Apparatus and method for blocking television commercials and providing an archive interrogation program
View Patent ↗An apparatus and method is disclosed for blocking specific television commercials from the viewer's television based upon the characteristics of the television commercial and a program to place the blocked television commercials into an archive. An archive interrogation program then acquires the users search criteria and sends the search criteria to the content search program for a list of matches. The matches are displayed to the user and the user can select a segment for viewing.
1. A method for searching blocked and archived television commercials comprising:
offering a plurality of entertainment packages from an alternate viewing provider, each of the plurality of entertainment packages adapted to fit into a time of a particular commercial;
using a television and combined with a logical unit, receiving a television program containing the particular commercial;
recognizing the particular commercial in the logical unit by an aggregation of at least one characteristic of a data sequence of the particular commercial;
responsive to a recognition of the particular commercial by the logical unit, blocking the particular commercial from the television;
saving the particular commercial to an archive containing a plurality of commercials previously blocked from the television by the logical unit;
displaying on the television a message informing a viewer that an entertainment package will be presented during a segment of time of the particular commercial, an on-screen counter showing how many seconds are left before a return to the television program, and directions to the tuner to go to a particular channel;
responsive to a user entering a search term adapted to locate a commercial in a particular area of interest, determining in the logical unit a list of commercials in the archive containing a text that matches the search term; and
responsive to the user selecting a matching commercial from the list, sending the matching commercial to an open channel on the television for viewing by the user.