Parental control of displayed content using closed captioning

• US 20070204288A1
• Filed: 02/28/2006
• Published: 08/30/2007
• Est. Priority Date: 02/28/2006
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Sony Corporation (Sony Group Corp.), Sony Electronics Inc. (Sony Group Corp.)
• Original Assignee: Sony Electronics Inc. (Sony Group Corp.)
• Inventors: Candelore, Brant
• Granted Patent: US 8,185,921 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 725/28
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/426 Internal components of the client ; Characteristics thereof H04N5/44 takes precedence
• 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 21/4884 for displaying subtitles
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/8133 specifically related to the content, e.g. biography of the actors in a movie, detailed information about an article seen in a video program
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/84 Generation or processing of descriptive data, e.g. content descriptors systems specially adapted for using meta-information in broadcast systems H04H60/73
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/8456 by decomposing the content in the time domain, e.g. in time segments
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 7/163 by receiver means only

Abstract

According to one embodiment, a method for blocking scenes with objectionable content comprises receiving incoming content, namely a scene of a program. Thereafter, using closed captioning information, a determination is made if the scene of the program includes objectionable content, and if so, blocking the scene from being displayed.

Claims

1. A method comprising:

receiving incoming content intended as a scene of a program;

determining if the scene of the program includes objectionable content based on closed captioning information; and

blocking a display of the scene of the program if the scene of the program includes objectionable content based on analysis of the closed captioning information.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the scene of the program is fifteen frames of video for display.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein the scene of the program includes at least one frame of video for display.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein the determining if the scene of the program features objectionable content includes accessing the closed captioning information provided with the content and comparing the closed captioning information with prior established parental control limits.

5. The method of claim 4, wherein the comparing of the closed captioning information includes determining whether an Age-based rating assigned to the scene of the program within the closed captioning information exceeds an Age-based parental control limit being the prior established parental control limit.

6. The method of claim 5, wherein the blocking of the display of the scene includes blocking at least a portion of the scene from being displayed if the Age-based rating of the scene associated with the content exceeds the Age-based parental control limit.

7. The method of claim 4, wherein the comparing of the closed captioning information includes analyzing tag information for the scene provided in the closed captioning information, determining by analysis of the tag information if the content includes objectionable content, and blocking at least a portion of the content from being displayed if the content includes objectionable content as identified by the tag information.

8. The method of claim 1, wherein prior to substituting the main content with the replacement content, the method comprises storing markers identifying a location of objectionable content within the main content, the markers to denote portions of the main content to be substituted with the replacement content during playback from a storage device adapted to store the incoming content.

9. The method of claim 1, wherein the content is a commercial of the program to be televised.

10. A digital device comprising:

a tuner/demodulation unit adapted to receive incoming content including a scene of a program; and

a data processing unit coupled to the tuner/demodulation unit, the data processing unit to (i) determine if the scene of the program includes objectionable content that exceeds a preset rating, and (ii) block the scene of the program from being displayed if the content includes objectionable content that exceeds the preset rating.

11. The digital device of claim 10, wherein the scene of the program ranges between one and thirty frames of video for display and the preset rating is a parental control limit preset to indicate what subject matter for the content is acceptable for a viewing audience.

12. The digital device of claim 10, wherein the data processing unit includes a processor and a decoder coupled to the processor, the decoder to determine if the scene of the program includes objectionable content.

13. The digital device of claim 10, wherein the data processing unit determines if the scene of the program includes objectionable content by accessing data within the closed captioning information provided with the content and comparing the data with the preset rating.

14. The digital device of claim 13, wherein the data processing unit comparing the data with the preset rating by determining whether an Age-based rating assigned to the scene of the program associated with the content exceeds an Age-based parental control limit being the preset rating and, if so, to block the scene from being displayed.

15. The digital device of claim 13, wherein the data processing unit comparing the data with the preset rating by analyzing tag information provided with the content for the scene, determining by analysis of the tag information if the scene of the program as provided by the content includes objectionable content, and blocking the scene from being displayed if the tag information associated with the content indicates that the content includes objectionable content.

16. The digital device of claim 10, wherein the data processing unit is adapted to store markers within the content that identify a location of the objectionable content within the content, the markers to denote at least portions of the content to be blocked during playback from a storage device adapted to store the incoming content and in communication with the data processing unit.

17. A machine readable medium to store software that, if executed by logic, will cause a digital device to perform the following operations:

software code to determine if a scene of a program includes objectionable content, the scene of the program being a portion of a first stream of content received by the digital device from an external source; and

software code to block a portion of the scene from being displayed if the scene of the program includes objectionable content being content that exceeds a preset parental control limit.