Method and apparatus for displaying HTML and video simultaneously

• US 6,928,652 B1
• Filed: 05/29/1998
• Issued: 08/09/2005
• Est. Priority Date: 05/29/1998
• Status: Expired due to Term

• Current Assignee: Rovi Technologies Corporation (Adeia Inc.)
• Original Assignee: WebTV Networks Inc. (Microsoft Corporation)
• Inventors: Goldman, Phillip Y.
• Primary Examiner(s): Srivastava, Vivek
• Assistant Examiner(s): VU, NGOC K
• Application Number:
  US09/087,354
• Time in Patent Office: 2,629 Days
• Field of Search: 725/37, 725/51, 725/112, 725/117, 725/136, 709/217, 709/218, 709/219, 715/513, 345/760, 348/564, 348/584, 348/589, 348/600
• US Class Current: 725/37
• 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 21/435 Processing of additional data, e.g. decrypting of additional data, reconstructing software from modules extracted from the transport stream
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/4622 Retrieving content or additional data from different sources, e.g. from a broadcast channel and the Internet web site content organization and management for information retrieval from the Internet G06F16/958; transmission by internet of broadcast information H04H60/82; stock exchange data over packet-switching network H04L12/1804; push services including data channel over packet-switching network H04L12/1859
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/47 End-user applications
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/4722 for requesting additional data associated with the content
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/4725 using interactive regions of the image, e.g. hot spots details of information retrieval from the Internet by using URLs G06F16/955; processing chained hypermedia data for information retrieval G06F16/94
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/4782 Web browsing , e.g. WebTV
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 5/44504 Circuit details of the additional information generator, e.g. details of the character or graphics signal generator, overlay mixing circuits

Abstract

A graphical user interface (GUI) includes a hyper text mark-up language (HTML) document. A video image from broadcast data is displayed in a same window with the HTML document.

Claims

1. In a system that receives broadcast data from a broadcast data source that encodes a document, a method for displaying both the broadcast data and the document while connecting with one or more remote servers and displaying additional documents retrieved from the one or more remote servers, the method comprising:

displaying video images of the broadcast data in a window of the display device;

decoding the document that is encoded in the broadcast data, the encoded document including one or more links that identify additional information that can be accessed in additional documents by a user when the one or more links are selected by the user;

converting the decoded document into a viewable document, the viewable document including the one or more links that can be selected by a user;

processing the viewable document with the broadcast data such that some of the video images of the broadcast data are simultaneously displayed with the viewable document in the same window as the displayed video images, the viewable document being independent of any particular video image of the broadcast data;

retrieving the additional documents from the one or more remote servers when a link is selected; and

displaying the additional documents in the same window as each video image of the broadcast data without resizing each video image.

2. A method as defined in claim 1, wherein the document includes a multimedia identifier that is selectable to deliver data to a remote computer system.

3. A method as recited in claim 1, wherein each video image spans an entire length and width of a display.

4. A method as recited in claim 1, wherein the document is a hyper text markup language document.

5. A method as recited in claim 1, wherein the document includes a multimedia identifier that is selectable to deliver data to be displayed in the same window as each video image of the broadcast data.

6. A method as recited in claim 1, wherein each video image from the broadcast data comprises a video image from a television program.