Rovi Guides, Inc.

Sun Microsystems, Inc.

Index Systems, Inc.

United Video Properties, Inc.

Gemstar Developement Corporation

Rovl Guides, Inc.

Solano Labs, Inc.

Videoguide, Inc.

38 Studios, LLC

E Guide, Inc.

Thomas E Westberg

Douglas B Macrae

Henry C Yuen

Elsie Y Leung

Kenneth S Hancock

Thomas Edward Ward, Iii

Arthur Y Ng

Stephen R Dias

Ronald Alexander

Jonathon Sutton

P Christopher Shoaff

Shawn P O'Neil

Michael D Ellis

William L Thomas

Brian Fife

Edgar A Fereira

David Bovenschulte

Joseph DiGiovanni

Roy J Mankovitz

Edward H Frank

Daniel S Kwoh

Christopher A Thorpe

Jay Moorthi

William Josephson

Serdar Ergene

Szu-Cheng Sun

Peter Christopher Schoaff

Steven R Willis

John O'Keefe

Shawn O'Neil

Shawn O'neil

Thomas Edward Ward

Edgar A Ferieira

Edgar A Ferreira

Joseph Digiovanni

An interactive television program guide application is provided that queries a user regarding the user's interest in television programs and suggests television programs to the user based on the user's responses. The interactive television program guide application identifies a television program that is potentially of interest to the user. The interactive television program guide application then queries the user regarding the user's interest using questions that are formulated based on attributes associated with the identified television program. Using the user's responses to the questions, the interactive television program guide application identifies and suggests one or more television programs to the user.

Systems and methods for providing program suggestions in an interactive television program guide

A distributed data storage system is provided for offering shared data to one or more clients. In various embodiments, client systems operate on shared data while having a unique writeable copy of the shared data. According to one embodiment, the data storage system can be optimized for various use cases (e.g., read-mostly where writes to shared data are rare or infrequent (although writes to private data may be frequent. Some implementations of the storage system are configured to provide fault tolerance and scalability for the shared storage. For example, read-only data can be stored in (relatively) high latency, low cost, reliable storage (e.g. cloud), with multiple layers of cache supporting faster retrieval. In addition, some implementations of the data storage system offer a low-latency approach to data caching. Other embodiments improve efficiency with access modeling and conditional execution cache hints that can be distributed across the data storage system.

Systems and methods for efficient distribution of stored data objects

The present invention relates to methods and systems for extracting digital content using an interactive television application. The interactive television application may allow the user to record programs on a set-top box. The interactive television application may also allow the user to extract the audio from one of the recorded programs and transfer the extracted audio to removable media (e.g., a CD-R). The interactive television application also be configured to perform a future transfer of digital content to removable media. The future transfer may occur without requiring any further user interaction.

Systems and methods for exporting digital content using an interactive television application

A system and method for utilizing data stored in an EPG database for modifying advertisement information. In this way, a service provider and/or an advertiser can transmit a single advertisement to all the television stations regardless of their geographic location and other user specific information, and need not re-transmit the advertisement even if there is a change in the show's program description. When the advertisement is displayed, the correct updated information is retrieved from the EPG database and inserted into the advertisement. In one aspect, the present invention describes a method for modifying an advertisement in an EPG comprising the steps of: storing television schedule information in a first database; storing advertisement information in a second database; incorporating a portion of the television schedule information into a portion of the advertisement information to form a modified advertisement; and displaying the modified advertisement on a screen.

System and method for modifying advertisement responsive to EPG information

In one embodiment, the present invention is a t-commerce platform, which is linked to the content from a video signal that the user is currently watching. At some point during the broadcast of the content, a close-up of the product is shown. Simultaneous with this, a VBI-based trigger is added to the video signal of the broadcast. This trigger causes the television, a set-top box, or a similar device to capture in a memory, a 'freeze-frame' of the image being shown. This action is transparent to the user while the video being displayed on the television is continuing normally. If the user chooses to perform an interactive 'buy' transaction the saved image data is used as part of the interactive screen display.

Systems and methods for capturing and storing an image related to a media asset

Growing community of inventors

Stow, MA, United States of America

Thomas E Westberg