Automatic delivery of personalized content to a portable media player with feedback

• US 7,653,761 B2
• Filed: 03/15/2006
• Issued: 01/26/2010
• Est. Priority Date: 03/15/2006
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: ROVI Product Corporation (Xperi Inc.)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Inventors: Juster, Josh, Giambalvo, Daniel, Farouki, Karim, Roup, Oliver R., McNulty, Mark
• Primary Examiner(s): Tsai; Henry W. H.
• Assistant Examiner(s): Nam; Hyun
• Application Number:
  US11/375,772
• Publication Number:
  US 20070220552A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,413 Days
• Field of Search: 710/18, 386/83
• US Class Current: 710/18
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/4334 Recording operations recording of a television signal H04N5/76; arrangements for recording or accumulating broadcast information or broadcast-related information H04H60/27
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/4335 Housekeeping operations, e.g. prioritizing content for deletion because of storage space restrictions storage management, e.g. defragmentation G06F3/0604; unloading stored programs G06F9/445; storage management in file systems G06F16/10; buffering arrangements in a network node or in an end terminal in packet networks H04L49/90
• 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 21/4532 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 21/47202 for requesting content on demand, e.g. video on demand
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/4755 for defining user preferences, e.g. favourite actors or genre retrieval personalisation and generation of user profiles for the retrieval of video data G06F16/739; user profiles in network data switching protocols H04L67/306
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/4825 using a list of items to be played back in a given order, e.g. playlists
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/6582 Data stored in the client, e.g. viewing habits, hardware capabilities, credit card number arrangements where receivers interact with the broadcast H04H20/38
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/812 involving advertisement data advertising per se G06Q30/02

Abstract

Automatic download of personalized media content to a portable media device based on user preferences is disclosed. A media service can evaluate content on a user'"'"'s media device as well as user action related thereto to infer the user'"'"'s preferences, and can automatically aggregate and download content that is relevant to the user'"'"'s tastes. The user can subscribe to, for example, playlists generated by the media service, another user'"'"'s playlist(s), a simulated radio station, etc., and can receive content updates thereto at predefined intervals and/or upon release of the updates. In this manner, the user can periodically receive media content that is personalized to the user without requiring the user to explicitly request the content or synchronize to a PC.

Claims

1. A system that facilitates automatically delivering personalized content to a media device, comprising:

a computing system that implements a media service to provide media content for download to a media device of a user who subscribes to said media service, wherein media content that is downloaded to the media device comprises (i) user-downloaded media content that is explicitly downloaded by the user from the media service and (ii) personalized media content that the media service automatically compiles and pushes to the media device without an explicit request by the user, wherein;

the media service automatically compiles new personalized media content for the user based on at least one of (i) a recommendation of content from another user who subscribes to said media service and (ii) usage data that the media service periodically receives from the media device, said usage data comprising information related to user actions with regard to downloaded media content on the media device;

the media service automatically pushes the new personalized media content to the media device of the user, wherein the new personalized media content is automatically stored in currently available memory associated with the media device, and wherein if no memory is currently available, then automatically stored in memory that is made available by selectively removing stored media content with lowest priority among the currently stored media content of the media device; and

stored media content is prioritized based at least on whether the stored media content is user-downloaded media content or personalized media content that was automatically pushed to the media device, such that stored personalized media content is selectively removed in favor of preserving user-downloaded media content stored on the media device.

2. The system of claim 1, wherein the media service automatically pushes new personalized media content to the media device upon the occurrence of a triggering event.

3. The system of claim 2, wherein the triggering event comprises a predetermined time of day.

4. The system of claim 2, wherein the triggering event comprises a recommendation of content by at least one of the media service, another subscriber approved by the user, or a content editor approved by the user.

5. The system of claim 2, wherein the triggering event is an update of a playlist to which the user has subscribed and wherein the update is included in personalized content that is pushed to the media device of the user.

6. The system of claim 2, wherein the triggering event is a new release of media content preferred by the user and wherein the newly-released media content is included in personalized content that is pushed to the media device of the user.

7. The system of claim 2, wherein the triggering event is a newly-released playlist created by a party to which the user has subscribed.

8. The system of claim 1, wherein the usage data further comprises a listing of all media content currently stored in a media library associated with the media device.

9. The system of claim 1, wherein the usage data further comprises rating information for media content currently stored by the media device.

17. The system of claim 1, further comprising at least one media device to access the media service over a communications network.

18. The system of claim 1, wherein the media content provided by the media service includes at least one of music content, video content and game content.

19. The system of claim 17, wherein the at least one device comprises a media library associated therewith, wherein downloaded media content is stored in the media library associated with the at least one media device, and wherein the at least one media device creates sufficient available storage at the media library by presenting the user a list of stored media content which is not user-downloaded media content, receiving from the user an indication of content from the list of stored media content that is designated by the user for removal, and removing the designated content from the media library.

10. A computer-implemented method of automatically downloading personalized media content to a user device, comprising:

sending usage data from a user device to a media service, wherein the usage data comprises information related to user actions with regard to a plurality of media files stored in the user device, the user actions comprising one or more of playing, skipping, or downloading one or more media files, and wherein the stored media files include (i) user-downloaded media files explicitly downloaded by the user from the media service and (ii) personalized media files automatically compiled by the media service and pushed to the media device without an explicit request by the user;

assigning scores to respective media files stored in the user device, wherein a score is assigned to a stored media file based at least on whether the stored media file is a personalized media file automatically pushed from the media service or a user-downloaded media file, wherein user-downloaded media files are assigned respective scores that are higher than respective scores assigned to personalized media files automatically pushed from the media service

receiving new personalized media files pushed from the media service, wherein said new personalized media files are automatically compiled by the media service based on at least one of the usage data sent from the user device and a user recommendation for one or more media files not stored in the user device and automatically pushed to the user device upon an occurrence of a triggering event;

determining whether the user device has sufficient available memory to store the new personalized media files pushed from the media service;

storing the new personalized media files in memory of the user device, if there is sufficient available memory;

if the user device does not have sufficient available memory to store the new personalized media files pushed from the media service, then liberating sufficient memory to store the new personalized media files by selectively deleting one or more stored media files having lowest assigned scores among the media files currently stored in the user device; and

periodically sending updated usage data to the media service.

11. The method of claim 10, wherein the triggering event comprises at least one of a predetermined time, an update to a playlist to which the user has subscribed, and a release of a new playlist that has been generated by a party to which the user has subscribed.

12. The method of claim 10, wherein the triggering event comprises at least one of a recommendation by the media service and a recommendation by a party that has been approved by the user.

13. The method of claim 10, wherein a score is assigned to a stored media file based at least on one or more additional factors including at least one of an amount of time the media file has been stored on the user device, a number of times the media file has been reviewed by the user, a number of times the media file has been skipped by the user, and a user rating of the media file.

14. The method of claim 13, further comprising obtaining user approval for selectively deleting stored media files having lowest overall scores.

16. The method of claim 10, wherein the triggering event comprises identifying an update to a playlist to which the user has previously subscribed and wherein personalized media files pushed from the media service include one or more media files in the updated playlist that are not stored in the user device or one or more media files stored on the media device for deletion that were removed from the playlist in the update thereto.

20. The method of claim 10, wherein the media files comprise one or more of audio files, video files, or game files.

15. A method of automatically downloading personalized media content to a media device, comprising:

determining preference information relating to respective media objects stored on the media device based at least in part on relative play frequencies of the respective media objects, relative skip frequencies of the respective media objects, download frequencies of media objects related to the respective media objects, and user relevance scores provided for respective media objects;

identifying a user recommendation for one or more media objects not stored in the media device;

queuing one or more new personalized media objects for automatic download to the media device based upon the preference information and the user recommendation;

generating priority information for respective media objects currently stored on the media device at least in part by assigning a primary priority to stored media objects that are user-downloaded media objects explicitly downloaded by the user from the media service and assigning a secondary priority to stored media objects that are personalized media objects automatically compiled by the media service and pushed to the media device without an explicit request by the user

determining whether sufficient available storage capacity exists on said media device for storing the queued one or more new personalized media objects;

if sufficient available storage capacity does not exist on said media device, removing from the media device, one or more stored media objects that are least preferred among a set of currently stored media objects to which the secondary priority has been assigned, based at least in part on the preference information; and

automatically pushing the queued one or more new personalized media objects to the media device upon a triggering event.