Customizing DVR functionality

• US 9,837,122 B2
• Filed: 06/30/2015
• Issued: 12/05/2017
• Est. Priority Date: 03/01/2006
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: TiVo Solutions Inc. (Adeia Inc.)
• Original Assignee: TiVo Solutions Inc. (Adeia Inc.)
• Inventors: Barton, James, Beach, Brian, Schmidt, Margret, Poniatowski, Robert F., Glennon, Shelly
• Primary Examiner(s): MENGESHA, MULUGETA A
• Application Number:
  US14/788,355
• Publication Number:
  US 20150302891A1
• Time in Patent Office: 889 Days
• Field of Search: 725 25, 725 28, 725 32, 725 34
• CPC Class Codes: G11B 27/005 Reproducing at a different information rate from the information rate of recording for television signals H04N5/783
• CPC Class Codes: G11B 27/105 of operating discs
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/4112 having fewer capabilities than the client, e.g. thin client having less processing power or no tuning capabilities
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/4147 PVR [Personal Video Recorder] H04N5/76 takes precedence ; arrangements for broadcast with accumulation-type receivers H04H20/40
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/42646 for reading from or writing on a non-volatile solid state storage medium, e.g. DVD, CD-ROM
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/44008 involving operations for analysing video streams, e.g. detecting features or characteristics in the video stream arrangements characterised by components specially adapted for monitoring, identification or recognition of video in broadcast systems H04H60/59
• 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 21/441 Acquiring end-user identification , e.g. using personal code sent by the remote control or by inserting a card
• 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 21/4542 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 21/47 End-user applications
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/47214 for content reservation or setting reminders; for requesting event notification, e.g. of sport results or stock market stock exchange data over packet-switching network H04L12/1804; push services over packet-switching network H04L12/1859; notification of incoming messages in packet switching networks H04L51/224
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/4751 for defining user accounts, e.g. accounts for children
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/4753 for user identification, e.g. by entering a PIN or password cryptographic authentication protocols H04L9/32; networks authentication protocols H04L63/08
• 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 21/488 Data services, e.g. news ticker systems specially adapted for using meteorological information in broadcast systems H04H60/71
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/812 involving advertisement data advertising per se G06Q30/02
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 5/76 Television signal recording
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 5/765 Interface circuits between an apparatus for recording and another apparatus
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 5/775 : between a recording apparatus and a television receiver
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 5/781 : on disks or drums
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 5/85 : on discs or drums
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 7/163 : by receiver means only
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 9/7921 : for more than one processing mode
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 9/8042 : involving data reduction

Abstract

Techniques described herein automatically identify, in a multimedia content, an advertiser from which an advertisement in the multimedia content originates and/or a brand to which the advertisement pertains. The system determines whether the identified advertiser and/or identified brand is specified in a not to be displayed list and if so, performs at least one of: presents alternative content during the time interval that the advertisement occupies in the multimedia content or skips over the advertisement in the multimedia content.

Claims

1. A method comprising:

at a multimedia device, storing information that specifies one or more words that are known to occur in advertisements;

based on inspecting captioning data that accompanies multimedia content, the multimedia device locating within the captioning data the one or more words specified in the information;

based at least partially on locating the one or more words in the captioning data, automatically identifying in the multimedia content, by the multimedia device, an advertisement that is associated with the one or more words;

in response to identifying the advertisement associated with the one or more words, while playing the multimedia content at the multimedia device, automatically skipping over the advertisement in the multimedia content.

2. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

the multimedia device determining a most recently specified mode of operation that the multimedia device has been instructed to operate in;

the multimedia device automatically skipping over the advertisement only when the most recently specified mode of operation is a particular mode of operation.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein the one or more words are one or more words known to occur in an advertisement from a specific advertiser.

4. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

determining a user identifier for a current user of the multimedia device;

wherein the multimedia device is configured to skip different advertisements for different determined user identifiers.

5. The method of claim 1, further comprising automatically skipping over the advertisement based on data indicating that a user of the multimedia device has paid a fee.

6. The method of claim 1, further comprising presenting, during a time interval that the advertisement occupies in the multimedia content, an alternative advertisement of a plurality of alternative advertisements, wherein the alternative advertisement is selected based in part on a priority list that specifies an order in which the plurality of alternative advertisements are to be presented.

7. One or more non-transitory computer-readable media storing instructions that, when executed by one or more computing devices, cause performance of:

at a multimedia device, storing information that specifies one or more words that are known to occur in advertisements;

based on inspecting captioning data that accompanies multimedia content, the multimedia device locating within the captioning data the one or more words specified in the information;

based at least partially on locating the one or more words in the captioning data, automatically identifying in the multimedia content, by the multimedia device, an advertisement that is associated with the one or more words;

in response to identifying the advertisement associated with the one or more words, while playing the multimedia content at the multimedia device, automatically skipping over the advertisement in the multimedia content.

8. The one or more non-transitory computer-readable media of claim 7, wherein the instructions, when executed by the one or more computing devices, further cause performance of:

the multimedia device determining a most recently specified mode of operation that the multimedia device has been instructed to operate in;

the multimedia device automatically skipping over the advertisement only when the most recently specified mode of operation is a particular mode of operation.

9. The one or more non-transitory computer-readable media of claim 7, wherein the one or more words are one or more words known to occur in an advertisement from a specific advertiser.

10. The one or more non-transitory computer-readable media of claim 7, wherein the instructions, when executed by the one or more computing devices, further cause performance of:

determining a user identifier for a current user of the multimedia device;

wherein the multimedia device is configured to skip different advertisements for different determined user identifiers.

11. The one or more non-transitory computer-readable media of claim 7, wherein the instructions, when executed by the one or more computing devices, further cause performance of:

automatically skipping over the advertisement based on data indicating that a user of the multimedia device has paid a fee.

12. The one or more non-transitory computer-readable media of claim 7, further comprising instructions that, when executed by the one or more computing devices, that cause performance of presenting, during a time interval that the advertisement occupies in the multimedia content, an alternative advertisement of a plurality of alternative advertisements, wherein the alternative advertisement is selected based in part on a priority list that specifies an order in which the plurality of alternative advertisements are to be presented.

13. An apparatus comprising:

a module, implemented at least partially by hardware, configured to store information that specifies one or more words that are known to occur in advertisements;

a module, implemented at least partially by hardware, configured to, based on inspecting captioning data that accompanies multimedia content, locate within the captioning data the one or more words specified in the information;

a module, implemented at least partially by hardware, configured to, based at least partially on locating the one or more words in the captioning data, automatically identify in the multimedia content an advertisement that is associated with the one or more words;

a module, implemented at least partially by hardware, configured to, in response to identifying the advertisement associated with the one or more words, while playing the multimedia content, automatically skip over the advertisement in the multimedia content.

14. The apparatus of claim 13, further comprising:

a module, implemented at least partially by hardware, configured to, determine a most recently specified mode of operation that the multimedia device has been instructed to operate in;

a module, implemented at least partially by hardware, configured to automatically skip over the advertisement only when the most recently specified mode of operation is a particular mode of operation.

15. The apparatus of claim 13, wherein the one or more words are one or more words known to occur in an advertisement from a specific advertiser.

16. The apparatus of claim 13, further comprising:

a module, implemented at least partially by hardware, configured to determine a user identifier for a current user of the multimedia device and skip different advertisements for different determined user identifiers.

17. The apparatus of claim 13, further comprising:

a module, implemented at least partially by hardware, configured to automatically skip over the advertisement based on data indicating that a user of the multimedia device has paid a fee.

18. The apparatus of claim 13, further comprising a module, implemented at least partially by hardware, configured to present, during a time interval that the advertisement occupies in the multimedia content, an alternative advertisement of a plurality of alternative advertisements, wherein the alternative advertisement is selected based in part on a priority list that specifies an order in which the plurality of alternative advertisements are to be presented.