Apparatus and method for television
View Patent ↗An apparatus for selecting television programs for display on a display device, for example a television, includes a receiver receiving audio/video data representing the television programs and receiving data indicating a schedule for the television programs. A control process receives an indication for at least one of the television programs to be broadcast providing a status of an availability for streaming the television program after the television program has been broadcast, and in response to the indication of the status of the availability for streaming the television program to perform a predetermined action in accordance with predetermined conditions. The predetermined actions may include, for example, recording the television program or generating a prompt for the user to watch the broadcast television program in response to an indication by the availability status that the television program will not be made available for streaming after being broadcast.
1. An apparatus comprising:
receiver circuitry configured to receive data indicating a schedule for transmission of television programs, the schedule of television programs including identification of television programs which are to be broadcast after a present time by one or more broadcast transmission systems for each of a plurality of television channels, and identification of television programs which have been transmitted by the one or more broadcast transmission systems, and for one or more of the television programs which have been transmitted an indication that the one or more television programs can be received by selectively streaming audio/video data representing the one or more television programs from one or more servers; and
control processor circuitry configured to control display on a display device of the schedule of television programs which are selectable by a user for display on the display device or for recording, wherein the control processor circuitry is configured to
receive an indication for at least one television program of the television programs which are to be broadcast after the present time, the indication providing an availability status regarding availability of streaming the at least one television program after a scheduled broadcast end time of the at least one television program; and
automatically record on a recording medium the at least one television program in response to the indication indicating that the at least one television program is unavailable for streaming after the scheduled broadcast end time of the at least one television program.
2. The apparatus as claimed in claim 1 , wherein the control processor circuitry is configured to
generate an indication on an electronic program guide informing the user of the availability status of the at least one television program.
3. The apparatus as claimed in claim 1 , wherein the control processor circuitry is configured to
identify a predetermined action to be performed in response to the availability status by logically combining the availability status of the at least one television program with user preferences indicating a preferred one of possible predetermined actions for each of a plurality of states of the availability status of the at least one television program.
4. The apparatus as claimed in claim 3 , wherein the control processor circuitry is configured to generate data representative of the user preferences and to store the data representing the user preferences in a data store.
5. The apparatus as claimed in claim 3 , wherein the control processor circuitry is configured to
generate the data representative of the user preferences by detecting meta data associated with television programs which are selected for viewing by the user and comparing the meta data with predetermined categories of meta data representative of categories of television programs; and
from the comparison, maintain a history of categories of television programs viewed by the user.
6. The apparatus as claimed in claim 5 , wherein the categories include a genre of the television programs or a free to air or pay per view preference.
7. The apparatus as claimed in claim 1 , wherein the availability status indicates that the at least one television program will not be available for streaming from a server after the scheduled end time of the at least one television program, that the at least one television program will be only available on a pay per view streaming service, or that representation quality of the at least one television program to be streamed is less than representation quality of the television program to be broadcast after the present time.
8. The apparatus as claimed in claim 1 , wherein the receiver circuitry is configured to receive a reliability signal indicating a relative reliability of an availability signal that indicates the availability status.
9. The apparatus as claimed in claim 1 , wherein the one or more broadcast transmission systems including terrestrial, cable or satellite digital broadcast transmission systems and an internet based transmission system.
10. An apparatus comprising:
circuitry configured to
cause a display device to display a graphical user interface, the graphical user interface, when displayed on the display device, comprising:
a two dimensional array of elements representing a schedule of television programs with respect of time, the schedule for the television programs including identification of television programs which are to be broadcast after a present time by one or more broadcast transmission systems for each of a plurality of television channels, and identification of television programs which have been transmitted by the one or more broadcast transmission systems; and
an indication for at least one television program of the television programs which are to be broadcast after the present time, the indication providing an availability status regarding availability of streaming the at least one television program after a scheduled broadcast end time of the at least one television program; and
automatically record on a recording medium the at least one television program in response to the indication indicating that the at least one television program is unavailable for streaming after the scheduled broadcast end time of the at least one television program.
11. A method comprising:
receiving data indicating a schedule for transmission of television programs, the schedule of television programs including identification of television programs which are to be broadcast after a present time by one or more broadcast transmission systems for each of a plurality of television channels, and identification of television programs which have been transmitted by the one or more broadcast transmission systems, and for one or more of the television programs which have been transmitted an indication that the one or more television programs can be received by selectively streaming audio/video data representing the one or more television programs from one or more servers;
controlling display on a television of the schedule of television programs which are selectable by a user for display on the television or for recording;
receiving an indication for at least one television program of the television programs which are to be broadcast after the present time, the indication providing an availability status regarding availability of streaming the at least one television program after a scheduled broadcast end time of the at least one television program; and
automatically recording on a recording medium the at least one television program in response to the indication indicating that the at least one television program is unavailable for streaming after the scheduled broadcast end time of the at least one television program.