Media Content Navigation Grid for Storyline Filtering
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Solution Overview
Problem
Viewers find it difficult to navigate and follow complex media content with multiple storylines, seasons, and episodes, as existing systems lack effective methods to highlight and filter content based on storylines.
Innovation Solution
A system that generates a display of media content arranged by episode, season, or storyline in a grid format, allowing users to select a storyline and filter or update the display to highlight relevant content, using storyline identifiers, episode identifiers, and time indicators.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Loss of information
If media content is organized by episode and season in a comprehensive grid format, then complete content coverage is achieved, but navigation complexity increases for users trying to follow specific storylines
Solution Approach 1:
The patent segments the media content display by introducing storyline-specific filtering that divides the comprehensive episode/season grid into storyline-focused subsets. Users can filter the grid to show only episodes containing specific storyline elements (characters, locations, plot points), effectively segmenting the overwhelming full content into manageable, storyline-relevant portions without losing access to complete content coverage.
2Quantity of substance
If all episodes and seasons are displayed in the grid, then complete content is available, but the display becomes overwhelming and difficult to navigate
Solution Approach 1:
The patent implements dynamic filtering capabilities that allow the display to adapt between showing all content and showing filtered content based on user needs. The system dynamically adjusts the displayed grid by applying filters for specific storylines, characters, or plot points, transforming the static overwhelming display into a dynamic, user-adapted view that maintains content completeness while reducing visual complexity.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent adds a new dimension to the traditional episode/season grid by incorporating storyline attributes as filterable criteria. This transforms the basic two-dimensional episode grid into a multi-dimensional navigation space where users can filter along storyline-related dimensions (characters, locations, plot points), effectively organizing content without increasing display clutter.
3Ease of operation
If storyline filtering is added to help users navigate, then navigation ease improves, but system complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent uses metadata copying and tagging approaches where storyline information (characters, locations, plot points) is copied into structured fields associated with each episode. This allows the filtering system to operate on pre-extracted metadata rather than analyzing full episode content, significantly reducing system complexity while enabling sophisticated storyline-based navigation and filtering capabilities.
Data Source
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AI summary
The system generates a display providing storyline information. The display includes, for example, a plurality of storyline identifiers, a plurality of time period indicators, and a plurality of episode indicators. Episode indicators indicate an episode having a segment of the storyline corresponding to a storyline identifier. The system may receive a user input selecting a storyline, or further filtering an existing storyline to tailor the displayed information more closely to a storyline of interest. The system updates the display to each reflect segments within episodes corresponding to the selected storyline identifier. The display may include a grid, with the storyline identifiers arranged along one axis and the time period indicators arranged along a different axis. The system may process metadata to determine storylines, and filter what information is displayed based on user input, the metadata, or both. Storylines include, for example, characters, locations, plots, teams, players, or other attributes.