Method and apparatus for multi-experience translation of media content with sensor sharing

• US 9,237,362 B2
• Filed: 08/11/2011
• Issued: 01/12/2016
• Est. Priority Date: 08/11/2011
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: AT&T Intellectual Property I LP (AT&T, Inc.)
• Original Assignee: AT&T Intellectual Property I LP (AT&T, Inc.)
• Inventors: Basso, Andrea, Hines, Tara, Ivanov, Aleksey, Mikan, Jeffrey, Morris, Nadia
• Primary Examiner(s): Dyer, Andrew
• Application Number:
  US13/208,037
• Publication Number:
  US 20130042174A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,615 Days
• Field of Search: 715/255, 715/273, 715/275
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/101 Collaborative creation, e.g. joint development of products or services
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/233 Processing of audio elementary streams monitoring, identification or recognition of audio in broadcast systems H04H60/58
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/2343 involving reformatting operations of video signals for distribution or compliance with end-user requests or end-user device requirements video transcoding H04N19/40; media packet handling at the source H04L65/762
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/234309 by transcoding between formats or standards, e.g. from MPEG-2 to MPEG-4 or from Quicktime to Realvideo conversion of standards in analog television systems H04N7/01
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/23439 for generating different versions
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/25841 involving the geographical location of the client retrieval from the Internet by querying based on geographical locations G06F16/9537; arrangements for identifying locations of receiving stations in broadcast systems H04H60/51; location of the user terminal in data switching networks H04L67/52; services making use of the location of users or terminals in wireless networks H04W4/02; locating users or terminals in wireless networks H04W64/00
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/42201 biosensors, e.g. heat sensor for presence detection, EEG sensors or any limb activity sensors worn by the user input arrangements for interaction with the human body based on nervous system activity detection G06F3/015
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/42202 environmental sensors, e.g. for detecting temperature, luminosity, pressure, earthquakes
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/437 Interfacing the upstream path of the transmission network, e.g. for transmitting client requests to a VOD server flow control in data networks H04L47/10; streaming protocols, e.g. RTP or RTCP, H04L65/65; scheduling or organising the servicing of application requests in data packet switching networks H04L67/60
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/442 Monitoring of processes or resources, e.g. detecting the failure of a recording device, monitoring the downstream bandwidth, the number of times a movie has been viewed, the storage space available from the internal hard disk arrangements for monitoring broadcast services or broadcast-related services H04H60/29; arrangements for identifying or recognising characteristics with a direct linkage to broadcast information H04H60/35; monitoring of user activities for profile generation for accessing a video database G06F16/739; monitoring in wireless networks H04W24/00
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/632 using a connection between clients on a wide area network, e.g. setting up a peer-to-peer communication via Internet for retrieving video segments from the hard-disk of other client devices broadcast-related systems characterised by transmission among terminal devices H04H60/80; distributed application using peer-to-peer [P2P] networks H04L67/104

Abstract

A method and apparatus incorporates teachings of the present disclosure and may include, for example, a method including detecting at least one of a plurality of sensor data sources for remotely capturing sensory data from a physical environment of the source device, receiving from the at least one of the plurality of sensor data sources sensory information representing the sensory data from the physical environment of the source device, identifying a plurality of characteristics of the physical environment of the source device from the received sensory information, sending to a second device media content and the sensory information representing the plurality of characteristics of the physical environment of the source device. Other embodiments are disclosed.

Claims

1. A method comprising:

detecting, by a system comprising a processor, a first audio sensory source for remotely capturing first audio information from a first physical environment associated with a recipient device;

receiving, by the system, from the first audio sensory source, the first audio information associated with the first physical environment;

receiving, by the system, image content and second audio information associated with a second physical environment, wherein the second audio information is captured at the second physical environment, the second physical environment being remote from the first physical environment;

determining, by the system, an audio difference between the first audio information at the first physical environment and the second audio information at the second physical environment, wherein the audio difference is associated with a difference between physical characteristics of the first physical environment and physical characteristics of the second physical environment; and

modifying, by the system, a presentation of the image content and the second audio information according to the audio difference to generate an adapted presentation of the second physical environment according to the audio difference, so that physical characteristics presented in the adapted presentation differ from the physical characteristics of the second physical environment.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the first audio sensory source comprises a set-top box, a mobile communication device, or a portable computer device, and wherein the recipient device comprises a set-top box, a mobile communication device, a portable computer device, or a combination thereof.

3. The method of claim 1, further comprising receiving, by the system, second sensory information associated with the first physical environment of the recipient device, wherein the second sensory information comprises temperature, weather, lighting, color, images, video, audio, location information, time, season of year, aroma, or any combination thereof.

4. The method of claim 1, further comprising receiving, by the system, second sensory information associated with the second physical environment, wherein the second sensory information comprises temperature, weather, lighting, images, video, audio, location, time, aroma, or a combination thereof.

5. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

transcoding, by the system, the image content according to the audio difference, wherein the determining of the audio difference is based on metadata associated with the first audio information and the second audio information, wherein the metadata is grouped into a digital representation.

6. A recipient device, comprising:

a processor; and

a memory that stores executable instructions that, when executed by the processor, facilitate performance of operations, comprising;

transmitting a request for sensory information;

receiving, responsive to the request, first audio information from a first sensory source located at a first physical environment of the recipient device, wherein the first sensory source captures at least the first audio information at the first physical environment;

receiving image content and second audio information associated with a second physical environment, wherein the second audio information is captured at the second physical environment, the second physical environment being remote from the first physical environment;

determining at least an audio difference between the first audio information at the first physical environment and the second audio information at the second physical environment, wherein the audio difference is associated with a difference between physical characteristics of the first physical environment and physical characteristics of the second physical environment; and

modifying a presentation of the image content and the second audio information to generate an adapted presentation of the second physical environment according to at least the audio difference between the first audio information and the second audio information, so that physical characteristics presented in the adapted presentation differ from the physical characteristics of the second physical environment.

7. The recipient device of claim 6, wherein the executable instructions further facilitate the performance of operations comprising:

receiving first visual information from a second sensory source associated with the first physical environment of the recipient device;

receiving second visual information associated with the second physical environment; and

determining a visual difference between the first visual information and second visual information associated with the second physical environment, wherein the image content is modified according to the visual difference.

8. The recipient device of claim 6, wherein the executable instructions further facilitate the performance of operations comprising:

receiving an offer of sensory data broadcast from a second sensory source associated with the first physical environment of the recipient device; and

sending a response to the second sensory source to establish communications with the second sensory source.

9. The recipient device of claim 6, wherein the executable instructions further facilitate the performance of operations comprising detecting the first sensory source by way of a wireless communication interface conforming to a radio frequency identifier communication protocol, a wireless fidelity communication protocol, a cordless phone communication protocol, a cellular phone communication protocol, or any combination thereof.

10. The recipient device of claim 6, wherein the executable instructions further facilitate the performance of operations comprising:

capturing first non-audio sensory data associated with the first physical environment of the recipient device by way of sensory inputs of the recipient device.

11. The recipient device of claim 10, wherein the first non-audio sensory data comprises temperature, weather, lighting, color, images, video, location information, time, season of year, aroma of the recipient device, or a combination thereof.

12. The recipient device of claim 10, wherein the executable instructions further facilitate the performance of operations comprising:

receiving second non-audio sensory data associated with the second physical environment, wherein the second non-audio sensory data comprises temperature, weather, lighting, images, video, location, time, aroma or any combination thereof;

determining a non-audio difference between the first non-audio sensory data and the second non-audio sensory data; and

modifying the presentation of the image content according to the non-audio difference.

13. The recipient device of claim 6, wherein the first sensory source is located at a set-top box, a mobile communication device, or a portable computer device, and wherein the recipient device comprises a set-top box, a mobile communication device, a portable computer device, or a combination thereof.

14. The recipient device of claim 6, wherein the executable instructions further facilitate the performance of operations comprising:

transcoding the image content according to the audio difference.

15. The recipient device of claim 6, wherein the executable instructions further facilitate the performance of operations comprising:

adapting a user interface of the recipient device according to the audio difference.

16. A non-transitory machine-readable storage device comprising executable instructions which, when executed by a processor, facilitate performance of operations comprising:

detecting a first sensory source for remotely capturing sensory data from a first physical environment associated with a recipient device;

receiving, from the first sensory source, first audio information and first image content captured at the first physical environment;

receiving, from a mobile phone device, via a cellular network, second image content and second audio information associated with a second physical environment of the mobile phone device, wherein the second image content and the second audio information is captured at the second physical environment of the mobile phone device, the second physical environment being remote from the first physical environment;

determining an image difference between the first image content at the first physical environment and the second image content at the second physical environment, wherein the image difference is associated with a difference between physical characteristics of the first physical environment and physical characteristics of the second physical environment;

identifying a presentation element associated with the second image content; and

adapting a user interface of the presentation element to modify a presentation of the second image content to generate an adapted presentation of the second physical environment by the presentation element according to the image difference, so that physical characteristics presented in the adapted presentation differ from the physical characteristics of the second physical environment.

17. The non-transitory machine-readable storage device of claim 16, wherein the operations further comprise:

broadcasting a request for the first audio information to the first sensory source, wherein the detecting of the first sensory source comprises receiving a response to the request.

18. The non-transitory machine-readable storage device of claim 16, wherein the operations further comprise:

receiving an offer of the first audio information that is broadcast from the first sensory source; and

sending a response to the offer.

19. The non-transitory machine-readable storage device of claim 16, wherein the detecting the first sensory source is by way a wireless communication interface conforming to a radio frequency identifier communication protocol, a wireless fidelity communication protocol, a cordless phone communication protocol, a cellular phone communication protocol, or any combination thereof.

20. The non-transitory machine-readable storage device of claim 16, wherein the operations further comprise capturing second sensory data associated with the first physical environment of the recipient device by way of sensory inputs of the recipient device.