US 2,007,053,513 · Filed 2006-08-29

The Smart TV Box That Learns What You Actually Want to Watch

Imagine a cable box that watches what you do, figures out your taste in shows, and starts personalizing everything—the menus, the suggestions, even how you control it. This patent covers a system where the box gets smarter the more you use it, adapting its interface and organizing content based on what it learns about you.

Curated and verified by the IsItPatented Editorial team

The plain-English version

What it protects

The claim covers an intelligent set-top box system that combines three core features: an adaptive user interface that models user behavior through observation and feedback; content-based media processing that analyzes audio and video to automatically generate descriptive metadata about what's playing; and media metadata processing that uses that information to organize and filter content. What's protected here is the combination of learning-based interface customization with automatic content analysis and metadata-driven media management, all working together in a single appliance.

Why it matters

This patent addresses a core problem of the 2000s digital media era: how to make interactive TV boxes useful when there's too much content to browse manually. By combining user modeling, automatic content understanding, and adaptive interfaces, it anticipated ideas now standard in streaming services—personalized recommendations, smart search, and interfaces that adapt to viewing habits. The patent also incorporates digital rights management, reflecting the era's focus on protecting licensed broadcast content.

Real-world use

When your cable box remembers that you always watch sports in the evening and starts highlighting game schedules on your guide, or when it learns your favorite channels and rearranges the menu to put them first, you're seeing this patent's adaptive interface in action.

Original USPTO abstract

An intelligent electronic appliance preferably includes a user interface, data input and/or output port, and an intelligent processor. A preferred embodiment comprises a set top box for interacting with broadband media streams, with an adaptive user interface, content-based media processing and/or media metadata processing, and telecommunications integration. An adaptive user interface models the user, by observation, feedback, and/or explicit input, and presents a user interface and/or executes functions based on the user model. A content-based media processing system analyzes media content, for example audio and video, to understand the content, for example to generate content-descriptive metadata. A media metadata processing system operates on locally or remotely generated metadata to process the media in accordance with the metadata, which may be, for example, an electronic program guide, MPEG 7 data, and/or automatically generated format. A set top box preferably includes digital trick play effects, and incorporated digital rights management features.

Patent details

Publication number: US 2,007,053,513
Filing date: 2006-08-29
Grant date: Application — not yet granted
Assignee: Hoffberg Steven M
Inventor(s): HOFFBERG STEVEN M.
CPC class: H04N7/163

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