Canon Kabushiki Kaisha

Marc Butler

Michael Alexander Oldfield

Farhad Fuad Islam

Dong Mei Zhang

Ryszard Kowalczyk

Mikhail Prokopenko

Wait Yat Wong

Paul Trayers

The present invention relates to a television system () and a method for automatically suggesting suitable programs to a viewer from a large number of available programs. The system () includes a DTV-agent system (). Title information and characteristics of programs are made available as EPG (Electronic Program Guide) data, which including at least one Electronic Program Guide Database (). A learning module () records characteristics associated with each program viewed by the user, and forms sets of these characteristics. The frequency of occurrence of each set is also determined. A recommendation module () uses a number of tasks to compile a list of viewer recommendations (). Various tasks are defined, with each task defining a unique combination of a manner of ordering the viewer profile (), and particular Relevance Filters for filtering the ordered viewer profile. Upon entry of a user request for a list of program recommendations (), a search is performed of the EPG data for programs with characteristics that best match sets selected by the task(s). The user is notified of the availability such programs, allowing selection of a particular program.

Television program recommendation system

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Sydney, Australia

Marc Butler