Tivo Corporation

Tivo Solutions Inc.

Adeia Media Solutions Inc.

Michael Klar

Brian W Beach

James M Barton

David C Platt

Todd Kulick

Paul Stevens

Richard Lee

Adam Barry Feder

David Avraham Brown

David W Chamberlin

Andrew Martin Goodman

Kevin P Smith

David Allen Lockett

Marcel Dubois

Vin Chawla

Alain Jobart

Jonathan A Logan

Kim Liu

Jim Barton

David Chamberlin

David Platt

Kevin Smith

Todd M Kulick

A method for generating and maintaining hierarchical tags with community-based ratings is provided. Tags for media streams are organized into a hierarchical format. Users may select tags from the hierarchical tag database that describes a particular multimedia content. If the user is unable to locate a desired tag, the user may submit a new tag. Upon submission of the new tag, a librarian approves the tag before storing and placing the tag in the hierarchical tag database. Users are also able to rate the quality of the association between the tag and the multimedia content. If a tag is rated low, the tag may be removed from the hierarchical tag database. If the tag is rated highly, display of the tag in a list of tags becomes more prominent.

Hierarchical tags with community-based ratings

Enhanced trick-play modes for video content that is being streamed to a client from a server are described. In an embodiment, the enhanced trick-play modes are provided with relatively low latency and high quality using trick-play optimization techniques for a streaming environment, avoiding the need to stream the entire contents of the portions through which the viewer is fast forwarding. By employing sophisticated selection criteria of which parts of the content to download at what time, the quality of the playback experience is improved versus that which would conventionally be possible when using a simple sequential frame data download. The streaming client maintains a cache of nearby significant frames, such as nearby key frames, in forward and/or reverse directions of the current playback position, without having to download the entire portions of the video stream in which the significant frames reside. The trick-play modes utilize these frames.

Advanced trick-play modes for streaming video

A multimedia mobile personalization system provides a remote control that detects a user's electronic tag, e.g. an RFID tag. The remote control notifies a multimedia device of the user's identity. The multimedia devices tailors it operations to the user's preferences stored locally. Multimedia content such as broadcast or recorded television programs, music play lists, and the like could be sorted, displayed, or restricted, depending on the user identifier.

Multimedia mobile personalization system

A multimedia mobile personalization system allows a user to record and play multimedia content on a set top box at a location other than his home using the user's preferences from his home DVR.

A DVR, server, or other agent correlates media metadata from diverse sources, like an EPG data provider and multiple video-on-demand (VOD) service providers. Metadata sets from different sources are compared in order to attempt to identify identical programs to which the metadata sets pertain. From at least one metadata set, information about the program that the other metadata set lacks is selected. A 'canonical' data structure instance for the program is created. The information that is lacking from at least one of the metadata sources is inserted into that instance. For each source from which a program is available, the DVR stores the identity of that source on the DVR's persistent storage device in association with the canonical data structure instance for that program. The DVR receives search criteria from a user and then searches the stored canonical data structure instance for programs that satisfy the criteria.

Correlation of media metadata gathered from diverse sources

Growing community of inventors

Santa Clara, CA, United States of America

Michael Klar