Automated Content Identification for Binge Watching
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing television and media playback systems lack efficient automated processes for skipping repetitive portions of programs during 'binge watching' sessions, leading to unnecessary viewing time and viewer frustration.
Innovation Solution
The implementation of automated processes in television receivers and media players that detect and skip repetitive program segments, such as opening and closing credits, using digital fingerprints, presentation time stamps, or anchor points within the content, allowing viewers to progress through multiple episodes quickly.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Productivity
If automated processes detect and skip repetitive program segments, then viewing time is reduced and productivity is improved, but device complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The system performs preliminary analysis of program content during encoding or pre-processing to identify repetitive segments and store their temporal locations. This allows the playback device to skip directly to non-repetitive content without requiring complex real-time analysis during viewing, thus improving productivity while limiting device complexity.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent introduces an intermediary data structure (temporal location markers or fingerprints) that bridges the content and the playback device. These markers serve as a simplified interface that enables the device to skip repetitive content without needing to understand or analyze the actual repetitive patterns during playback, reducing device complexity.
2Ease of operation
If the system automatically skips repetitive content, then ease of operation is improved, but measurement precision requirements increase
Solution Approach 1:
The system creates simplified copies or representations of content segments (such as audio fingerprints, visual hashes, or temporal markers) that can be quickly compared and identified. These copies enable automated detection of repetitive content with high precision without requiring the full original content to be analyzed, thus improving ease of operation while managing measurement precision requirements.
Data Source
AI summary
“Binge watching” of multiple episodes of a program is improved by the player device automatically skipping repeated portions of the program. Opening and closing credit scenes, for example, can be automatically skipped to thereby allow the viewer to progress through the entire season of programming at an even faster rate than was previously thought possible. Programming to be skipped may be identified by detecting audio or other digital fingerprints in the content itself, for example. Content to be skipped may be identified to the playback device according to presentation time stamp (PTS) or other time markers.