System and method for presenting search results from multiple sources
阅读说明：本技术 用于呈现来自多个来源的搜索结果的系统和方法 (System and method for presenting search results from multiple sources ) 是由 D·G·维特克 于 2018-04-18 设计创作，主要内容包括：用于通过对从中接收到结果的来源进行排名并且不呈现来自较低排名来源的重复结果来呈现来自多个来源的搜索结果的系统和方法。例如,可以接收来自第一来源和第二来源的结果。响应于用户相对于第二来源对第一来源的偏好,来自第一来源的结果可以比来自第二来源的结果呈现在更靠近屏幕的顶部的行中。如果两个结果匹配,则结果仅显示在排名较高的来源的行中,并且在第二行中呈现与第一行中显示的任何结果都不匹配的另一个结果。(Systems and methods for presenting search results from multiple sources by ranking the sources from which the results were received and not presenting duplicate results from lower ranked sources. For example, results from a first source and a second source may be received. In response to a user's preference for a first source relative to a second source, results from the first source may be presented in a row closer to the top of the screen than results from the second source. If the two results match, the results are only displayed in the row of the higher ranked source, and another result that does not match any of the results displayed in the first row is presented in the second row.)
1. A method for presenting search results from a plurality of sources, the method comprising:
source search results from a first source and a second source based on user input;
receiving at least a first search result from a first source;
receiving at least a second search result and a third search result from a second source;
retrieving user preferences indicating preferences for the first source relative to the second source; and
generating a grid for display, the grid comprising a plurality of rows, each row comprising one or more search results, by:
generating, for display in a first row, first search results from a first source based on the user preferences;
determining that the first search result matches the second search result and that the first search result does not match the third search result; and
based on the determination, third search results are generated for display in a second row, wherein the second search results are not displayed in the second row.
2. A method for presenting search results from a plurality of sources, the method comprising:
receiving a user input;
source search results from a first source and a second source based on user input;
receiving a first search result from a first source and a second search result from a second source;
retrieving user preferences indicating preferences for the first source relative to the second source; and
generating a grid for display, the grid comprising a plurality of rows with search results, by:
determining to generate, for display in a first row, first search results from the first source based on the retrieved user preferences indicating preferences for the first source relative to second sources;
determining a first subset of first search results that are appropriate for the first row and a second subset of second search results that are appropriate for the second row, wherein the first subset includes first results of the first search results, and wherein the second subset includes second results of the second search results but not third results of the second search results;
comparing metadata associated with the first result with metadata associated with the second result;
determining that the first result matches the second result based on the comparison;
in response to determining that the first result matches the second result, modifying the second subset by replacing the second result in the second subset with the third result; and
a first subset for display in a first row and a modified second subset for display in a second row are generated.
3. The method of claim 1, wherein the user input is a first user input, and wherein the preference is a first preference, further comprising:
receiving a second user input indicating a second preference for a second source relative to the first source; and
in response to receiving the second user input:
generating a third subset of the second search results by replacing a third result in the modified second subset with the second result;
generating a fourth subset of the first search results by replacing the first results in the first subset with fourth results of the first search results, wherein the fourth results are not in the first subset; and
generating a third subset for display in the first row instead of the first subset, an
For display in the second row, instead of the modified second subset.
4. The method of claim 1, wherein determining a first subset of first search results that are appropriate for a first row and a second subset of second search results that are appropriate for a second row comprises:
retrieving a display template of the grid;
retrieving a first value for the first number of results for the first row from a first field of a display template associated with the first row;
retrieving a second value for a second number of results for the second row from a second field of the display template associated with the second row;
selecting a first number of results from the first search results as a first subset; and
a second number of results from the second search results is selected as a second subset.
5. The method of claim 1, wherein determining a first subset of first search results that are appropriate for a first row and a second subset of second search results that are appropriate for a second row comprises:
ranking each of the first search results and each of the second search results based on a relevance of each result to the user input;
retrieving the highest ranked result from the first search results as a first result in the first subset; and
the highest ranked result is retrieved among the second search results as a second result in the second subset.
6. The method of claim 1, wherein modifying the second subset by replacing the second result in the second subset with the third result comprises:
retrieving a next highest ranked result not in the second subset as a third result;
removing the second result from the second subset; and
adding the third result to the second subset.
7. The method of claim 1, wherein the user preference is a first user preference, and wherein modifying the second subset by replacing the second result in the second subset with the third result comprises:
retrieving second user preferences for attributes of the search results;
determining that an attribute of the third result matches the second user preference; and
in response to determining that the attributes of the third result match the second user preferences:
removing the second result from the second subset; and
adding the third result to the second subset.
8. The method of claim 1, wherein comparing the metadata associated with the first result with the metadata associated with the second result comprises:
comparing a first identifier of the first result and a second identifier of the second result to a plurality of identifiers stored in a database;
determining that the first stored identifier matches the first identifier and that the second stored identifier matches the second identifier;
retrieving first metadata from a first field associated with the identifier of the first storage and retrieving second metadata from a second field associated with the identifier of the second storage; and
a first character of first metadata associated with the first result is compared to a second character of second metadata associated with the second result.
9. The method of claim 1, wherein generating a grid for display further comprises:
comparing each result of the first search results to each result of the second search results;
determining a number of duplicate results between the first search result and the second search result based on comparing each result of the first search result to each result of the second search result; and
an indication of a number of duplicate results for display in the second row is generated.
10. The method of claim 1, further comprising:
receiving a user selection of a first result; and
in response to receiving the user selection, an indication is generated that the first result for display is also available from the second source.
11. The method of claim 1, wherein the first result identifies a media asset, further comprising:
receiving a user selection of a first result;
in response to receiving the user selection, generating for display a plurality of selectable options associated with the media asset, wherein the plurality of selectable options includes at least one of:
an option to add the media asset to a watch list;
an option to add the media asset to a favorites list;
an option to view the upcoming time at which the media asset is available; and
options for recording media assets.
12. A system for presenting search results from a plurality of sources, the system comprising:
user input circuitry; and
control circuitry configured to:
receiving user input via user input circuitry;
source search results from a first source and a second source based on user input;
receiving a first search result from a first source and a second search result from a second source;
retrieving user preferences indicating preferences for the first source relative to the second source; and
generating a grid for display, the grid comprising a plurality of rows with search results, by:
determining to generate, for display in a first row, first search results from the first source based on the retrieved user preferences indicating preferences for the first source relative to second sources;
determining a first subset of first search results that are appropriate for the first row and a second subset of second search results that are appropriate for the second row, wherein the first subset includes first results of the first search results, and wherein the second subset includes second results of the second search results but not third results of the second search results;
comparing metadata associated with the first result with metadata associated with the second result;
determining that the first result matches the second result based on the comparison;
in response to determining that the first result matches the second result, modifying the second subset by replacing the second result in the second subset with the third result; and
a first subset for display in a first row and a modified second subset for display in a second row are generated.
13. The system of claim 12, wherein the user input is a first user input, and wherein the preference is a first preference, the control circuitry further configured to:
receiving a second user input indicating a second preference for a second source relative to the first source; and
in response to receiving the second user input:
generating a third subset of the second search results by replacing a third result in the modified second subset with the second result;
generating a fourth subset of the first search results by replacing the first results in the first subset with fourth results of the first search results, wherein the fourth results are not in the first subset; and
generating a third subset for display in the first row instead of the first subset, an
For display in the second row, instead of the modified second subset.
14. The system of claim 12, wherein when determining the first subset of first search results that are appropriate for the first row and the second subset of second search results that are appropriate for the second row, the control circuitry is further configured to:
retrieving a display template of the grid;
retrieving a first value for the first number of results for the first row from a first field of a display template associated with the first row;
retrieving a second value for a second number of results for the second row from a second field of the display template associated with the second row;
selecting a first number of results from the first search results as a first subset; and
a second number of results from the second search results is selected as a second subset.
15. The system of claim 12, wherein when determining the first subset of first search results that are appropriate for the first row and the second subset of second search results that are appropriate for the second row, the control circuitry is further configured to:
ranking each of the first search results and each of the second search results based on a relevance of each result to the user input;
retrieving the highest ranked result from the first search results as a first result in the first subset; and
the highest ranked result is retrieved among the second search results as a second result in the second subset.
16. The system of claim 12, wherein when modifying the second subset by replacing a second result in the second subset with a third result, the control circuitry is further configured to:
retrieving a next highest ranked result not in the second subset as a third result;
removing the second result from the second subset; and
adding the third result to the second subset.
17. The system of claim 12, wherein the user preference is a first user preference, and wherein when modifying the second subset by replacing a second result in the second subset with a third result, the control circuitry is further configured to:
retrieving second user preferences for attributes of the search results;
determining that an attribute of the third result matches the second user preference; and
in response to determining that the attributes of the third result match the second user preferences:
removing the second result from the second subset; and
adding the third result to the second subset.
18. The system of claim 12, wherein when comparing the metadata associated with the first result to the metadata associated with the second result, the control circuitry is further configured to:
comparing a first identifier of the first result and a second identifier of the second result to a plurality of identifiers stored in a database;
determining that the first stored identifier matches the first identifier and that the second stored identifier matches the second identifier;
retrieving first metadata from a first field associated with the identifier of the first storage and retrieving second metadata from a second field associated with the identifier of the second storage; and
a first character of first metadata associated with the first result is compared to a second character of second metadata associated with the second result.
19. The system of claim 12, wherein when generating the grid for display, the control circuitry is further configured to:
comparing each result of the first search results to each result of the second search results;
determining a number of duplicate results between the first search result and the second search result based on comparing each result of the first search result to each result of the second search result; and
an indication of a number of duplicate results for display in the second row is generated.
20. The system of claim 12, wherein the control circuitry is further configured to:
receiving a user selection of a first result; and
in response to receiving the user selection, an indication is generated that the first result for display is also available from the second source.
21. The system of claim 12, wherein the first result identifies a media asset, and wherein the control circuitry is further configured to:
receiving a user selection of a first result;
in response to receiving the user selection, generating for display a plurality of selectable options associated with the media asset, wherein the plurality of selectable options includes at least one of:
an option to add the media asset to a watch list;
an option to add the media asset to a favorites list;
an option to view the upcoming time at which the media asset is available; and
options for recording media assets.
22. A system for presenting search results from a plurality of sources, the system comprising:
means for receiving a user input;
means for receiving search results from a first source and a second source based on user input;
means for receiving a first search result from a first source and a second search result from a second source;
means for retrieving user preferences indicating preferences for the first source relative to a second source; and
means for generating for display a grid comprising a plurality of rows with search results by:
determining to generate, for display in a first row, first search results from the first source based on the retrieved user preferences indicating preferences for the first source relative to second sources;
determining a first subset of first search results that are appropriate for the first row and a second subset of second search results that are appropriate for the second row, wherein the first subset includes first results of the first search results, and wherein the second subset includes second results of the second search results but not third results of the second search results;
comparing metadata associated with the first result with metadata associated with the second result;
determining that the first result matches the second result based on the comparison;
in response to determining that the first result matches the second result, modifying the second subset by replacing the second result in the second subset with the third result; and
a first subset for display in a first row and a modified second subset for display in a second row are generated.
23. The system of claim 22, wherein the user input is a first user input, and wherein the preference is a first preference, further comprising:
means for receiving a second user input indicating a second preference for a second source relative to the first source; and
in response to receiving the second user input:
means for generating a third subset of the second search results by replacing a third result in the modified second subset with the second result;
means for generating a fourth subset of the first search results by replacing the first results in the first subset with fourth results of the first search results, wherein the fourth results are not in the first subset; and
means for generating a third subset for display in the first row instead of the first subset, and a fourth subset for display in the second row instead of the modified second subset.
24. The system of claim 22, wherein the means for determining a first subset of first search results that are appropriate for the first row and a second subset of second search results that are appropriate for the second row comprises:
means for retrieving a display template for the grid;
means for retrieving a first value for a first number of results for the first row from a first field of a display template associated with the first row;
means for retrieving a second value for a second number of results for the second row from a second field of the display template associated with the second row;
means for selecting a first number of results from the first search results as a first subset; and
means for selecting a second number of results from the second search results as a second subset.
25. The system of claim 22, wherein the means for determining a first subset of first search results that are appropriate for the first row and a second subset of second search results that are appropriate for the second row comprises:
means for ranking each of the first search results and each of the second search results based on a relevance of each result to the user input;
means for retrieving a highest ranked result among the first search results as a first result in the first subset; and
means for retrieving, among the second search results, a highest ranked result as a second result in the second subset.
26. The system of claim 22, wherein the means for modifying the second subset by replacing the second result in the second subset with the third result comprises:
means for retrieving a next highest ranked result not in the second subset as a third result;
means for removing the second result from the second subset; and
means for adding the third result to the second subset.
27. The system of claim 22, wherein the user preference is a first user preference, and wherein the means for modifying the second subset by replacing the second result in the second subset with the third result comprises:
means for retrieving second user preferences for attributes of the search results;
means for determining that the attributes of the third result match the second user preferences; and
in response to determining that the attributes of the third result match the second user preferences:
means for removing the second result from the second subset; and
means for adding the third result to the second subset.
28. The system of claim 22, wherein the means for comparing the metadata associated with the first result with the metadata associated with the second result comprises:
means for comparing a first identifier of the first result and a second identifier of the second result with a plurality of identifiers stored in a database;
means for determining that the first stored identifier matches the first identifier and that the second stored identifier matches the second identifier;
means for retrieving first metadata from a first field associated with the identifier of the first storage and second metadata from a second field associated with the identifier of the second storage; and
means for comparing a first character of the first metadata associated with the first result with a second character of the second metadata associated with the second result.
29. The system of claim 22, wherein the means for generating a grid for display further comprises:
means for comparing each result of the first search result with each result of the second search result;
means for determining a number of duplicate results between the first search result and the second search result based on comparing each result of the first search result to each result of the second search result; and
means for generating an indication of a number of repeated results for display in the second row.
30. The system of claim 22, further comprising:
means for receiving a user selection of a first result; and
means for generating, in response to receiving the user selection, an indication that the first result for display is also available from the second source.
31. The system of claim 22, wherein the first result identifies a media asset, the system further comprising:
means for receiving a user selection of a first result;
means for generating, for display, a plurality of selectable options associated with a media asset in response to receiving a user selection, wherein the plurality of selectable options includes at least one of:
an option to add the media asset to a watch list;
an option to add the media asset to a favorites list;
an option to view the upcoming time at which the media asset is available; and
options for recording media assets.
32. A non-transitory computer-readable medium having encoded thereon instructions for presenting search results from a plurality of sources, the instructions comprising:
instructions for receiving user input;
instructions for sourcing search results from a first source and a second source based on user input;
instructions for receiving a first search result from a first source and a second search result from a second source;
instructions for retrieving user preferences indicating preferences for the first source relative to a second source; and
instructions for generating for display a grid comprising a plurality of rows with search results by:
determining to generate, for display in a first row, first search results from the first source based on the retrieved user preferences indicating preferences for the first source relative to second sources;
determining a first subset of first search results that are appropriate for the first row and a second subset of second search results that are appropriate for the second row, wherein the first subset includes first results of the first search results, and wherein the second subset includes second results of the second search results but not third results of the second search results;
comparing metadata associated with the first result with metadata associated with the second result;
determining that the first result matches the second result based on the comparison;
in response to determining that the first result matches the second result, modifying the second subset by replacing the second result in the second subset with the third result; and
a first subset for display in a first row and a modified second subset for display in a second row are generated.
33. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 32, wherein the user input is a first user input, and wherein the preference is a first preference, the instructions further comprising:
instructions for receiving a second user input indicating a second preference for a second source relative to the first source; and
in response to receiving the second user input:
instructions for generating a third subset of the second search results by replacing a third result in the modified second subset with the second result;
instructions for generating a fourth subset of the first search results by replacing the first results in the first subset with fourth results of the first search results, wherein the fourth results are not in the first subset; and
instructions for generating a third subset for display in the first row instead of the first subset, and a fourth subset for display in the second row instead of the modified second subset.
34. The non-transitory computer readable medium of claim 32, wherein the instructions for determining a first subset of first search results that are appropriate for the first row and a second subset of second search results that are appropriate for the second row comprise:
instructions for retrieving a display template for a grid;
instructions for retrieving a first value for a first number of results for the first row from a first field of a display template associated with the first row;
instructions for retrieving a second value for a second number of results for the second line from a second field of the display template associated with the second line;
instructions for selecting a first number of results from the first search results as a first subset; and
instructions for selecting a second number of results from the second search results as a second subset.
35. The non-transitory computer readable medium of claim 32, wherein the instructions for determining a first subset of first search results that are appropriate for the first row and a second subset of second search results that are appropriate for the second row comprise:
instructions for ranking each of the first search results and each of the second search results based on a relevance of each result to the user input;
instructions for retrieving a highest ranked result in the first search result as a first result in the first subset; and
instructions for retrieving, among the second search results, a highest ranked result as a second result in the second subset.
36. The non-transitory computer readable medium of claim 32, wherein the instructions for modifying the second subset by replacing the second result in the second subset with the third result comprise:
instructions for retrieving a next highest ranked result not in the second subset as a third result;
instructions for removing the second result from the second subset; and
instructions for adding the third result to the second subset.
37. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 32, wherein the user preference is a first user preference, and wherein the instructions for modifying the second subset by replacing the second result in the second subset with the third result comprise:
instructions for retrieving second user preferences for attributes of the search results;
instructions for determining that the attributes of the third result match the second user preferences; and
in response to determining that the attributes of the third result match the second user preferences:
instructions for removing the second result from the second subset; and
instructions for adding the third result to the second subset.
38. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 32, wherein the instructions for comparing metadata associated with the first result with metadata associated with the second result comprise:
instructions for comparing a first identifier of the first result and a second identifier of the second result to a plurality of identifiers stored in a database;
instructions for determining that the first stored identifier matches the first identifier and that the second stored identifier matches the second identifier;
instructions for retrieving first metadata from a first field associated with an identifier of a first storage and retrieving second metadata from a second field associated with an identifier of a second storage; and
instructions for comparing a first character of the first metadata associated with the first result to a second character of the second metadata associated with the second result.
39. The non-transitory computer readable medium of claim 32, wherein the instructions for generating the grid for display further comprise:
instructions for comparing each result of the first search result to each result of the second search result;
instructions for determining a number of duplicate results between the first search result and the second search result based on comparing each result of the first search result to each result of the second search result; and
instructions for generating an indication of a number of repeated results for display in a second row.
40. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 32, the instructions further comprising:
instructions for receiving a user selection of a first result; and
instructions for generating, in response to receiving the user selection, an indication that the first result for display is also available from the second source.
41. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 32, wherein the first result identifies a media asset, the instructions further comprising:
instructions for receiving a user selection of a first result;
instructions for generating, for display, a plurality of selectable options associated with a media asset in response to receiving a user selection, wherein the plurality of selectable options includes at least one of:
an option to add the media asset to a watch list;
an option to add the media asset to a favorites list;
an option to view the upcoming time at which the media asset is available; and
options for recording media assets.
42. A method for presenting search results from a plurality of sources, the method comprising:
receiving, by control circuitry, a user input;
receiving, by the control circuitry, search results from the first source and the second source based on the user input;
receiving, by control circuitry, first search results from a first source and second search results from a second source;
retrieving, by the control circuitry, user preferences indicating preferences for the first source relative to preferences for the second source; and
generating, by control circuitry, a grid for display, the grid comprising a plurality of rows with search results, by:
determining to generate, for display in a first row, first search results from the first source based on the retrieved user preferences indicating preferences for the first source relative to second sources;
determining a first subset of first search results that are appropriate for the first row and a second subset of second search results that are appropriate for the second row, wherein the first subset includes first results of the first search results, and wherein the second subset includes second results of the second search results but not third results of the second search results;
comparing metadata associated with the first result with metadata associated with the second result;
determining that the first result matches the second result based on the comparison;
in response to determining that the first result matches the second result, modifying the second subset by replacing the second result in the second subset with the third result; and
a first subset for display in a first row and a modified second subset for display in a second row are generated.
43. The method of claim 42, further comprising:
receiving a second user input indicating a second preference for a second source relative to the first source; and
in response to receiving the second user input:
generating a third subset of the second search results by replacing a third result in the modified second subset with the second result;
generating a fourth subset of the first search results by replacing the first results in the first subset with fourth results of the first search results, wherein the fourth results are not in the first subset; and
generating a third subset for display in the first row instead of the first subset, an
For display in the second row, instead of the modified second subset.
44. The method of any of claims 42-43, further comprising:
retrieving a display template of the grid;
retrieving a first value for the first number of results for the first row from a first field of a display template associated with the first row;
retrieving a second value for a second number of results for the second row from a second field of the display template associated with the second row;
selecting a first number of results from the first search results as a first subset; and
a second number of results from the second search results is selected as a second subset.
45. The method of any one of claims 42-44, further comprising:
ranking each of the first search results and each of the second search results based on a relevance of each result to the user input;
retrieving the highest ranked result from the first search results as a first result in the first subset; and
the highest ranked result is retrieved among the second search results as a second result in the second subset.
46. The method of any of claims 42-45, further comprising:
retrieving a next highest ranked result not in the second subset as a third result;
removing the second result from the second subset; and
adding the third result to the second subset.
47. The method of any of claims 42-46, further comprising:
retrieving second user preferences for attributes of the search results;
determining that an attribute of the third result matches the second user preference; and
in response to determining that the attributes of the third result match the second user preferences:
removing the second result from the second subset; and
adding the third result to the second subset.
48. The method of any one of claims 42-47, further comprising:
comparing a first identifier of the first result and a second identifier of the second result to a plurality of identifiers stored in a database;
determining that the first stored identifier matches the first identifier and that the second stored identifier matches the second identifier;
retrieving first metadata from a first field associated with the identifier of the first storage and retrieving second metadata from a second field associated with the identifier of the second storage; and
a first character of first metadata associated with the first result is compared to a second character of second metadata associated with the second result.
49. The method of any one of claims 42-48, further comprising:
comparing each result of the first search results to each result of the second search results;
determining a number of duplicate results between the first search result and the second search result based on comparing each result of the first search result to each result of the second search result; and
an indication of a number of duplicate results for display in the second row is generated.
50. The method of any one of claims 42-49, further comprising:
receiving a user selection of a first result; and
in response to receiving the user selection, an indication is generated that the first result for display is also available from the second source.
51. The method of any one of claims 42-50, further comprising:
receiving a user selection of a first result;
in response to receiving the user selection, generating for display a plurality of selectable options associated with the media asset, wherein the plurality of selectable options includes at least one of:
an option to add the media asset to a watch list;
an option to add the media asset to a favorites list;
an option to view the upcoming time at which the media asset is available; and
options for recording media assets.
Background
Given the plethora of media content sources, each with a large amount of available media content, users often find it difficult to read a large number of search results for a given query. In particular, generic search features have enabled users to obtain results from many different content sources with one search, but the absolute number of results is too large to handle. Some conventional systems attempt to overcome this problem by organizing the results by the source from which they were received when they were presented to the user. However, many of the same media content may be obtained from different sources and may be presented multiple times, which may result in results that may be of interest to the user being buried therein.
Disclosure of Invention
Thus, described herein are systems and methods for presenting search results from multiple sources by ranking the sources from which the results were received and not presenting duplicate results from less ranked sources. For example, results from a first source and a second source may be received. In response to a user's preference for a first source over a second source (e.g., the user prefers HBO over HBO)
In some aspects, a media guidance application receives user input. For example, the media guidance application may receive user input via a user input interface (e.g., a remote control or a touch screen interface). The user input may be a string of one or more alphanumeric or other characters. Alternatively or additionally, the user input may be selection of one of a plurality of selectable options through a common search query. For example, the media guidance application may present the most frequently searched keywords as selectable options that may be selected by the user, thereby saving the user the time he or she may have to enter characters.
The media guidance application sources the search results from the first source and the second source based on user input. For example, the media guidance application may send user input to the first source and the second source. For example, the media guidance application may generate a data packet that includes user input (e.g., a string of characters) and/or other parameters for the search (e.g., the results should be within a certain time period). In some embodiments, the media guidance application may utilize APIs from one or two sources to send search queries (e.g., based on user input). The media guidance application may determine the source to which to send the user input based on the user's preferences for a particular source (e.g., user preferences stored in a user profile). For example, a user may store that a search query should be sent to a particular set of sources (e.g.,
The media guidance application receives a first search result from a first source and a second search result from a second source. For example, the media guidance application may receive multiple results from two sources that match the user input. The results from each source may be received in separate tables, where each table contains a plurality of rows, each row having an identifier that matches the results (e.g., a title of the media asset) and additional information in an associated field (e.g., an actor in the media asset). In some embodiments, the results may be ranked according to popularity (popularity). Alternatively or additionally, the results may be ranked according to relevance to the user input. For example, while "The Big Bang Theory" is The most popular result (e.g., many users click on it), since The user input is "Bang," The result "Bangerz" as an album for MileyCyrus may be ranked higher due to The first word matching The query. Alternatively or additionally, the media guidance application may reorder the results based on any combination of the factors discussed above and based on user preferences. For example, if the media guidance application retrieves user preferences for a movie that the user likes with a given actor, the results with that actor may be promoted in the ranking.
The media guidance application retrieves user preferences indicating preferences for the first source relative to the second source. For example, the media guidance application may retrieve a user profile that is stored locally or remotely at a server. The media guidance application may retrieve the search preferences from the user profile. For example, the media guidance application may store a ranking of sources set by the user. As a specific example, the media guidance application may generate a graphical user interface in which a user may select sources (e.g.,etc.) into a particular order to reflect his or her preferences. The media guidance application may then store (e.g., in an array) the ranking and identifier for each source. The media guidance application may retrieve a ranking of stored sources set by the user and determine a respective ranking of the first source and the second source. For example, the media guidance application may determine that identified by the string "hulu
The media guidance application generates for display a grid including a plurality of rows with search results. For example, the media guidance application may generate results from the first source that are higher than results from the second source and display only results in the second source that do not match the results displayed from the first source. In particular, the media guidance application determines to generate, for display in the first row, first search results from the first source based on the retrieved user preferences indicating preferences for the first source relative to the second source. For example, the media guidance application may determine a particular location (e.g., a line) in which the results were generated from the first source. In some embodiments, the line may be located at a line closer to the top of the screen than a second line that presents results from a second source.
The media guidance application determines a first subset of first search results that are appropriate for the first row and a second subset of second search results that are appropriate for the second row, where the first subset includes the first results of the first search results, and where the second subset includes the second results but not the third results of the second search results. For example, the media guidance application may determine the number of results that fit in the first and second rows. The number may be constant (e.g., each row always contains 3 results), or may vary based on the length of the identifier of the result (e.g., results with a greater number of characters take more space and fewer results are displayed at one time). In some embodiments, the number may be different for the first row and the second row. For example, more results may be displayed for the first row than the second row (e.g., the first row may occupy more display space and display the results in two sub-rows) as being preferred based on user preferences. The media guidance application may then select an appropriate number of results from the received search results from the two sources for display (e.g., the first subset and the second subset). The first subset may include first results that match second results in the second subset. For example, "The Big Bang Theory" may exist in The first subset and The second subset. To present non-duplicate results to the user, the media guidance application may select a third result of the second search results that does not match any of the results in the first subset, rather than the second result, as described further below.
The media guidance application compares metadata associated with the first result with metadata associated with the second result. For example, the media guidance application may retrieve metadata associated with the results locally from storage or from a remote server. The media guidance application may alternatively or additionally receive metadata in fields of a table associated with results received from the source. The metadata may be any data related to the results that describes the content associated with the results. For example, if the result is for a news article, the metadata may include the author of the article, the type of article (e.g., opinion), and/or the publication name (e.g., Nature). The media guidance application may execute a program script to iteratively compare characters of metadata (e.g., attributes) of the two results to determine whether the two results match. For example, the media guidance application may compare the string "Matt Damon" associated with the first result to the string "Matt Dillon" associated with the second result.
In some embodiments, the media guidance application may retrieve metadata from a database and compare characters of the retrieved metadata to determine whether the two results match. In particular, the media guidance application compares a first identifier of the first result and a second identifier of the second result to a plurality of identifiers stored in a database. The identifier may be any combination of characters that define the result, such as a title, URL, and/or a numerical value (e.g., a serial number) associated with the result. For example, the media guidance application may access a database stored locally in a storage device or a database stored at a remote server via a communication network. The database may be organized as a series of multiple linked lists (e.g., a relational database) in which multiple identifiers in a first table are each associated with a pointer to another table containing metadata associated with the identifier. For example, the media guidance application may compare the characters of the first identifier and the second identifier to a stored plurality of identifiers. The media guidance application determines that the first stored identifier matches the first identifier and that the second stored identifier matches the second identifier. For example, the media guidance application may determine that the first stored identifier matches the first identifier and that the second stored identifier matches the second identifier. The media guidance application may then access the appropriate link table based on the pointers in the fields corresponding to the first stored identifier and the second stored identifier.
The media guidance application retrieves first metadata from a first field associated with the first stored identifier and retrieves second metadata from a second field associated with the second stored identifier. For example, a table containing metadata associated with each stored identifier may be constructed such that the metadata in the first field of each table is always a title associated with the result, the metadata in the second field of each table is always a director, and so on, for easier comparison (e.g., metadata of the same attribute may be compared without having to compare each stored value to each stored value associated with another identifier). Alternatively or additionally, the table may be structured such that each field having metadata is associated with a tag (such as "ACTOR") that may be used to compare corresponding metadata associated with different identifiers. The media guidance application may retrieve metadata from a first field associated with a first identifier (e.g., title) and retrieve metadata from a second field associated with a second identifier (e.g., also title). The media guidance application then compares a first character of the first metadata associated with the first result to a second character of the second metadata associated with the second result. For example, the media guidance application may compare each character of the retrieved string associated with the first result (identified by the first identifier) to each character of the retrieved string associated with the second result (identified by the second identifier).
The media guidance application determines that the first result matches the second result based on the comparison. For example, the media guidance application may determine that two results match if each character of a particular attribute associated with a first result matches each character of a corresponding attribute associated with a second result. For example, if the two results contain metadata that references the actor "Matt Damon," the media guidance application may determine that the metadata matches, and thus the two results match. Alternatively or additionally, the media guidance application may determine whether all metadata (e.g., all attributes) or a threshold percentage (e.g., 50%) associated with the first result matches corresponding metadata of the second result. For example, if the media guidance application determines that the title, director, and genre attributes match between two results, the media guidance application may determine that the two results match with greater confidence than when only one attribute is matched.
In some embodiments, certain attributes (e.g., titles) may be weighted more when determining whether two results match, as the attributes are more different between the results. For example, many results may relate to "Matt Damon" and thus false positive matches may occur if only actor metadata is matched, but many results are less likely to relate to "the BourneIdentity" and thus the title is weighted higher than the actor. In some embodiments, the media guidance application may determine a match if a threshold number of characters match between attributes of the first result and attributes of the second result. For example, in some cases, a single character may differ between metadata associated with a first result and metadata associated with a second result (e.g., "TomHanks" and "TomHankz") due to spelling errors or other typographical errors. In this case, if a threshold number of characters (e.g., all characters except one character) match, the media guidance application may determine that the metadata associated with the first and second results match.
In some embodiments, the media guidance application may determine the number of results to select for the first subset and the second subset based on the display template. In particular, the media guidance application retrieves a display template for the grid. For example, the media guidance application may retrieve the display template either locally from storage or remotely from a server via a communication network. The display template may be any suitable data structure, such as a class or table, that contains parameters for displaying results from multiple sources in different rows. The media guidance application retrieves a first value for a first number of results for the first row from a first field of a display template associated with the first row. For example, the media guidance application may retrieve an integer number of results in the first row (e.g., "3") from a field of the display template. Alternatively or additionally, the media guidance application may retrieve one or more values corresponding to the size of the display area of the first row and calculate a number of results that may be appropriate for the first row. The media guidance application retrieves a second value from a second field of the display template associated with the second row that is appropriate for the second number of results for the second row. Similar to the value for the number of results in the first row, the media guidance application may retrieve an integer number of results in the first row (e.g., "3") from the fields of the display template. In some embodiments, the number of results appropriate for the first row may be different from the number of results appropriate for the second row. For example, the media guidance application may present a greater number of results from the first source because it is preferred by the user.
The media guidance application then selects a first number of results from the first search results as a first subset. For example, the media guidance application may retrieve from the first search result the number of results determined to be appropriate for the first row (e.g., retrieve an identifier of the result from a table containing results received from the first source, as discussed above). The media guidance application may generate the first subset by adding identifiers for the number of results in the first search result to a list or other data structure. The media guidance application selects a second number of results from the second search results as a second subset. For example, the media guidance application may retrieve from the second search result the number of results determined to be appropriate for the second row (e.g., retrieve an identifier of a result from a table containing results received from the second source, as discussed above). The media guidance application may generate the second subset by adding identifiers for the number of results in the second search result to a list or other data structure. The media guidance application may retrieve additional text and/or graphics associated with each identifier of the first subset and the second subset to populate an instance of the display template (e.g., such that each result is displayed according to parameters in the display template).
In some embodiments, the media guidance application determines which results to select based on the relevance rankings of the results from each source. In particular, the media guidance application ranks each of the first search results based on a relevance of each result to the user input, and ranks each of the second search results. For example, the media guidance application may receive search results from sources that have been ranked by popularity (e.g., based on the number of times a user has clicked on a particular link) and/or character matches (e.g., how many characters in a search query submitted by the user match the characters of the results). In this case, the media guidance application may also rank the results based on user preferences (e.g., promote certain results based on the user's preferences for those results), or may simply retrieve the highest ranked results without further ranking. If the results received from the sources are not ranked, and are ranked based only on similarity to the user's query, the media guidance application may determine a relative popularity for each result. For example, the media guidance application may compare the identifier of each result to the popularity stored in the data structure (either in local storage or at a remote server). The media guidance application may then rank the results received from the sources based on the retrieved popularity values. For example, the popularity value may be a Nielsen (Nielsen) ranking of television programs.
The media guidance application retrieves the highest ranked result among the first search results as the first result in the first subset. For example, the media guidance application may retrieve the highest ranked result of the ranked first search results as the first result. The media guidance application may continue to retrieve the number of results that fit in the first row by retrieving the next highest ranked result from the first search results (e.g., as discussed above). The media guidance application retrieves the highest ranked result among the second search results as the second result in the second subset. For example, the media guidance application may retrieve the highest ranked result of the second search results as the second result. The media guidance application may continue to retrieve the number of results that are appropriate for the second row by retrieving the next highest ranked result from the second search results (e.g., as discussed above).
The media guidance application modifies the second subset by replacing the second result in the second subset with the third result in response to determining that the first result matches the second result. For example, in determining that two results are to be displayed simultaneously (e.g., they are in a first subset and a second subset), the media guidance application replaces the results of the sources that are not preferred by the user with another result. For example, if "The Big Bang Theory" is a result from both a first source and a second source and is in a first subset and a second subset, The result in The second subset may be replaced with another result. As discussed further below, the results replacing the second results may be based on user preferences or based on a ranking of each of the search results from the second source.
In some embodiments, the media guidance application modifies the second subset by replacing the second result with the next highest ranked result. In particular, the media guidance application retrieves the next highest ranked result that is not in the second subset as the third result. For example, the media guidance application may retrieve, from a ranked results list (e.g., as discussed above, or received from a source of search results, or generated by the media guidance application), results that are the highest ranked results that are not part of the second subset. The media guidance application may also determine whether the retrieved next highest ranked result matches a result in the first subset (e.g., by comparing metadata as discussed above). For example, if the media guidance application determines that the next highest ranked result matches a result in the first subset, the media guidance application may retrieve another result (e.g., one lower on the ranked list) until the result does not match any of the first subset.
The media guidance application may remove the second result from the second subset. For example, the media guidance application may remove the identifier associated with the second result from a list or other data structure that stores the identifiers of the second subset. The media guidance application may then add the third result to the second subset. For example, the media guidance application may add an identifier of the next highest ranked result (which does not match any of the results in the first subset) to a list or other data structure. The media guidance application may add the identifier to the same field previously populated with the identifier of the removed second result, or may reorder the identifiers (e.g., based on popularity). In some embodiments, the media guidance application uses the order of identifiers stored in a list or other data structure as the order in which the identifiers are presented to the user in the row.
In some embodiments, the media guidance application modifies the second subset by replacing the second result with a result that matches the user preferences. In particular, the media guidance application retrieves second user preferences for attributes of the search results. For example, the media guidance application may retrieve a user profile that contains a plurality of user preferences. The media guidance application may retrieve preferences from the user profile. For example, the media guidance application may retrieve movies that the user likes to include the actor "Matt Damon". The media guidance application may compare the retrieved user preferences to metadata associated with each of the search results from the sources. For example, the media guidance application may retrieve metadata associated with the results from a local storage or a remote server.
The media guidance application may then determine, for each result, whether the user preferences match the metadata associated with each result (e.g., based on a character comparison). In some embodiments, the media guidance application compares each user preference in the user profile to metadata associated with the results and ranks the results based on how many user preferences match the metadata associated with each result. For example, if both the actor and genre of a result match the user preferences, the result may be ranked higher than another result in which only the actor associated with the result matches the user preferences. In some embodiments, the media guidance application may weight certain user preferences higher when determining which result to replace the second result (e.g., based on an indication stored in the user profile). For example, the media guidance application may determine that the user preferences retrieved for the "action movie" are the user's "low preferences" based on the user specifying the preferences for the "action movie" as "low preferences". In contrast, the media guidance application may determine that the user preferences retrieved for "Matt Damon" are "high preferences" of the user.
The media guidance application removes the second result from the second subset in response to determining that the attributes of the third result match the second user preferences. For example, the media guidance application may remove the identifier associated with the second result from a list or other data structure that stores the identifiers of the second subset. The media guidance application may then add the third result to the second subset. For example, the media guidance application may add an identifier of the result that matches (or most closely matches) the user preference(s) to a list or other data structure. The media guidance application may add the identifier to the same field previously populated with the identifier of the removed second result, or may reorder the identifiers (e.g., based on popularity). In some embodiments, the media guidance application uses the order of identifiers stored in a list or other data structure as the order in which the identifiers are presented to the user in the row.
The media guidance application generates a first subset for display in a first row and a modified second subset for display in a second row. For example, the media guidance application may generate an identifier for each result in the first subset in the first row. As a specific example, the identifier may be text or graphics that identify each result. The media guidance application may receive the identifiers from the source or may retrieve them from a local storage or a remote server. The media guidance application may similarly generate an identifier for each result in the modified second subset in the second row (e.g., where the third result has replaced the second result). In some embodiments, the media guidance application generates an indication that more results are available (e.g., an arrow pointing to the side). In response to receiving a user selection of an arrow, the media guidance application may either be for the source for which only the arrow was selected (e.g., from a source for which the arrow was selectedIs displayed instead of the current result) or is the source of all displays (e.g., from
In some embodiments, the media guidance application determines a total number of duplicate results received from the first and second sources and displays the number to the user. In particular, the media guidance application compares each of the first search results to each of the second search results. For example, the media guidance application may associate metadata associated with each of the first search results with the secondary search resultsThe metadata of each search result received by the second source is compared. For example, the media guidance application may execute a program script using a for loop to iteratively compare each result from the first source with each result from the second source. The media guidance application then determines a number of duplicate results between the first search result and the second search result based on comparing each of the first search results to each of the second search results. For example, the media guidance application may initialize a counter and increment the counter each time a match between a result from a first source and a result from a second source is determined until each result from the first source has been compared to a search result from the second source. As discussed above, the media guidance application may determine a match if a threshold percentage of the metadata associated with the two search results match. The media guidance application then generates an indication of a number of repeated results for display in the second row. For example, the media guidance application may generate text for display with a value of the total number of repeated items in the first or second row (e.g., "30"). The indication may optionally contain text that sets forth which source the repeated item refers to. For example, if
In some embodiments, the media guidance application may display other sources that return the same results upon receiving a user selection of a result. In particular, the media guidance application receives a user selection of a first result. For example, the media guidance application may receive a selection of a particular result displayed on the grid via a user input interface, such as a remote control or a touch screen interface. As a specific example, The media guidance application may determine that The user has selected The results of "The Big BangTheory" in The first row (e.g., The user's most preferred source). The media guidance application may determine other sources that received The results of The "The Big Bang Theory" by comparing metadata associated with The selected results with results from other sources, as discussed above. For example, the media guidance application may determine that the second result (from the second source) matches the first result (e.g., from the first source), and that the first source was selected by the user. In response to receiving the user selection, the media guidance application generates an indication that the first results for display are also available from the second source. For example, if both The first search result and The second search result include a result of "The Big Bang Theory," when The user selects The "The Big Bang Theory" result in The first row containing The first search result, The media guidance application may generate an indication for display that The result is also returned by The second source. As a specific example, the media guidance application may generate text for display "this result is also returned by Hulu". In this manner, the media guidance application may provide the user with an alternative source from which results are available without having to display the same results in each row.
In some embodiments, the media guidance application receives a request from the user expressing a preference for the second source rather than the first source, and the media guidance application replaces the duplicate results between the first and second subsets from the first subset rather than the second subset. In particular, the media guidance application may receive second user input indicating a second preference for the second source relative to the first source. For example, when the media guidance application generates a grid for display with search results from the first and second results, a selectable option (e.g., an arrow) may be included to swap rows with results from one source with rows with results from another source. The media guidance application may receive a user selection of one of the selectable options to promote the second line with results from the second source over the first line with results from the first source. For example, the user may select (e.g., via a user input interface such as a remote control) an arrow graphic pointing upward, and the media guidance application may determine that the user selection is a request to swap the first and second rows (e.g., if the first row is directly above the second row). The media guidance application may store (e.g., in a user profile) new user preferences that prefer the second source over the first source for use in generating future grids using search results from the two sources.
The media guidance application, in response to receiving the second user input, swaps rows displaying the first search result and the second search result and determines whether duplicate items exist in the less preferred source (e.g., the first source) from the more preferred source (e.g., the second source). In particular, the media guidance application generates a third subset of the second search results by replacing a third result in the modified second subset with the second result. For example, since the second source is preferred over the first source, the results from the second source are preferred. Thus, a second result (e.g., for "The Big Bang Theory") may be added back into The second subset to create a new third subset of results for display. The media guidance application may generate a new list or other data structure having identifiers for each result that is part of the third subset, or modify an existing list or other data structure of the second subset. In some embodiments, the second result replaces the third result. In other embodiments, another result previously in the subset is removed and both the second and third results are in the third subset.
The media guidance application generates a fourth subset of the first search results by replacing a first result in the first subset with a fourth result in the first search results, wherein the fourth result is not in the first subset. For example, since the second source is preferred over the first source, results from the first source that match results from the second source need to be replaced with other results. Thus, The first result (e.g., for The "The Big Bang Theory") may be replaced with a fourth result in The first result that does not match any of The results in The third subset (e.g., based on The comparison metadata, as discussed above). The media guidance application may generate a new list or other data structure having identifiers for each result that is part of the fourth subset, or modify an existing list or other data structure of the first subset. The media guidance application then generates a third subset for display in the first row instead of the first subset, and a fourth subset for display in the second row instead of the modified second subset. For example, the media guidance application may generate an indicator (e.g., text and/or graphics) associated with each result of the third subset in the first row and each result of the fourth subset in the second row. In this way, duplicate results are still not presented, but since the second source is now preferred over the first source, the duplicate results are replaced from the first result rather than the second result.
In some embodiments, the results identify media assets, and the media guidance application presents selectable options to perform actions related to the media assets. In particular, the media guidance application receives a user selection of a first result. For example, the media guidance application may receive a selection of a particular result displayed on the grid via a user input interface, such as a remote control or a touch screen interface. As a specific example, the media guidance application may determine that the user has selected the results of "the big Bang Theory" in the first row (e.g., the user's most preferred source). The media guidance application generates, for display, a plurality of selectable options associated with the media assets in response to receiving the user selection. The plurality of options may include an option to add the media asset to a watch list. For example, after the user selects the option to add a media asset to the watch list, the media guidance application may store an identifier associated with the media asset in a data structure that includes identifiers of media assets that the user desires to watch at some future time.
The plurality of options may include an option to add the media asset to a list of favorites. For example, when the user selects the option to add a media asset to the favorites list, the media guidance application may store identifiers associated with the media assets in a data structure that includes identifiers of media assets that the user likes. In some embodiments, as discussed above, the favorites list may be used to determine a user's preference for a particular result when determining which result to replace with a duplicate result. The plurality of options may include an option to view the time of upcoming available media assets. For example, when a user selects the option to view the upcoming time at which a media asset is available, the media guidance application may query a media guidance database (e.g., stored locally in storage or at a remote server) for the time and the source from which the media asset is available. The media guidance application may then generate a time for display and a source from which the media assets are available.
The plurality of options may include an option to record the media asset. For example, upon a user selecting the option to record a media asset, the media guidance application may determine whether the media asset is available from a source during a certain time period. If the media asset is available, the media guidance application may schedule the recording (e.g., by adding an identifier of the media asset and the source and time of the available media asset to a scheduling data structure). If the media asset is not available, the media guidance application may add the media asset to the watch list, as discussed above.
The described systems and methods may present search results from different sources in different rows based on user preferences and ensure that less preferred sources do not display duplicate items with more preferred sources. Conventional systems may present results from different sources organized by source of the results. However, this process ignores the user's preferences when ranking the results based on their respective sources. Furthermore, conventional systems do not determine whether a lower ranked source (based on user preferences) contains duplicate results from a higher ranked source, and therefore present different results. By considering and removing duplicate items, the described systems and methods may maximize the number of unique results that may be presented on a given display screen.
It should be noted that the above-described systems and/or methods may be applied to, or used in accordance with, other systems, methods, and/or apparatuses described in this disclosure.
Drawings
The above and other objects and advantages of the present disclosure will become apparent upon consideration of the following detailed description, taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings, in which like reference characters refer to like parts throughout, and in which:
FIG. 1 shows an illustrative example of a display displaying search results from multiple sources in a grid, in accordance with some embodiments of the present disclosure;
FIG. 2 shows an illustrative depiction of a data structure containing search results from different sources, in accordance with some embodiments of the disclosure;
FIG. 3 shows another illustrative display of search results from multiple sources displayed in a grid in accordance with some embodiments of the present disclosure;
FIG. 4 shows an illustrative example of a display screen for use in accessing media content in accordance with some embodiments of the present disclosure;
FIG. 5 shows another illustrative example of a display screen for accessing media content in accordance with some embodiments of the present disclosure;
fig. 6 is a block diagram of an illustrative user equipment device, in accordance with some embodiments of the present disclosure;
FIG. 7 is a block diagram of an illustrative media system in accordance with some embodiments of the present disclosure;
FIG. 8 is a flowchart of illustrative steps for presenting search results from multiple sources in accordance with some embodiments of the present disclosure;
FIG. 9 is a flowchart of exemplary steps for determining, based on user preferences, that a user prefers a first source over a second source, according to some embodiments of the present disclosure;
FIG. 10 is a flowchart of illustrative steps for determining a subset of results to display in accordance with some embodiments of the present disclosure;
FIG. 11 is a flowchart of illustrative steps for determining whether a first result from a first source and a second result from a second source match, in accordance with some embodiments of the present disclosure; and
FIG. 12 is another flowchart of illustrative steps for presenting search results from multiple sources in accordance with some embodiments of the present disclosure.
Detailed Description
Systems and methods are described for presenting search results from multiple sources by ranking the sources from which the results were received and not presenting duplicate results from lower ranked sources. For example, results from a first source and a second source may be received. In response to a user's preference for a first source over a second source (e.g., the user prefers HBO over HBO)
FIG. 1 shows an illustrative example of a display displaying search results from multiple sources in a grid, according to some embodiments of the present disclosure. For example,
The
In some embodiments, the media guidance application receives user input. For example, the media guidance application may receive user input via a user input interface (e.g., a remote control or a touch screen interface). The user input may be a string of one or more alphanumeric or other characters (e.g., "Big"). Alternatively or additionally, the user input may be selection of one of a plurality of selectable options through a common search query. For example, the media guidance application may present the most frequently searched keywords as selectable options that may be selected by the user, thereby saving the user the time he or she may have to enter characters.
The media guidance application sources the search results from the first source and the second source based on user input. For example, the media guidance application may send user input (e.g., user query 102) to a first source and a second source (e.g.,
As referred to herein, a "result" should be understood to be data that is related to or matches the user's input. For example, the data may be a link to a location of the data, such as a URL to a web page or a link to a location in a storage device that stores the media asset. As another example, the data may be text or graphics that match the user input (e.g., if the user input is "orange", the result may be an image of the fruit). As referred to herein, "search results" should be understood as one or more results received from a source. For example, querying the source of the results based on user input may return multiple results (e.g., links to different URLs, pointers to different locations in storage, graphics, etc.).
The media guidance application receives a first search result from a first source and a second search result from a second source. For example, the media guidance application may receive multiple results from two sources (e.g.,
The media guidance application retrieves user preferences indicating preferences for the first source relative to the second source. For example, the media guidance application may retrieve a user profile that is stored locally or remotely at a server. The media guidance application may retrieve the search preferences from the user profile. For example, the media guidance application may store a ranking of sources (e.g.,
The media guidance application generates for display a grid including a plurality of rows with search results. For example, the media guidance application may generate results from a first source (e.g., source 104) that are higher than results from a second source (e.g., source 106), and display only results in the second source that do not match the results displayed from the first source. In particular, the media guidance application determines to generate, for display in the first row, first search results from the first source based on the retrieved user preferences indicating preferences for the first source relative to the second source. For example, the media guidance application may determine a particular location (e.g., a row) in which to generate results (e.g., results 112, 114, and 116) from a first source (e.g., source 104). In some embodiments, the line may be located at a line closer to the top of the screen (e.g., display 100) than a second line that presents results from a second source.
The media guidance application determines a first subset of first search results that are appropriate for the first row and a second subset of second search results that are appropriate for the second row, where the first subset includes first results of the first search results, and where the second subset includes second results of the second search results, but not third results of the second search results. For example, the media guidance application may determine the number of results that fit in the first and second rows. The number may be constant (e.g., each row always contains 3 results), or may vary based on the length of the identifier of the result (e.g., results with a greater number of characters take more space and fewer results are displayed at one time). In some embodiments, the number may be different for the first row and the second row. For example, because the
The media guidance application compares metadata associated with the first result with metadata associated with the second result. For example, the media guidance application may retrieve metadata associated with the results (e.g., results 112) locally from storage or from a remote server. The media guidance application may alternatively or additionally receive metadata in fields of a table associated with results received from a source (e.g., source 104). The metadata may be any data related to the results that describes the content associated with the results. For example, if the result is for a news article, the metadata may include the author of the article, the type of article (e.g., opinion), and/or the publication name (e.g., Nature). The media guidance application may execute a program script to iteratively compare characters of metadata (e.g., attributes) of the two results to determine whether the two results match (e.g., compare
The media guidance application determines that the first result matches the second result based on the comparison. For example, the media guidance application may determine that two results match if each character of a particular attribute associated with a first result (e.g., result 112 from source 104) matches each character of a corresponding attribute associated with a second result (e.g., result 112 from source 106). For example, if the two results contain metadata that references the actor "Matt Damon," the media guidance application may determine that the metadata matches, and thus the two results match. Alternatively or additionally, the media guidance application may determine whether all metadata (e.g., all attributes) or a threshold percentage (e.g., 50%) associated with the first result (e.g., from source 104) matches corresponding metadata of the second result (e.g., from source 106). For example, if the media guidance application determines that the title, director, and genre attributes match between two results, the media guidance application may determine that the two results match with greater confidence than when only one attribute is matched.
In some embodiments, certain attributes (e.g., titles) may be weighted more when determining whether two results match, as the attributes are more different between the results. For example, many results may relate to "Matt Damon" and thus false positive matches may occur if only actor metadata is matched, but many results relate to "The BourneIdentity" with less likelihood and therefore title weights higher than actors. In some embodiments, the media guidance application may determine a match if a threshold number of characters match between attributes of a first result (e.g., from source 104) and attributes of a second result (e.g., from source 106). For example, in some cases, a single character may differ between metadata associated with a first result and metadata associated with a second result (e.g., "Tom Hanks" and "TomHankz") due to spelling errors or other typographical errors. In this case, if a threshold number of characters (e.g., all characters except one character) match, the media guidance application may determine that the metadata associated with the first and second results match.
In some embodiments, the media guidance application may determine the number of results to select for the first subset and the second subset based on the display template. In particular, the media guidance application retrieves a display template for the grid (e.g., to generate display 100). For example, the media guidance application may retrieve the display template either locally from storage or remotely from a server via a communication network. The display template may be any suitable data structure, such as a class or table, that contains parameters for displaying results from multiple sources in different rows. The media guidance application retrieves a first value for the first number of results for the first row from a first field of a display template associated with the first row. For example, the media guidance application may retrieve an integer number of results in the first row (e.g., "3") from a field of the display template. Alternatively or additionally, the media guidance application may retrieve one or more values corresponding to the size of the display area of the first row and calculate a number of results that may be appropriate for the first row. The media guidance application retrieves a second value from a second field of the display template associated with the second row that is appropriate for the second number of results for the second row. Similar to the value for the number of results in the first row, the media guidance application may retrieve an integer number of results in the first row (e.g., "3") from the fields of the display template. In some embodiments, the number of results appropriate for the first row may be different from the number of results appropriate for the second row. For example, the media guidance application may present a greater number of results from a first source (e.g., source 104) because it is user preferred.
The media guidance application then selects a first number of results from the first search results as a first subset. For example, the media guidance application may retrieve from the first search result the number of results determined to fit in the first line (e.g., if 3 results fit in the first line, results 112, 114, and 116 from
The media guidance application modifies the second subset by replacing the second result in the second subset with the third result in response to determining that the first result matches the second result. For example, upon determining that two results are to be displayed simultaneously (e.g., they are in the first subset and the second subset), the media guidance application replaces the results of the source that the user does not prefer (e.g., the results that match
The media guidance application generates a first subset for display in a first row and a modified second subset for display in a second row. For example, the media guidance application may generate an identifier for each result in a first subset (e.g., results 112, 114, and 116) in the first row. As a specific example, the identifier may be text or graphics that identify each result. The media guidance application may receive the identifiers from the sources (e.g.,
In some embodiments, the media guidance application receives a request from the user expressing a preference for the second source rather than the first source, and the media guidance application replaces the duplicate results between the first and second subsets from the first subset rather than the second subset. In particular, the media guidance application receives a second user input (e.g., of
The media guidance application, in response to receiving the second user input, swaps rows displaying the first search result and the second search result and determines whether duplicate items exist in the less preferred source (e.g., now the first source) with the more preferred source (e.g., now the second source). In particular, the media guidance application generates a third subset of the second search results by replacing a third result in the modified second subset with the second result. For example, since the second source is preferred over the first source, the results from the second source are preferred. Thus, the second result (e.g., matching
The media guidance application generates a fourth subset of the first search results by replacing a first result in the first subset with a fourth result in the first search results, wherein the fourth result is not in the first subset. For example, because a second source (e.g., source 106) is preferred over a first source (e.g., source 104), results from the first source that match results from the second source need to be replaced with other results in the same manner as discussed above. Thus, the first result (e.g., result 112) may be replaced with a fourth result in the first result that does not match any of the results in the third subset (e.g., based on the comparison metadata, as discussed above). The media guidance application may generate a new list or other data structure having identifiers for each result that is part of the fourth subset, or modify an existing list or other data structure of the first subset. The media guidance application then generates a third subset for display in the first row instead of the first subset, and a fourth subset for display in the second row instead of the modified second subset. For example, the media guidance application may generate an indicator (e.g., text and/or graphics) associated with each result of the third subset in the first row and each result of the fourth subset in the second row. In this way, duplicate results are still not presented, but since the second source is now preferred over the first source, the duplicate results are replaced from the first result rather than the second result.
FIG. 2 shows an illustrative depiction of a data structure containing search results from different sources in accordance with some embodiments of the disclosure. For example,
In some embodiments, the media guidance application may retrieve metadata from a database and compare characters of the retrieved metadata to determine whether the two results match. In particular, the media guidance application compares a first identifier of the first result and a second identifier of the second result to a plurality of identifiers stored in a database. The identifier may be any combination of characters that define the result, such as a title, URL, and/or a numerical value (e.g., a serial number) associated with the result. For example, the media guidance application may access a database stored locally in a storage device or a database stored at a remote server via a communication network. The database may be organized as a series of multiple linked lists (e.g., a relational database) in which multiple identifiers in a first table are each associated with a pointer to another table containing metadata associated with the identifier. For example, the media guidance application may compare the characters of the first identifier and the second identifier (e.g., the identifiers of
The media guidance application retrieves first metadata from a first field associated with the first stored identifier and retrieves second metadata from a second field associated with the second stored identifier. For example, tables containing metadata associated with each stored identifier (e.g., associated with
In some embodiments, the media guidance application determines which results to select based on the relevance rankings of the results from each source. In particular, the media guidance application ranks each of the first search results based on a relevance of each result to the user input, and ranks each of the second search results. For example, the media guidance application may receive search results from sources (e.g., data structure 200) that have been ranked by popularity (e.g., based on the number of times a user has clicked on a particular link) and/or character matches (e.g., how many characters in a search query submitted by a user match characters of the results). In this case, the media guidance application may also rank the results based on user preferences (e.g., promote certain results based on the user's preferences for those results), or may simply retrieve the highest ranked results (e.g., results indexed "1," such as results 204) without further ranking. If the results received from the sources are not ranked, and are ranked based only on similarity to the user's query, the media guidance application may determine a relative popularity for each result. For example, the media guidance application may compare an identifier of each result (e.g., an identifier of result 204) to popularity stored in a data structure (either in local storage or at a remote server). The media guidance application may then rank the results received from the sources based on the retrieved popularity values. For example, the popularity value may be a nielsen ranking of television programs.
The media guidance application retrieves the highest ranked result among the first search results as the first result in the first subset. For example, the media guidance application may retrieve the highest ranked result of the ranked first search results (e.g., result 204 may be indexed as the highest ranked result in data structure 200) as the first result. The media guidance application may continue to retrieve the number of results that fit in the first row (e.g., as discussed above) by retrieving the next highest ranked result from the first search result (e.g., from data structure 200). The media guidance application retrieves the highest ranked result among the second search results as the second result in the second subset. For example, the media guidance application may retrieve the highest ranked result of the second search results (e.g., result 252 may be indexed as the highest ranked result in data structure 250) as the second result. The media guidance application may continue to retrieve the number of results that are appropriate for the second row by retrieving the next highest ranked result from the second search results (e.g., as discussed above).
In some embodiments, the media guidance application modifies the second subset by replacing the second result with the next highest ranked result. In particular, the media guidance application retrieves the next highest ranked result that is not in the second subset as the third result. For example, the media guidance application may retrieve, from a ranked results list (e.g., as discussed above, or received from a source of search results, or generated by the media guidance application), results that are the highest ranked results that are not part of the second subset. As a specific example, if the highest ranked result of the second subset (e.g., result 252) matches the result in the first subset (e.g., result 204) and three results need to be displayed from the second source (e.g., three results need to be retrieved from data structure 250), the media guidance application may select results ranked 2-4 (e.g., subset 254) for display instead of 1-3. The media guidance application may also determine whether the retrieved next highest ranked result matches a result in the first subset (e.g., by comparing metadata as discussed above). For example, if the media guidance application determines that the next highest ranked result matches a result in the first subset, the media guidance application may retrieve another result (e.g., one lower on the ranked list) until the result does not match any of the first subset.
The media guidance application may remove the second result from the second subset. For example, the media guidance application may remove the identifier associated with the second result (e.g., result 252) from a list or other data structure that stores the identifiers of the second subset. The media guidance application may then add the third result to the second subset. For example, the media guidance application may add an identifier of the next highest ranked result (which does not match any of the results in the first subset) to a list or other data structure. The media guidance application may add the identifier to the same field previously populated with the identifier of the removed second result, or may reorder the identifiers (e.g., based on popularity). In some embodiments, the media guidance application uses the order of identifiers stored in a list or other data structure as the order in which the identifiers are presented to the user in the row.
In some embodiments, the media guidance application modifies the second subset by replacing the second result with a result that matches the user preferences. In particular, the media guidance application retrieves second user preferences for attributes of the search results. For example, the media guidance application may retrieve a user profile that contains a plurality of user preferences. The media guidance application may retrieve preferences from the user profile. For example, the media guidance application may retrieve movies that the user likes to include the actor "Matt Damon". The media guidance application may compare the retrieved user preferences to metadata associated with each of the search results from the source (e.g., each of the results in data structure 250). For example, the media guidance application may retrieve metadata associated with the results from a local storage or a remote server.
The media guidance application may then determine, for each result, whether the user preferences match the metadata associated with each result (e.g., based on a character comparison). In some embodiments, the media guidance application compares each user preference in the user profile to metadata associated with the results and ranks the results based on how many user preferences match the metadata associated with each result. For example, if both the actor and genre of a result match the user preferences, the result (e.g., result 252) may be ranked higher than another result in which only the actor associated with the result matches the user preferences. In some embodiments, the media guidance application may weight certain user preferences higher when determining which result to replace the second result (e.g., based on an indication stored in the user profile). For example, the media guidance application may determine that the user preferences retrieved for the "action movie" are the user's "low preferences" based on the user specifying the preferences for the "action movie" as "low preferences". In contrast, the media guidance application may determine that the user preferences retrieved for "Matt Damon" are "high preferences" of the user.
The media guidance application removes the second result from the second subset in response to determining that the attributes of the third result match the second user preferences. For example, the media guidance application may remove the identifier associated with the second result (e.g., result 252) from a list or other data structure that stores the identifiers of the second subset. The media guidance application may then add the third result to the second subset. For example, the media guidance application may add an identifier of the result that matches (or most closely matches) the user preference(s) to a list or other data structure (e.g., another result in data structure 250). The media guidance application may add the identifier to the same field previously populated with the identifier of the removed second result, or may reorder the identifiers (e.g., based on popularity). In some embodiments, the media guidance application uses the order of identifiers stored in a list or other data structure as the order in which the identifiers are presented to the user in the row.
FIG. 3 shows another illustrative example of a display displaying search results from multiple sources in a grid in accordance with some embodiments of the present disclosure. For example,
Upon receiving a user selection to receive more information about the selected
In some embodiments, the media guidance application determines a total number of duplicate results received from the first and second sources and displays the number to the user. In particular, the media guidance application compares each of the first search results to each of the second search results. For example, the media guidance application may compare metadata associated with each of the first search results (e.g., from source 304) with metadata for each search result received from the second source (e.g., from source 306). For example, the media guidance application may execute a program script using a for loop to iteratively compare each result from the first source with each result from the second source. The media guidance application then determines a number of duplicate results between the first search result and the second search result based on comparing each of the first search results to each of the second search results. For example, media guidesThe application may initialize a counter and increment the counter each time a match between a result from a first source and a result from a second source is determined until each result from the first source has been compared to a search result from the second source. As discussed above, the media guidance application may determine a match if a threshold percentage of the metadata associated with the two search results match. The media guidance application then generates an indication of the number of repeated results (e.g., the number of repeated items 314) for display in the second row. For example, the media guidance application may generate text for display with a value of the total number of repeated items in the first or second row (e.g., "30"). The indication may optionally contain text that sets forth which source the repeated item refers to. For example, if
In some embodiments, the media guidance application may display other sources that return the same results upon receiving a user selection of a result. In particular, the media guidance application receives a user selection of a first result. For example, the media guidance application may receive a selection of a particular result displayed on the grid via a user input interface, such as a remote control or a touch screen interface. As a specific example, The media guidance application may determine that The user has selected a result of "The Big BangTheory" in The first row (e.g., selected result 310). The media guidance application may determine other sources that received The results of The "The Big Bang Theory" by comparing metadata associated with The selected results with results from other sources, as discussed above. For example, the media guidance application may determine that the second result (e.g., from source 306) matches the first result (e.g., selected
In some embodiments, the results identify media assets, and the media guidance application presents selectable options to perform actions related to the media assets. In particular, the media guidance application receives a user selection of a first result. For example, the media guidance application may receive a selection of a particular result (e.g., selected result 310) displayed on the grid via a user input interface, such as a remote control or a touch screen interface. As a specific example, The media guidance application may determine that The user has selected The results of "The Big Bang Theory" in The first row (e.g., The user's most preferred source). The media guidance application, in response to receiving the user selection, generates for display a plurality of selectable options associated with the media asset (e.g., overlaid on
The plurality of options may include an option to add the media asset to a list of favorites. For example, when the user selects the option to add a media asset to the favorites list, the media guidance application may store identifiers associated with the media assets in a data structure that includes identifiers of media assets that the user likes. In some embodiments, as discussed above, the favorites list may be used to determine a user's preference for a particular result when determining which result to replace with a duplicate result. The plurality of options may include an option to view the time of upcoming available media assets. For example, when a user selects the option to view the upcoming time at which a media asset is available, the media guidance application may query a media guidance database (e.g., stored locally in storage or at a remote server) for the time and the source from which the media asset is available. The media guidance application may then generate a time for display and a source from which the media assets are available.
The plurality of options may include an option to record the media asset. For example, upon a user selecting the option to record a media asset, the media guidance application may determine whether the media asset is available from a source during a certain time period. If the media asset is available, the media guidance application may schedule the recording (e.g., by adding an identifier of the media asset and the source and time of the available media asset to a scheduling data structure). If the media asset is not available, the media guidance application may add the media asset to the watch list, as discussed above.
The amount of content available to a user in any given content delivery system can be large. Accordingly, many users desire a form of media guidance through an interface that allows users to efficiently navigate content selections and easily identify content that they may desire. The application providing such guidance is referred to herein as an interactive media guidance application, or sometimes as a media guidance application or a guidance application.
Interactive media guidance applications may take various forms based on the content they provide guidance. One typical type of media guidance application is an interactive television program guide. Interactive television program guides (sometimes referred to as electronic program guides) are well known guide applications that allow users to navigate and locate among various types of content or media assets, among other things. The interactive media guidance application may generate graphical user interface screens that enable the user to navigate, locate, and select between content. As referred to herein, the terms "media asset" and "content" should be understood to mean electronically consumable user assets, such as television programs, as well as pay-per-view programs, on-demand programs (as in a video-on-demand (VOD) system), internet content (e.g., streaming content, downloadable content, web broadcasts (Webcast), etc.), video clips, audio, content information, pictures, rotating images, documents, playlists, websites, articles, books, ebooks, blogs, chat sessions, social media, applications, games, and/or any other media or multimedia and/or combinations thereof. The guidance application also allows users to navigate and locate between content. As referred to herein, the term "multimedia" should be understood to mean content that utilizes at least two different forms of content as described above (e.g., text, audio, image, video, or interactive content forms). The content may be recorded, played, displayed, or accessed by the user equipment device, but may also be part of a live performance.
The media guidance application and/or any instructions for performing any of the embodiments discussed herein may be encoded on a computer-readable medium. Computer-readable media include any medium that can store data. The computer-readable medium may be transitory, including but not limited to propagating electrical or electromagnetic signals, or may be non-transitory, including but not limited to volatile and non-volatile computer memory or storage devices, such as hard disks, floppy disks, USB drives, DVDs, CDs, media cards, register memory, processor cache, random access memory ("RAM"), and so forth.
With the advent of the internet, mobile computing, and high-speed wireless networks, users access media on user equipment devices that they do not traditionally use. As referred to herein, the phrase "user equipment device," "user equipment," "user device," "electronic equipment," "media equipment device," or "media device" should be understood to mean any device for accessing the aforementioned, such as a television, a smart TV, a set-top box, an Integrated Receiver Decoder (IRD) for processing satellite television, a digital storage device, a Digital Media Receiver (DMR), a Digital Media Adapter (DMA), a streaming media device, a DVD player, a DVD recorder, a connected DVD, a local media server, a BLU-RAY player, a BLU-RAY recorder, a Personal Computer (PC), a laptop computer, a tablet computer, a TV box, a personal computer television (WebPC/TV), a PC media server, a PC media center, a handheld computer, a computer, a stationary phone, a Personal Digital Assistant (PDA), a mobile phone, a portable video player, a portable music player, a portable game player, a smart phone or any other television equipment, computing equipment or wireless device, and/or combinations thereof. In some embodiments, the user equipment device may have a front-facing screen and a rear-facing screen, multiple front screens, or multiple angled screens. In some embodiments, the user equipment device may have a front facing camera and/or a rear facing camera. On these user equipment devices, the user may be able to navigate and locate within the same content available through the television. Thus, media guidance may also be available on these devices. The provided guidance may be for content available only through the television, for content available only through one or more other types of user equipment devices, or for content available through both the television and one or more other types of user equipment devices. The media guidance application may be provided as an online application (i.e., provided on a website) or as a standalone application or client on a user equipment device. Various devices and platforms that may implement a media guidance application are described in more detail below.
One of the functions of a media guidance application is to provide media guidance data to a user. As referred to herein, the phrases "media guidance data" or "guidance data" should be understood to mean any data related to content or data used in operating a guidance application. For example, guide data may include program information, guide application settings, user preferences, user profile information, media listings, media-related information (e.g., broadcast times, broadcast channels, titles, descriptions, rating information (e.g., parental control ratings, critic's ratings, etc.), genre or category information, actor information, logo data for a broadcaster's or provider's logos, etc.), media formats (e.g., standard definition, high definition, 3D, etc.), on-demand information, blogs, websites, and any other type of guide data that facilitates user navigation and location in a desired content selection.
4-5 show illustrative display screens that may be used to provide media guidance data. The display screens shown in fig. 4-5 may be implemented on any suitable user equipment device or platform. 4-5 are shown as full screen displays, they may also be overlaid in whole or in part on the content being displayed. The user may indicate a desire to access the content information by selecting a selectable option provided in the display screen (e.g., a menu option, a list option, an icon, a hyperlink, etc.) or pressing a dedicated button (e.g., a GUIDE button) on a remote control or other user input interface or device. In response to a user's indication, the media guidance application may provide media guidance data organized in one of several ways to the display screen, such as by time and channel, by time, by channel, by source, by content type, by category (e.g., movie, sports, news, children, or other program categories), or other predefined, user-defined, or other organization criteria in a grid.
Fig. 4 shows an illustrative grid of program listing displays 400 arranged by time and channel that also enables access to different types of content in a single display.
In addition to providing access to linear programming (e.g., content scheduled to be transmitted to a plurality of user equipment devices at predetermined times and provided according to a schedule), the media guidance application also provides access to non-linear programming (e.g., content accessible to and not provided by the user equipment devices at any time). Non-linear programming may include content from different content sources, including on-demand content (e.g., VOD), Internet content (e.g., streaming media, downloadable media, etc.), locally stored content (e.g., content stored on any of the user equipment devices or other storage devices described above), or other time-independent content. On-Demand content may include movies or any other content provided by a particular content provider (e.g., HBO On Demand provides "The Sopranos" and "Curb Your Enterprise". HBO ON DEMAND is a service mark owned by Time Warner, l.p. et al, and THE same SOPRANOS and current yourenthwisiasm are trademarks owned by Home Box Office. The internet content may include web events, such as chat sessions or webcasts, or content available on-demand as streaming content or downloadable content, accessible through an internet website or other internet (e.g., FTP).
The
The media guidance application may be personalized based on user preferences. The personalized media guidance application allows a user to customize displays and features to create a personalized "experience" with the media guidance application. Such a personalized experience may be created by allowing the user to enter these customizations and/or monitoring user activities through the media guidance application to determine various user preferences. Users may access their personalized guidance application by logging in or otherwise identifying themselves to the guidance application. Customization of the media guidance application may be based on a user profile. Customizations may include different presentation schemes (e.g., color scheme of display, font size of text, etc.), aspects of the displayed content listing (e.g., HDTV-only or 3D-only programming, user-specified broadcast channels based on favorite channel selections, display of re-ordered channels, recommended content, etc.), desired recording characteristics (e.g., recording or series recording for a particular user, recording quality, etc.), parental control settings, customized presentation of internet content (e.g., presentation of social media content, e-mail, electronically delivered articles, etc.), and other desired customizations.
The media guidance application may allow the user to provide user profile information or may automatically compile the user profile information. The media guidance application may, for example, monitor content accessed by the user and/or other interactions that the user may have with the guidance application. In addition, the media guidance application may obtain all or part of other user profiles related to the particular user (e.g., from other websites (such as www.Tivo.com) accessed by the user on the Internet, other media guidance applications accessed from the user, other interactive applications accessed from the user, from another user equipment device of the user, etc.), and/or obtain information about the user from other sources accessible to the media guidance application. Thus, a unified guidance application experience may be provided for a user across different user equipment devices of the user. This type of user experience is described in more detail below in conjunction with FIG. 7. Additional personalized media guidance application features are described in more detail in U.S. patent application publication No.2005/0251827 to Ellis et al, filed 2005-7-11, U.S. patent No.7,165,098 to Boyer et al, 2007-1-16, and U.S. patent application publication No.2002/0174430 to Ellis et al, filed 2002-2-21, which are incorporated herein by reference in their entirety.
Another display arrangement for providing media guidance is shown in fig. 5.
The lists in
The user may access the content and media guidance application (and its display screens described above and below) from one or more of its user equipment devices. Fig. 6 shows a generalized embodiment of an illustrative
In a client-server based embodiment,
The memory may be an electronic storage device provided as
A user may send instructions to control
The guidance application may be implemented using any suitable architecture. For example, it may be a stand-alone application implemented entirely on the
In some embodiments, the media guidance application is a client-server based application. Data for use by thick or thin clients implemented on the
In some embodiments, the media guidance application is downloaded and interpreted or otherwise run by an interpreter or virtual machine (run by control circuitry 604). In some embodiments, the guidance application may be encoded in ETV Binary Interchange Format (EBIF), received by the
The
User equipment devices utilizing at least some of the system features described above in connection with fig. 6 may not be classified solely as user television equipment 702, user computer equipment 704, or wireless user communication device 706. For example, user television equipment 702 may be internet-enabled like some user computer equipment 704 to allow access to internet content, while user computer equipment 704 may include a tuner like some television equipment 702 to allow access to television programming. The media guidance applications may have the same layout on a variety of different types of user equipment or may be customized for the display capabilities of the user equipment. For example, on user computer equipment 704, the guidance application may be provided as a website accessed by a web browser. In another example, the guidance application may be scaled down for the wireless user communication device 706.
In system 700, there is typically more than one of each type of user equipment device, but only one of each type is shown in fig. 7 to avoid overcomplicating the drawing. Further, more than one type of user equipment device and more than one user equipment device of each type may be utilized by each user.
In some embodiments, the user equipment devices (e.g., user television equipment 702, user computer equipment 704, wireless user communication device 706) may be referred to as "second screen devices". For example, the second screen device may supplement content presented on the first user equipment device. The content presented on the second screen device may be any suitable content that supplements the content presented on the first device. In some embodiments, the second screen device provides an interface for adjusting settings and display preferences of the first device. In some embodiments, the second screen device is configured for interacting with other second screen devices or for interacting with a social network. The second screen device may be located in the same room as the first device, in a different room but in the same house or building as the first device, or in a different building than the first device.
The user may also set various settings to maintain consistent media guidance application settings between the home-based device and the remote device. Settings include those described herein, as well as channel and program collections, program preferences that the guide application uses to make program recommendations, display preferences, and other desired guide settings. For example, if a user sets a channel on, for example, website www.Tivo.com as a favorite on their office's personal computer, then the same channel will appear as a favorite on the user's home-style device (e.g., user television equipment and user computer equipment) as well as the user's mobile device. Thus, a change made on one user equipment device may change the guidance experience on another user equipment device, whether they are the same type or different types of user equipment devices. In addition, the changes made may be based on settings entered by the user and user activities monitored by the guidance application.
The user equipment devices may be coupled to a communication network 714. That is, user television equipment 702, user computer equipment 704, and wireless user communication device 706 are coupled to communication network 714 via communication paths 708, 710, and 712, respectively. The communication network 714 may be one or more networks including the internet, a mobile telephone network, a mobile voice or data network (e.g., a 4G or LTE network), a wireline network, a public switched telephone network, or other type of communication network, or a combination of communication networks. Paths 708, 710, and 712 may individually or together comprise one or more communication paths such as a satellite path, a fiber optic path, a cable path, a path supporting internet communications (e.g., IPTV), a free space connection (e.g., for broadcast or other wireless signals), or any other suitable wired or wireless communication path or combination of such paths. Path 712 is drawn with a dotted line to indicate that it is a wireless path in the exemplary embodiment shown in fig. 7, and paths 708 and 710 are drawn as solid lines to indicate that they are wired paths (although, if desired, these paths may be wireless paths). Communication with the user equipment device may be provided by one or more of these communication paths, but is shown as a single path in fig. 7 to avoid overcomplicating the drawing.
Although no communication paths are drawn between user equipment devices, these devices may communicate directly with each other via communication paths such as those described above in connection with paths 708, 710, and 712, as well as other short-range point-to-point communication paths such as USB cables, IEEE 1394 cables, wireless paths (e.g., Bluetooth, infrared, IEEE 802-11x, etc.), or other short-range communications via wired or wireless paths. Bluetooth is an authentication flag owned by Bluetooth SIG corporation. The user equipment devices may also communicate directly with each other through indirect paths via the communication network 714.
System 700 includes a content source 716 and a media guidance data source 718 coupled to a communication network 714 via communication paths 720 and 722, respectively. Paths 720 and 722 may include any of the communication paths described above in connection with paths 708, 710, and 712. Communications with content source 716 and media guidance data source 718 may be exchanged via one or more communication paths, but are shown as a single path in fig. 7 to avoid overcomplicating the drawing. Furthermore, there may be more than one of each of content source 716 and media guidance data source 718, but only one of each is shown in FIG. 7 to avoid overcomplicating the drawing. (different types of each of these sources are discussed below.) if desired, content source 716 and media guidance data source 718 may be integrated into one source device. While communication between sources 716 and 718 and user equipment devices 702, 704, and 706 is shown through communication network 714, in some embodiments, sources 716 and 718 may communicate directly with user equipment devices 702, 704, and 706 via communication paths (not shown), such as those described above in connection with paths 708, 710, and 712.
Content source 716 can include one or more types of content distribution equipment, including television distribution facilities, cable system headends, satellite distribution facilities, program sources (e.g., television broadcasters, such as NBC, ABC, HBO, etc.), intermediate distribution facilities and/or servers, internet providers, on-demand media servers, and other content providers. NBC is a trademark owned by National Broadcasting Company, Inc, ABC is a trademark owned by american Broadcasting Company, Inc, and HBO is a trademark owned by Home Box Office, Inc. The content source 716 may or may not be an originator of the content (e.g., a television broadcaster, a network broadcast provider, etc.) (e.g., an on-demand content provider, an internet provider of content for downloaded broadcast programs, etc.). The content source 716 may include a cable source, a satellite provider, an on-demand provider, an internet provider, an over-the-top (over-the-top) content provider, or other content provider. The content source 716 can also include a remote media server to store different types of content (including user-selected video content) at a location remote from any user equipment device. Systems and methods for remote storage of content and providing remotely stored content to user equipment are discussed in more detail in conjunction with U.S. patent No.7,761,892 to Ellis et al, 7, 20, 2010, which is incorporated herein by reference in its entirety.
Media guidance data source 718 may provide media guidance data, such as the media guidance data described above. Media guidance data may be provided to user equipment devices using any suitable scheme. In some embodiments, the guide application may be a stand-alone interactive television program guide that receives program guide data via a data feed (e.g., a continuous feed or trickle feed). The program schedule data and other guide data may be provided to user equipment on a television channel sideband using in-band digital signals, using out-of-band digital signals, or by any other suitable data transmission technique. Program schedule data and other media guide data may be provided to user equipment on a plurality of analog or digital television channels.
In some embodiments, guidance data from media guidance data source 718 may be provided to a user's equipment using a client-server approach. For example, the user equipment device may pull media guidance data from the server, or the server may push media guidance data to the user equipment device. In some embodiments, a guidance application client resident on the user equipment may initiate a session with source 718 to obtain guidance data when needed, e.g., when the guidance data is outdated or when the user equipment device receives a request to receive data from a user. The media guidance may be provided to the user equipment at any suitable frequency (e.g., continuously, daily, for a user-specified period of time, for a system-specified period of time, in response to a request from the user equipment, etc.). Media guidance data source 718 may provide the media guidance application itself or software updates for the media guidance application to user equipment devices 702, 704, and 706.
In some embodiments, the media guidance data may include viewer data. For example, viewer data may include current and/or historical user activity information (e.g., what content a user typically watches, what time a user watches content, whether a user interacts with a social network, what time a user interacts with a social network to post information, what type of content a user typically watches (e.g., pay-per-view or free-view), mood, brain activity information, etc.). Media guidance data may also include subscription data. For example, the subscription data may identify which feeds or services a given user subscribes to and/or which feeds or services a given user previously subscribes to but later terminates accessing (e.g., whether the user subscribes to a paid channel, whether the user increases the paid tier for services, whether the user increases internet speed). In some embodiments, the viewer data and/or subscription data may identify patterns for a given user for a period of time exceeding one year. The media guidance data may include a model (e.g., a survivor model) for generating a score that indicates a likelihood that a given user will terminate access to the service/source. For example, the media guidance application may process viewer data with subscription data using the model to generate a value or score that indicates the likelihood of whether a given user will terminate access to a particular service or source. In particular, a higher score may indicate a higher confidence that the user will terminate access to a particular service or source. Based on the score, the media guidance application may generate a promotion that entices the user to remain indicated by the score as a particular service or source to which the user may terminate access.
The media guidance application may be a standalone application implemented on a user equipment device, for example. For example, the media guidance application may be implemented as software or a set of executable instructions that may be stored in
The content and/or media guidance data delivered to user equipment devices 702, 704, and 706 may be over-the-top (OTT) content. OTT content delivery allows internet-enabled user devices (including any of the user equipment devices described above) to receive content (including any of the content described above) that is delivered over the internet in addition to content received over a cable or satellite connection. OTT content is delivered via an internet connection provided by an Internet Service Provider (ISP), but a third party distributes the content. The ISP may not be responsible for viewing capabilities, copyright, or redistribution of content and may only transmit IP packets provided by OTT content providers. Examples of OTT content providers include providing audio and video via IP packets
Media guidance system 700 is intended to illustrate a number of scenarios or network configurations through which user equipment devices and content sources and guidance data may communicate with one another for the purpose of accessing content and providing media guidance. Embodiments described herein may be applied in any one or a subset of these methods, or in systems that deliver content and provide media guidance using other methods. The following four schemes provide a detailed description of the generalized example of fig. 7.
In one arrangement, user equipment devices may communicate with each other within a home network. The user equipment devices may communicate with each other directly via the short-range point-to-point communication scheme described above, via an indirect path through a hub or other similar device provided on the home network, or via the communication network 714. Each of a plurality of individuals in a single home may operate a different user equipment device on the home network. Accordingly, it may be desirable to communicate various media guidance information or settings between different user equipment devices. For example, as described in more detail in U.S. patent publication No.2005/0251827 to Ellis et al, filed 7/11/2005, a user may desire to maintain consistent media guidance application settings on different user equipment devices within a home network. Different types of user equipment devices in the home network may also communicate with each other to transmit content. For example, a user may send content from a user computer device to a portable video player or a portable music player.
In a second approach, users may have multiple types of user equipment through which they access content and obtain media guidance. For example, some users may have home networks that are accessed by home-based and mobile devices. A user may control a home-based device through a media guidance application implemented on a remote device. For example, users may access an online media guidance application on a website via a personal computer or mobile device (such as a PDA or web-enabled mobile phone) of their office. The user may set various settings (e.g., recording, reminders, or other settings) on the online guidance application to control the user's home-style equipment. The online guidance may control the user's equipment directly or by communicating with a media guidance application on the user's home equipment. For example, various systems and methods for user equipment device communication are discussed in U.S. patent No.8,046,801 to Ellis et al, 10/25/2011, which is incorporated by reference in its entirety, where the user equipment devices are remotely located from each other.
In a third approach, users of user equipment devices both inside and outside of a home may use their media guidance application to communicate directly with content source 716 to access content. In particular, at home, users of user television equipment 702 and user computer equipment 704 may access the media guidance application to navigate among and locate desired content. The user may also access the media guidance application outside of the home using wireless user communication device 706 to navigate among and locate desired content.
In a fourth aspect, a user equipment device may operate in a cloud computing environment to access cloud services. In a cloud computing environment, various types of computing services (e.g., video sharing sites or social networking sites) for content sharing, storage, or distribution are provided by a collection of network-accessible computing and storage resources known as the "cloud". For example, a cloud may comprise a collection of server computing devices, which may be located in a centralized or distributed location, providing cloud-based services over a communication network 714 to various types of users and devices connected via a network (such as the internet). These cloud resources may include one or more content sources 716 and one or more media guidance data sources 718. In addition or in the alternative, the remote computing site may include other user equipment devices, such as user television equipment 702, user computer equipment 704, and wireless user communication devices 706. For example, other user equipment devices may provide access to stored video copies or streaming video. In such embodiments, the user equipment devices may operate in a peer-to-peer manner without communicating with the central server.
For user equipment devices, the cloud provides access to services, such as content storage, content sharing, or social networking services, among other examples, as well as to any of the above. The services may be provided in the cloud by a cloud computing service provider or by other providers of online services. For example, the cloud-based services may include content storage services, content sharing sites, social networking sites, or other services via which user-sourced content is distributed for viewing by others on connected devices. These cloud-based services may allow user equipment devices to store content to and receive content from the cloud, rather than storing content locally and accessing locally stored content.
A user may record content using various content capture devices, such as video cameras, digital cameras with video mode, audio recorders, mobile phones, and handheld computing devices. A user may upload content directly (e.g., from user computer equipment 704 or a wireless user communication device 706 with content capture features) to a content storage service on the cloud. Alternatively, the user may first transfer the content to a user equipment device (such as user computer equipment 704). The user equipment devices storing the content upload the content to the cloud using a data transfer service over the communication network 714. In some embodiments, the user equipment devices themselves are cloud resources, and other user equipment devices may access content directly from the user equipment device on which the user stores the content.
The cloud resources may be accessed by the user equipment device using, for example, a web browser, a media guidance application, a desktop application, a mobile application, and/or any combination of their access applications. The user equipment device may be a cloud client that relies on cloud computing for application delivery, or the user equipment device may have certain functionality without accessing cloud resources. For example, some applications running on the user equipment device may be cloud applications, i.e., applications delivered as a service over the internet, while other applications may be stored and run on the user equipment device. In some embodiments, the user device may receive content from multiple cloud resources simultaneously. For example, a user device may stream audio from one cloud resource while downloading content from a second cloud resource. Or the user device may download content from multiple cloud resources for more efficient downloading. In some embodiments, the user equipment device may use cloud resources to process operations, such as the processing operations performed by the processing circuitry described with respect to fig. 6.
As referred to herein, the term "responsive to …" means initiated as a result. For example, the first action being performed in response to the second action may include an intervening step between the first action and the second action. As referred to herein, the term "directly responsive" means caused by. For example, a first action being performed directly in response to a second action may not include an intervening step between the first action and the second action.
FIG. 8 is a flowchart of illustrative steps for presenting search results from multiple sources in accordance with some embodiments of the present disclosure. Media guidance
FIG. 9 is a flowchart of illustrative steps for determining, based on user preferences, that a user prefers a first source over a second source in accordance with some embodiments of the present disclosure. Media guidance
At 910, if the media guidance application determines that the user preferences relate to the source being searched,
At 912, if the media guidance application determines that the user preferences do not indicate a positive opinion of the source,
At 912, if the media guidance application determines that the user preferences indicate a positive opinion of the source,
At 910, if the media guidance application determines that the user preferences do not relate to the source being searched,
At 918, if the media guidance application determines that there are other preferences in the user profile that have not yet been retrieved,
At 918, if the media guidance application determines that all user preferences in the user profile have been retrieved,
FIG. 10 is a flowchart of illustrative steps for determining a subset of results to display in accordance with some embodiments of the present disclosure. Media guidance
At 1004, if the media guidance application determines that the results are not ranked based on relevance to the user input,
At 1004, if the media guidance application determines that the results are ranked based on relevance to the user input,
At 1010, if the media guidance application determines that the results are not ranked based on popularity,
At 1010, if the media guidance application determines that the results are ranked based on popularity,
At 1016, if the media guidance application determination results are not ranked based on user preferences,
At 1016, if the media guidance application determines that the results are ranked based on user preferences,
FIG. 11 is a flowchart of illustrative steps for determining whether a first result from a first source and a second result from a second source match, in accordance with some embodiments of the present disclosure. Media guidance
At 1108, if the media guidance application determines that the attributes do not match,
At 1114, if the media guidance application determines that there are additional attributes to compare,
At 1114, if the media guidance application determines that there are no other attributes to compare,
At 1120, if the media guidance application determines that the percentage is greater than the threshold match percentage,
FIG. 12 is another flowchart of illustrative steps for presenting search results from multiple sources in accordance with some embodiments of the present disclosure. Media guidance application implementation process 1200 may be performed by control circuitry 604 (FIG. 6), for example. It should be noted that process 1200, or any of its steps, may be performed on or provided by any of the devices shown in fig. 6-7.
Process 1200 begins at 1202, where the media guidance application searches (e.g., via control circuitry 604 (FIG. 6)) results from a first source and a second source based on user input. For example, the media guidance application may receive (e.g., via control circuitry 604 (fig. 6)) user input via a user input interface (e.g., user input interface 610 (fig. 6)). For example, the media guidance application may send (e.g., via control circuitry 604 (FIG. 6)) the user input to a first source and a second source (e.g., via communication network 714 (FIG. 7) to content source 716). For example, the media guidance application may generate a data packet that includes user input (e.g., a string of characters) and/or other parameters for the search (e.g., the results should be within a certain time period). In some embodiments, the media guidance application may utilize APIs from one or both sources to send (e.g., via control circuitry 604 (fig. 6)) a search query (e.g., based on user input).
Process 1200 continues to 1204, where the media guidance application receives (e.g., via control circuitry 604 (fig. 6)) at least a first search result from a first source. For example, the media guidance application may receive (e.g., via control circuitry 604 (fig. 6)) one or more results from a first source (e.g., from content source 716 (fig. 7)) that match the user input. The media guidance application may receive (e.g., via control circuitry 604 (fig. 6)) the result(s) from the source in a table that contains a plurality of rows, each row having an identifier that matches the result (e.g., a title of the media asset) and additional information in an associated field (e.g., an actor in the media asset).
Process 1200 continues to 1206, where the media guidance application receives (e.g., via control circuitry 604 (fig. 6)) at least a second search result and a third search result from a second source. For example, the media guidance application may receive (e.g., via control circuitry 604 (fig. 6)) a plurality of results that match the user input from a second source (e.g., from content source 716 (fig. 7)). The media guidance application may receive (e.g., via control circuitry 604 (fig. 6)) the results from the second source in a table that contains a plurality of rows, each row having an identifier that matches the results (e.g., a title of the media asset) and additional information in an associated field (e.g., an actor in the media asset).
Process 1200 continues to 1208, where the media guidance application retrieves (e.g., via control circuitry 604 (FIG. 6)) user preferences indicating that the first source is preferred over the second source. For example, the media guidance application may retrieve a user profile that is stored locally (e.g., in storage 608 (fig. 6)) or remotely (e.g., at media guidance data source 718 accessible via communication network 714 (fig. 7)) e.g., via control circuitry 604 (fig. 6). The media guidance application may retrieve (e.g., via control circuitry 604 (fig. 6)) the search preferences from the user profile, as described further below with respect to fig. 9. For example, the media guidance application may store (e.g., via control circuitry 604 (FIG. 6)) settings set by the userThe source of (c). As a specific example, the media guidance application may generate a graphical user interface (e.g., on display 612 (fig. 6)), where the user may select sources (e.g.,
Process 1200 continues to 1210, where the media guidance application generates (e.g., via control circuitry 604 (FIG. 6)) first search results from a first source for display in a first row of a grid comprising a plurality of rows, each row comprising one or more search results, based on the user preferences. For example, the media guidance application may determine (e.g., via control circuitry 604 (FIG. 6)) a particular location (e.g., a row) in which to generate results from a first source. For example, the media guidance application may generate (e.g., via control circuitry 604 (FIG. 6)) an indicator (e.g., text and/or graphics) for display (e.g., on display 612 (FIG. 6)) associated with the first result in the first row.
Process 1200 continues to 1212, where the media guidance application determines (e.g., via control circuitry 604 (fig. 6)) that the first search result matches the second search result, and that the first search result does not match the third search result. For example, the media guidance application may determine (e.g., via control circuitry 604 (fig. 6)) that the two results match if each character of the particular attribute associated with the first result matches each character of the corresponding attribute associated with the second result. For example, if the two results contain metadata that references actor "Matt Damon," the media guidance application may determine (e.g., via control circuitry 604 (FIG. 6)) that the metadata matches, and thus the two results match.
Process 1200 continues to 1214 where the media guidance application generates (e.g., via control circuitry 604 (fig. 6)) a third search result for display in a second row of the grid, where the second search result is not displayed in the second row. For example, upon determining that two results to be displayed simultaneously match (e.g., they are in the first subset and the second subset), the media guidance application replaces (e.g., via control circuitry 604 (FIG. 6)) the results of the source that the user does not prefer with another result. For example, if "The Big Bang Theory" is a result from both a first source and a second source (e.g., source 716 (fig. 7)) and is in a first subset and a second subset, then a second result in The second subset may be replaced with another result (e.g., a third result). The media guidance application may then generate (e.g., via control circuitry 604 (fig. 6)) a third result for display (e.g., on display 612 (fig. 6)) in a second row (e.g., with results from a second source) instead of the second result.
It is contemplated that the steps or descriptions of each of fig. 8-12 may be used with any other embodiment of the present disclosure. Further, the steps and descriptions described with respect to fig. 8-12 may be accomplished in an alternate order or in parallel with other objects of the present disclosure. For example, each of these steps may be performed in any order or in parallel or substantially simultaneously to reduce lag or increase the speed of the system or method. Further, it should be noted that any of the devices or equipment discussed with respect to fig. 6-7 may be used to perform one or more of the steps in fig. 8-12.
Although some portions of the present disclosure may refer to a "convention (convention)," any such reference is for the purpose of providing a context for the invention(s) of the present disclosure and does not form any admission as to what constitutes prior art.
The processes discussed above are intended to be illustrative and not limiting. Those skilled in the art will recognize that steps of processes discussed herein may be omitted, modified, combined, and/or rearranged, and that any additional steps may be performed without departing from the scope of the present invention. More generally, the above disclosure is intended to be illustrative, and not restrictive. Only the following claims are intended to define the limits of what is encompassed by the invention. Furthermore, it should be noted that features and limitations described in any one embodiment may be applied to any other embodiment herein, and that flowcharts or examples relating to one embodiment may be combined with any other embodiment in a suitable manner, done in a different order, or done in parallel. Further, the systems and methods described herein may be performed in real-time. It should also be noted that the above-described systems and/or methods may be applied to, or used in accordance with, other systems and/or methods.
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