Apparatus and method for blocking television commercials and providing an archive interrogation program

• US 7,454,772 B2
• Filed: 07/25/2002
• Issued: 11/18/2008
• Est. Priority Date: 07/25/2002
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Kyndryl Incorporated
• Original Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Inventors: Hamilton, Rick Allen II, Fellenstein, Craig William
• Primary Examiner(s): Kelley; Chris
• Assistant Examiner(s): Baig; Sahar A
• Application Number:
  US10/205,550
• Publication Number:
  US 20040019905A1
• Time in Patent Office: 2,308 Days
• Field of Search: 725/32, 725/39, 725/25, 725/46, 725/119, 725/153, 725/141, 358/908, 707/103, 707/104, 455/4, 455/5, 348/10, 348/12, 348/907
• US Class Current: 725/32
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/4532 involving end-user characteristics, e.g. viewer profile, preferences monitoring of user activities for profile generation for accessing a video database G06F16/739; user profiles in network data switching protocols H04L67/306; processing of user preferences or user profiles in wireless networks H04W8/18
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/454 Content or additional data filtering, e.g. blocking advertisements
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/4542 Blocking scenes or portions of the received content, e.g. censoring scenes
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/458 Scheduling content for creating a personalised stream, e.g. by combining a locally stored advertisement with an incoming stream; Updating operations, e.g. for OS modules ; time-related management operations arrangements for replacing or switching information during the broadcast or during the distribution H04H20/10
• 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 21/4828 for searching program descriptors retrieval of video data G06F16/739
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/60 Network structure or processes for video distribution between server and client or between remote clients; Control signalling between clients, server and network components; Transmission of management data between server and client , e.g. sending from server to client commands for recording incoming content stream; Communication details between server and client
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/812 involving advertisement data advertising per se G06Q30/02
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/854 Content authoring
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 7/163 by receiver means only

Abstract

An apparatus and method is disclosed for blocking specific television commercials from the viewer'"'"'s television based upon the characteristics of the television commercial and a program to place the blocked television commercials into an archive. An archive interrogation program then acquires the users search criteria and sends the search criteria to the content search program for a list of matches. The matches are displayed to the user and the user can select a segment for viewing.

Claims

1. A method for searching blocked and archived television commercials comprising:

offering a plurality of entertainment packages from an alternate viewing provider, each of the plurality of entertainment packages adapted to fit into a time of a particular commercial;

using a television and combined with a logical unit, receiving a television program containing the particular commercial;

recognizing the particular commercial in the logical unit by an aggregation of at least one characteristic of a data sequence of the particular commercial;

responsive to a recognition of the particular commercial by the logical unit, blocking the particular commercial from the television;

saving the particular commercial to an archive containing a plurality of commercials previously blocked from the television by the logical unit;

displaying on the television a message informing a viewer that an entertainment package will be presented during a segment of time of the particular commercial, an on-screen counter showing how many seconds are left before a return to the television program, and directions to the tuner to go to a particular channel;

responsive to a user entering a search term adapted to locate a commercial in a particular area of interest, determining in the logical unit a list of commercials in the archive containing a text that matches the search term; and

responsive to the user selecting a matching commercial from the list, sending the matching commercial to an open channel on the television for viewing by the user.