Media Guidance Application User Defined Content Routing Rules
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Solution Overview
Problem
Current media guidance applications lack the ability for users to define personalized rules for assigning specific user equipment devices as destinations for media content, leading to inefficient media content management and potential access to inappropriate content by users.
Innovation Solution
An interactive media guidance application that allows users to define rules based on conditions such as genre, theme, rating, and user preferences for assigning user equipment devices as destinations for media content, with authentication and parental control features to manage content access.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Ease of operation
If automatic device selection is implemented, then ease of operation is improved, but adaptability deteriorates because users cannot customize device assignment based on their preferences
Solution Approach 1:
The system performs preliminary actions by allowing users to pre-define their device assignment preferences and rules before actual media content scheduling occurs. The media guidance application stores these user-defined preferences and automatically applies them when scheduling recordings or content delivery, thus providing both ease of operation (automatic execution) and adaptability (user-customized rules).
2Ease of operation
If user-defined rules are allowed without authentication, then ease of operation is improved, but reliability deteriorates due to potential access to inappropriate content
Solution Approach 1:
The system introduces authentication as an intermediary step between the user and the rule definition functionality. Before allowing users to create or modify device assignment rules, the media guidance application verifies user identity and authorization status. This intermediary mechanism ensures that only authorized users can define rules, maintaining reliability and content appropriateness while still allowing ease of operation for authenticated users.
3Reliability
If centralized rule storage is implemented, then reliability is improved, but device complexity increases due to network communication requirements
Solution Approach 1:
The media guidance application serves multiple functions: it acts as both the user interface for rule definition and the centralized storage system. By consolidating these functions in a single application that runs on user equipment, the system achieves reliable centralized storage without significantly increasing overall device complexity, as the same application hardware handles both rule management and storage operations.
Data Source
AI summary
A media guidance application is provided by which users can define rules for assigning user equipment devices as destinations for media content. For example, a user may define a rule by which selected media content having attributes that satisfy a user-defined condition are downloaded, recorded, or streamed to a particular, user-specified user equipment device. The user may define and manage rules using media guidance menus, and may restrict other users from accessing the rules (e.g., parents restricting children).