Flextronics Ap, LLC

International Business Machines Corporation

Mikhail Shoykher

Sanjiv Sirpal

John Visosky

Mohammed Selim

Ron Cassar

Robert Csiki

Eduardo Diego Torres Milano

Terrance D Voth

Xuan Hu

Jeffrey Klink

Zhe Cao

A thumbnail management system is provided for an intelligent TV. Thumbnails may accumulate over time and require removal from a data storage device. Thumbnails may expire based, in part, on the type of media they represent, such as broadcast programs, movies, pay-per-view, games, and user content, such as music and images. Thumbnails may also be removed upon removal of the referencing media file.

Thumbnail cache

An intelligent television and methods for user interaction between the intelligent television and the user are provided. In general, a user is provided with navigation, notification, and setup options which enable one or more functions associated with the intelligent television. The presentation of options is based on input received by the intelligent television. As a user provides input to the intelligent television via a remote control or other input device, the intelligent television is configured to interpret the input and provide interactive functionality in the form of content presented to the display of the intelligent television.

Reminder dialog presentation and behavior

An Intelligent TV can organize metadata about media items for display in a variety of contextual panels. The panels may be interactive or informational and may provide recommendations of other media items to the user. The Intelligent TV can receive a request to activate a panel through the reception of signals from a remote control or a user interface. Based on the request, the Intelligent TV can determine the type of panel requested by the user. The layout, information, and content of a panel may depend on the context and content of the media item with focus when a user activates the panel. The Intelligent TV can retrieve metadata for the requested panel and can then transition to the desired panel and provide the retrieved metadata.

Media center panels for an intelligent television

A data service system in an Intelligent Television (TV) includes an internal content provider module configured to provide content to video hardware or display of the Intelligent TV or to a content provider module or application of the Intelligent TV and a subservice configured to provide the internet content provider module with requested data for a pre-defined data model. The internal content provider module is loaded on the Intelligent TV responsive to a user action or a schedule event on the Intelligent TV, and the internal content provider module organizes the received data from the subservice as the content according to a pre-defined format. The internal content provider module includes an EPG data provider, a media data provider, a media browser, a media scanner, and/or a thumbnail engine.

Data service

Tracking user behavior via application monitored channel changing notifications

A Digital Living Network Alliance (DLNA) subservice module for an intelligent television (TV) is configured to run periodic discovery scans for DLNA devices on a local network. The DLNA subservice module retrieves status data for DLNA devices connected to the network, updates an internal status data for the DLNA device using the retrieved data, and notifying a media scanner module of the Intelligent TV with the updated internal status data. The DLNA subservice module further works with internal provider modules of the Intelligent TV that deals with non-DLNA devices. The media browser includes a plug-in for retrieving metadata from DLNA content servers in addition to non-DLNA devices. The media scanner aggregates unified metadata retrieved from media browser content provider modules that includes data from DLNA devices.

Automated DLNA scanning with notification

Live television application information panel

A display for an Intelligent television (TV) includes a live TV display and an Electronic Programming Guide (EPG) display. The EPG display is positioned at a side of the live TV display and includes a favorite channel portion showing EPG information for a plurality of favorite tagged channels and a favorite show portion showing EPG information for a plurality of favorite tagged shows. An EPG display application generates the EPG display portion and retrieves the EPG information for the plurality of favorite tagged channels and the plurality of favorite tagged shows through an EPG subservice. The EPG subservice retrieves channels and shows tagged as favorite through a tag subservice. A second application sets and clears favorite tags for channels and shows through the tag subservice.

EPG data interface

An EPG data service for an Intelligent TV includes various of source plugins polling and retrieving updated EPG information from a plurality of respective EPG information sources and an EPG subservice receiving the EPG information retrieved by the various source plugins, aggregate the EPG information, and provide a relevant portion of the EPG information to an application of the Intelligent TV. For an EPG source with substantially no updated EPG information, the respective source plugin associates EPG information from the EPG source with dummy EPG data. The EPG subservice aggregates the updated EPG information from the plurality of EPG sources and resolve conflicts between duplicate EPG information from the plurality of EPG sources according to various rules.

Sourcing EPG data

A method and apparatus allow multiple virtual machines to share the same IP address on an external network address space. The virtual machines reside on one or more physical host computer systems. A virtual network manager handles network traffic from a physical interface on the host computer and forwards network data to the appropriate virtual machine based on a destination port number. Data packets on the external network each have a destination and source port number. The virtual network manager uses a port range table that associates each virtual machine with a range of destination port numbers for incoming data packets. Each of the virtual machines is assigned a unique destination port range in the port range table and incoming data traffic on the external network is routed to the receiving virtual machines based on the destination port number in the data packet.

Growing community of inventors

Thornhill, Canada

Mikhail Shoykher