System and method for delivering missed portions of media assets to interested viewers

Abstract

Systems and methods are described herein for efficiently “catching-up” a user that is interested in a media asset when that user has missed a portion of the media asset while consuming the media asset together with other people. The system may detect that multiple people are consuming a media asset and may determine, based on a respective profile of each person, whether that person is interested in the media asset. When the system detects that the user is disregarding the media asset, the missed portion of the media asset is stored if the user is interested in the media asset, and is not stored if the user is not interested in the media asset.

Description

[0001]This application claims the benefit of U.S. Provisional Application No. 62 / 334,202, filed May 10, 2016, the disclosure of which is hereby incorporated by reference herein in its entirety.BACKGROUND[0002]People often get together to consume content together (e.g., watch sporting events or a movie). While consuming content, a person may become distracted by, for example, a phone call or a text message, or may leave the room for a short time period. When a person gets distracted, that person may miss part of the content that is being consumed. Traditional systems deal with this situation by recording and storing a latest portion of the content being viewed (e.g., the last shown 30 minutes of a movie that is playing). When the person who left the room comes back, that person is able to “catch up” by rewinding the movie until a point when he or she became distracted and then missed watching the missed portion. However, those systems store or record the missed portions without regar...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

The patent describes a system and method for helping users who may have missed part of a media asset while watching it with others. The system detects if the user is likely to be interested in the media asset and stores the missed portion of the media asset accordingly. The user can then access the stored portion at a later time to catch up without others having to watch it again. Additionally, the system can play back the stored portion at increased speed to make it faster for the user to catch up to the current time in the media asset.

Problems solved by technology

While consuming content, a person may become distracted by, for example, a phone call or a text message, or may leave the room for a short time period.

When a person gets distracted, that person may miss part of the content that is being consumed.

However, those systems store or record the missed portions without regard to whether the person who is disregarding the media asset is likely to want to consume that missed portion.

Thus, traditional systems are inefficient and ineffective at least because they indiscriminately record or store content without regard as to whether that content is likely to be consumed, thereby wasting resources (e.g., tuner time to record the content and storage space to store it).

Moreover, as the person who missed a portion of the media asset is “catching up” to the current time, other viewers are forced to consume the same portion of the content again.

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