Triggerless interactive television
View Patent ↗Various technologies and techniques are disclosed that relate to providing interactive television by synchronizing content to live and/or recorded television shows. Content is synchronized without the use of in-band triggers. A broadcast stream is received, and search/action pairs are received from a transmission path, such as from the Internet or user. When the search criteria are found in the broadcast stream, the associated action is performed and the content is synchronized with the show. An application programming interface is used to facilitate synchronization, and includes a set search method, a search function template method, and a clear search method. The set search method initiates searching of the broadcast stream and registers one or more callback methods for performing the associated action when the match is found. The search function template serves as the template for registering the callback methods. The clear search method clears the system resources from the search.
1. A computer-implemented method comprising:
receiving at least one broadcast stream of a television show at a computer operating a search program for processing the at least one broadcast stream for the television show;
receiving, at the search program operating on the computer from a transmission path separate from the at least one broadcast stream of the television show, a web page that contains executable code and a set of search instructions to process the at least one broadcast stream of the television show, the executable code implementing one or more callback methods within the web page that perform associated actions when called, the set of search instructions comprising a search/action pair indicating at least one search criteria and a callback method located within the web page that is to be called to initiate at least one associated action when the at least one search criteria is found in the at least one broadcast stream of the television show;
creating, by the search program, a search object comprising an instance of a search class for extracting portions of content from the broadcast stream of the television show and performing a search of extracted portions of content for a match of the at least one search criteria indicated by the search/action pair;
registering, from the search object, the callback method that is indicated by the search/action pair and located within the web page;
determining, by the search object, that the at least one search criteria indicated by the search/action pair has been found in the extracted portions of content;
clearing, by the search object, system resources associated with the search of the extracted portions of content performed by the search object;
calling the callback method that is indicated by the search/action pair and located within the web page for initiating the at least one associated action; and
synchronizing the at least one associated action with content of the television show being displayed on the computer.
2. The method of claim 1 , wherein the broadcast stream of the television show is a captioning stream.
3. The method of claim 1 , wherein the broadcast stream of the television show is an audio stream.
4. The method of claim 1 , wherein the web page containing the set of search instructions is received in response to a user of the computer navigating to the web page.
5. The method of claim 1 , further comprising:
timeshifting playback of the television show to make the at least one associated action appear to occur before a point in time that that the at least one associated action was initiated.
6. The method of claim 1 , wherein the at least one search criteria is based at least in part upon a string value.
7. The method of claim 1 , wherein the at least one search criteria is based at least in part upon a sound.
8. The method of claim 1 , wherein the at least one search criteria is based at least in part upon one or more video frames.
9. The method of claim 1 , wherein the step of determining that the at least one search criteria has been found does not require an exact match.
10. The method of claim 1 , further comprising:
receiving a guide entry for the television show; and
retrieving the web page containing the set of search instructions at a particular URL specified in the guide entry.
11. The method of claim 1 , wherein the transmission path is an Internet connection.
12. The method of claim 1 , wherein the web page including the executable code and the set of search instructions is generated based on a search string and a desired action specified by a user of the computer.
13. A computer-readable storage medium that does not consist of a signal, the computer-readable storage medium storing computer-executable instructions causing a computer to perform the method recited in claim 1 .
14. A computer-implemented method comprising:
receiving a guide entry for a television show at a computer operating a search program, the guide entry for the television show specifying a location of a search page that was generated based on at least one search criteria and a desired action specified by a user of the computer, the search page containing executable code and a set of search instructions for processing at least one broadcast stream of the television show;
retrieving, by the search program operating on the computer, the search page from the location specified by the guide entry for the television show, the executable code implementing one or more callback methods within the search page that perform associated actions when called, the set of search instructions comprising a search/action pair indicating the at least one search criteria specified by the user and a callback method located within the search page to be called for performing the desired action specified by the user when the at least one search criteria is found in the at least one broadcast stream of the television show;
receiving the at least one broadcast stream of the television show at the computer;
creating, by the search program, a search object comprising an instance of a search class for performing a search of the at least one broadcast stream of the television show for a match of the at least one search criteria indicated by the search/action pair;
binding the search page to the search object;
registering, from the search object, the callback method that is indicated by the search/action pair and located within the search page;
determining, by the search object, that the at least one search criteria indicated by the search/action pair has been found in the at least one broadcast stream of the television show;
clearing, by the search object, system resources associated with the search of the at least one broadcast stream of the television show performed by the search object;
calling the callback method that is indicated by the search/action pair and located within the search page to perform the desired action specified by the user; and
synchronizing the desired action specified by the user with content of the television show being displayed on the computer.
15. The method of claim 14 , wherein the search class comprises:
a set search method operable to initiate the search of the at least one broadcast stream of the television show and to register at least one callback method;
a search function template method used as a template by the set search method to register the at least one callback method; and
a clear search method operable to clear the system resources associated with the search performed by the search object.
16. A computer-readable storage medium that does not consist of a signal, the computer-readable storage medium storing computer-executable instructions causing a computer to perform the method recited in claim 14 .
17. The method of claim 15 , wherein the set search method comprises a stream ID call parameter to identify at least one of a captioning stream, an audio stream, or a video stream of the television show to search.
18. The method of claim 15 , wherein the set search method comprises a delta time shift call parameter to specify a delay in presentation time from when the at least one search criteria is found and when at least one callback method is called.
19. The method of claim 15 , wherein the set search method further comprises a start search time call parameter and an end search time call parameter.
20. The method of claim 15 , wherein the search function template method comprises:
a start time call parameter indicating a starting time of a first field to match, and
an end time call parameter indicating an ending time of a last field to match.