System and method for delivering digital content

• US 8,234,386 B2
• Filed: 11/17/2008
• Issued: 07/31/2012
• Est. Priority Date: 11/23/2007
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Original Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Inventors: Collet, Jean-Luc, Drouet, Francois-Xavier, Lanne, Fabien
• Primary Examiner(s): Nguyen, Thuong
• Application Number:
  US12/271,956
• Publication Number:
  US 20090138604A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,352 Days
• Field of Search: 709/227, 709/231, 725/2, 725/4, 725/11, 725/32, 725/42, 725/86, 370/386
• US Class Current: 709/227
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/02 Marketing; Price estimation or determination; Fundraising
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/23424 involving splicing one content stream with another content stream, e.g. for inserting or substituting an advertisement
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/2387 Stream processing in response to a playback request from an end-user, e.g. for trick-play
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/25891 being end-user preferences retrieval of video data in a video database based on user preferences G06F16/739; arrangements for recognizing users' preferences H04H60/46; 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 21/262 Content or additional data distribution scheduling, e.g. sending additional data at off-peak times, updating software modules, calculating the carousel transmission frequency, delaying a video stream transmission, generating play-lists scheduling strategies for dispatcher in multiprogramming arrangements G06F9/4881; arrangements for scheduling broadcast services or broadcast-related services H04H60/06; flow control in packet networks H04L47/10; establishing a time schedule or organising the servicing of application requests H04L67/62
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/44016 involving splicing one content stream with another content stream, e.g. for substituting a video clip
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/47202 for requesting content on demand, e.g. video on demand
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/6587 Control parameters, e.g. trick play commands, viewpoint selection
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/812 involving advertisement data advertising per se G06Q30/02
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 7/17336 Handling of requests in head-ends

Abstract

A system for delivering digital content to user devices. The system includes a content delivery server for establishing respective sessions with the user devices and for delivering streams of content to the user devices during the sessions according to a streaming protocol. An asset server is communicatively coupled to the content delivery server through an asset protocol for maintaining an asset scheduling table including asset entries, each asset entry including an asset identifier identifying a given asset in association with a starting time parameter, user identifiers identifying at least one target user device, and a set of session identifiers each identifying a session established with a target user device identified by the user identifiers. The content delivery server inserts, for each asset entry in the asset scheduling table, and for each session identified by a session identifier in the asset entry, the asset identified by the asset identifier of the asset entry into the stream of content delivered during the session, at a predefined insertion time.

Claims

1. A system for delivering digital content to user devices, the system comprising at least one content delivery server for establishing respective sessions with the user devices and for delivering streams of content to the user devices during the sessions according to a streaming protocol, the system further comprising:

at least one computing device, including;

an asset server communicatively coupled to the at least one content delivery server through an asset protocol for maintaining an asset scheduling table including asset entries, each asset entry comprising an asset identifier identifying a given asset in association with a starting time parameter, user identifiers identifying at least one target user device, and a set of session identifiers each identifying a session established with a target user device identified by the user identifiers, the asset server further comprising an auxiliary table including all assets, each asset including a duration parameter indicating a duration of the asset, a keyword parameter indicating a list of keywords associated with content of the asset, and a rating parameter indicating a user restriction for the asset;

the at least one content delivery server being further adapted, for each asset entry in the asset scheduling table, and for each session identified by a session identifier in the asset entry, to insert the asset identified by the asset identifier of the asset entry into the stream of content delivered during the session, at a predefined insertion time;

wherein each asset entry of the asset scheduling table includes a control parameter, the content delivery server being further adapted to decide, for each asset entry, whether to disable or enable user interaction with the content delivery server during asset streaming, based on the value of the control parameter of the asset entry, wherein the value of the control parameter indicates whether the target user is able to skip the asset streaming.

2. The system of claim 1, wherein the at least one content delivery server is arranged, in response to a session being established with a user device, to determine whether the scheduling table contains an asset entry comprising a user identifier identifying the user device, and if so for updating the session identifier corresponding to the target user device in the asset entry.

3. The system of claim 1, wherein the asset protocol comprises request and response message pairs for communication between the asset server and the content delivery server.

4. The system of claim 1, further comprising a storage system for storing the assets.

5. The system of claim 1, wherein the predefined insertion time at which the content delivery server inserts the asset identified by the asset identifier is determined from the starting time parameter associated with the asset entry.

6. The system of claim 5, wherein each stream of content delivered by the content delivery server is encoded according to an MPEG technology, and the predefined insertion time is defined as a next MPEG I-Frame, after the starting time value.

7. The system of claim 1, wherein the asset insertion performed by the content delivery server comprises pausing the stream of content being delivered at the insertion time, streaming the asset identified by the asset identifier, and restarting the delivery of the stream of content from the insertion time.

8. The system of claim 1, wherein the asset protocol provides an insertion command for insertion of an asset entry in the asset scheduling table, the insertion command including an asset identifier identifying the asset that is to be inserted, a starting time parameter, user identifiers identifying at least one target user device, and a set of session identifiers each identifying a session established with a target user device identified by the user identifiers.

9. The system of claim 1, wherein the asset protocol provides a removal command for removal of an asset entry from the asset scheduling table, the removal command including an asset identifier identifying the asset that is to be removed from the asset scheduling table, and user identifiers identifying at least one target user device.

10. The system of claim 1, wherein the asset protocol provides a get session identifier command designating at least one user identifier for getting the session identifiers identifying the sessions established with the target user devices identified by the at least one user identifier.

11. The system of claim 1, wherein the content delivery server is a video on demand server for delivering preselected video streams to the user devices.

12. The system of claim 1, wherein the streaming protocol is a RTSP protocol.

13. A method of delivering digital content to user devices, the method comprising establishing respective sessions with the user devices and delivering streams of content during the sessions to the user devices according to a streaming protocol, wherein the method further comprises:

maintaining an asset scheduling table comprising asset entries, each asset entry comprising an asset identifier identifying a given asset in association with a starting time parameter, user identifiers identifying at least one target user device, and a set of session identifiers each identifying a session established with a target user device identified by the user identifiers;

maintaining an auxiliary table including all assets, each asset including a duration parameter indicating a duration of the asset, a keyword parameter indicating a list of keywords associated with content of the asset, and a rating parameter indicating a user restriction for the asset; and

wherein for each asset entry in the asset scheduling table, and for each session identified by a session identifier in the asset entry, inserting the asset identified by the asset identifier of the asset entry into the stream of content delivered during the session, at a predefined insertion time;

wherein each asset entry of the asset scheduling table further includes a control parameter for selectively disabling user interaction with the asset in the stream of content delivered during the session, wherein a value of the control parameter indicates whether the target user is able to skip the asset streaming.