handling of upstream communications

Abstract

A method and apparatus for detecting time compression of broadcast content that has been encoded with time data, includes a processor for comparing encoded time data with broadcast time data to determine whether the content has been time compressed. The method and apparatus additionally detect commercial advertisements inserted between segments and exclude when detecting time compression of the content.

Claims

1. Apparatus for detecting time compression of broadcast content having encoded time information, said apparatus comprising:

a processor for comparing a first duration of time, the first duration of time being calculated using a set of encode times included in the encoded time information to a second duration of time associated with the broadcast of the content;

wherein time compression of the content is determined to have occurred when said second duration of time is shorter than said first duration of time.

2. The apparatus as defined in claim 1, wherein said processor compares said first duration of time to said second duration of time by dividing said second duration of time by said first duration of time to obtain a compression factor, and time compression is determined to have occurred when said compression factor is less than a predetermined value.

3. The apparatus as defined in claim 2 wherein said predetermined value is approximately 1.0.

4. The apparatus as defined in claim 1 further including at least one tuner for receiving a broadcast signal carrying the content, and a controller for controlling the tuner to tune to said broadcast signal, extracting the encode times from the content as the content is received by the tuner, and recording a set of broadcast times, each broadcast time corresponding to one of the encode times, wherein said broadcast times are used to calculate the second duration of time.

5. The apparatus as defined in claim 4 further including means for transferring said encode times and said broadcast times to a buffer for storing data.

6. The apparatus as defined in claim 4, wherein said processor uses at least two of the broadcast times to calculate the second duration of time, the second duration of time being a duration of time during which the content was broadcast.

7. The apparatus as defined in claim 1, wherein said content comprises a television program and wherein said television program is divided into consecutive segments, and further wherein the processor processes each segment to detect whether time compression has occurred for each segment.

8. The apparatus as defined in claim 7, wherein the processor processes each segment by calculating the first duration for each segment and calculates the second duration for each segment and then compares the first and second durations calculated for each segment to determine whether time compression has occurred.

9. The apparatus as defined in claim 7, wherein each consecutive segment is separated by one or more commercial advertisements and wherein the apparatus is configured to identify the commercial advertisements and to exclude such commercial advertisements from the processing performed to detect whether time compression has occurred.

10. The apparatus as defined in claim 8, wherein the processor identifies said content as being time compressed if time compression is detected for all consecutive segments of said content.

11. The apparatus as defined in claim 7, wherein said content is encoded with identification information, and wherein said apparatus uses said identification information to identify all of the segments of the content.