Social networking and peer to peer for TVs
A peer-to-peer (P2P) application which can be applied to TVs. The P2P application promotes a social networking aspect by allowing devices connecting to either the home mesh network and/or Internet to share contents and create common-interest channels. The P2P application does not require support from network infrastructure (e.g., no central servers), and consequently is extremely cost-effective and easy to deploy. The distributed nature of this system allows users to join or leave the network at will. It takes advantage of the local home mesh network connectivity, or existing Internet connections. A participant that tunes into a broadcast on an Internet channel is not only downloading a video stream, but also uploading it to other participants watching the program. Data mining systems capture user preferences and create personalized Internet channels on the TV using the P2P network.
1. TV system comprising at least one processor accessing at least one tangible computer readable medium to:
detect that the system is connected to a network;
execute peer-to-peer (P2P) discovery of other TV systems using P2P network discovery; and
using a P2P framework, establish a social P2P network with other TV systems to share video/audio contents, create personalized channels and help to distribute audio video content, wherein user preferences and content are published to at least one other system in the social P2P network in meta data format using XML to form special personalized channels made to appear in a “content” section of a user interface presented on a cross-menu bar (XMB) user interface having a row of genre categories including the “content” section and a column of selections from a genus category that is in focus, the column of selections crossing the genus category that is in focus on the XMB wherein users in the social network provide a link to their content via their social networking page allowing anyone to get first content without needing to authenticate such that the first content is openly shared between peers, and wherein to share second premium content a user must send an invitation to other users to share the premium content to restrict access to the premium content, the premium content being protected by digital rights management (DRM) being shared in the P2P network only if all the users of a common group in the network pass DRM security authentication for displaying premium content such that the social network is used not just by home users but also by relatively larger content providers to share movies or TV programs and generate advertising data based on habits of users in the social network.
2. The system of claim 1 , wherein content is shared among TV systems in the social P2P network by: receiving programming selections from a user; deriving user characteristics from the selections; and classifying content based on the characteristics.
3. The system of claim 2 , wherein the characteristics are published on a computer network in accordance with user-defined policies.
4. The system of claim 2 , wherein user interest and content are published in meta data format to form special personalized channels which are presented in a “content” section of a user interface presented on a TV display.
5. The system of claim 1 , wherein an Internet social networking web site is added to the P2P network to serve as a publishing and announcing tool.