Parental Control in Video Mosaic Environments
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Solution Overview
Problem
Current parental control systems are inadequate for supporting video mosaic screens, as they fail to effectively manage multiple video sources with varying ratings, leading to incompatible or inadequate control over content access in media systems.
Innovation Solution
An interactive content control application (ICCA) is implemented on standard user equipment, allowing users to lock and unlock individual cells within a video mosaic display, providing options for parental control settings, such as locking or unlocking channels, ratings, and titles, with the ability to synchronize locks across different parental control systems.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Adaptability or versatility
If traditional parental control systems are used with video mosaic screens, then content filtering is simplified, but the system cannot adequately support multiple video sources with varying ratings
Solution Approach 1:
The patent segments the video mosaic screen into individual cells, each representing a separate video source with its own parental control ratings. This allows the system to apply granular parental control settings to each cell independently, enabling support for multiple video sources with varying ratings while maintaining manageable complexity through modular control structures.
2Ease of operation
If video mosaic screens present multiple video sources, then user access to content is improved, but parental control compatibility deteriorates
Solution Approach 1:
The patent applies local quality by implementing parental control settings at the individual cell level rather than uniformly across the entire mosaic screen. Each cell can have its own parental control ratings and access permissions, allowing the system to maintain reliable parental control compatibility while preserving the ease of operation benefits from presenting multiple video sources simultaneously.
3Object-affected harmful factors
If parental control locks are applied to video mosaic cells, then content filtering is enhanced, but user interface complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent extracts the parental control functionality into a separate, dedicated application running on the user equipment. This modular approach enhances content filtering by providing specialized parental control features while reducing overall system complexity, as the parental control application operates independently from the video mosaic presentation system.
Data Source
AI summary
Systems and methods for providing parental control support in video mosaic environment are disclosed. Upon receiving a request for a video mosaic page, screen data, which may include parental control information, is received. The screen data may identify the video assets in the video mosaic page. A determination is made whether the video assets in the video mosaic page are locked or unlocked by parental controls in force on the user equipment. Locked assets may be masked and individually unlocked upon verification of a parental control access code or PIN. Unlocked assets may be presented in cells, or windows, in the video mosaic page and may also be individually locked and subsequently masked. A separate set of parental control settings may be maintained for video mosaic pages or the mosaic parental control commands may be resolved with system parental control settings.