Interactive entertainment network system and method for providing program listings during non-peak times

We claim:

1. An interactive entertainment network system comprising:

multiple user interface units in individual homes, each user interface unit having a record cache;

a program provider which is connected to provide programs to the multiple user interface units;

a distribution network interconnecting the program provider and the multiple user interface units;

a storage medium at the program provider containing a plurality of program data records, the program data records containing programming information about the programs provided by the program provider;

an electronic program guide which executes on individual user interface units, the electronic program guide requesting the program data records from the storage medium at the program provider and displaying the programming information contained in the program data records;

the program provider sending at least some of the program data records to a plurality of the user interface units prior to a peak time when a plurality of the electronic program guides are likely to concurrently request the program data records; and

the user interface units storing the program data records in its record cache for use by the electronic program guide during the ensuing peak time.

2. An interactive entertainment network system as recited in claim 1 wherein the electronic program guide displays the programming information in a format categorized by discrete time slots and the peak time coincides approximately with a time interval covering an ending portion of one time slot and a beginning portion of a subsequent time slot.

3. An interactive entertainment network system as recited in claim 1, further comprising:

a program selection filter which provides sets of prioritized program data records that are customized according to individual user preferences; and

the program provider sending the sets of prioritized program data records to corresponding user interface units prior to the peak time.

4. An interactive entertainment network system as recited in claim 3 wherein the program selection filter resides at the program provider.

5. An interactive entertainment network system as recited in claim 1 wherein the multiple user interface units are categorized into plural groups and the program provider simultaneously sends the program data records to the user interface units within each group.

6. An interactive entertainment network system as recited in claim 1 wherein the program data records correspond to particular time slots and the program provider sends a subset of all possible program data records for upcoming time slots.

7. An interactive entertainment network system as recited in claim 1 wherein:

the electronic program guide displays the programming information in a format categorized by discrete time slots and the program data records correspond to particular time slots;

the peak time coincides approximately with a time interval covering an ending portion of one time slot and a beginning portion of a subsequent time slot; and

prior to the peak time, the program provider sends the program data records for the subsequent time slot.

8. A user interface unit for use in an interactive entertainment network system having a program provider, the program provider providing programs to the user interface unit, the user interface unit comprising:

a processor;

an electronic program guide which executes on the processor to display programming information in a format categorized by discrete time slots;

an I/O port responsive to the processor for communicating with the program provider to send requests for program data records from the electronic program guide to the program provider and to receive the program data records from the program provider, the program data records containing programming information about the programs provided by the program provider;

a record cache which temporarily stores a set of the program data records which are likely to be requested by the electronic program guide during a peak time when the program provider is likely to receive numerous concurrent requests from a plurality of user interface units connected to the interactive entertainment network system; and

prior to the peak time, the electronic program guide updates the record cache with the program data records received from the program provider to avoid requesting the program data records from the program provider during the peak time.

9. A user interface unit as recited in claim 8 wherein the peak time coincides approximately with a time interval covering an ending portion of one time slot and a beginning portion of a subsequent time slot.

10. A user interface unit as recited in claim 8 wherein the electronic program guide displays during the peak time the programming information contained in the program data records received prior to the peak time.

11. A user interface unit as recited in claim 8 wherein the record cache is sized to store a subset of all possible program data records that are available for the upcoming time slots.

12. A user interface unit as recited in claim 8 wherein the record cache stores a set of prioritized program data records that are customized according to user preference.

13. A method for operating an interactive entertainment network system having a program provider which is connected to provide programs to a plurality of user interface units, the program provider having a storage medium which stores a plurality of program data records containing programming information about the programs provided by the program provider, individual user interface units having an electronic program guide capable of independently requesting the program data records from the program provider and displaying the programming information contained in the program data records in a format categorized by discrete time slots, the method comprising the following steps:

identifying a peak time when a plurality of the electronic program guides are likely to concurrently request the program data records from the program provider;

sending at least some of the program data records from the program provider to multiple user interface units prior to the peak time without being requested by the electronic program guides associated with the multiple user interface units; and

storing at the user interface units the programming information contained in the data records received from the program provider for use during the peak time.

14. A method as recited in claim 13 wherein the sending step comprises simultaneously sending at least some of the program data records from the program provider to multiple user interface units.

15. A method as recited in claim 13 wherein:

the identifying step comprises designating a peak time as covering an ending portion of one time slot and a beginning portion of a subsequent time slot; and

the sending step comprises sending prior to the peak time those program data records that pertain to the subsequent time slot.

16. A method as recited in claim 13, further comprising the additional step of displaying during the peak time the programming information contained in the program data records received prior to the peak time.

17. A method as recited in claim 13 and further comprising:

customizing sets of prioritized program data records according to individual user preferences; and

selectively sending the sets of prioritized program data records to corresponding user interface units prior to the peak time.

Description Submit all comments and votes

TECHNICAL FIELD

This invention relates to interactive entertainment network systems, such as interactive television systems, and to electronic program guides which operate in conjunction with these systems. This invention further relates to methods for operating such interactive entertainment network systems.

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION

Television viewers are very familiar with printed programming schedules that appear in daily newspapers or weekly magazines, such as TV Guide.RTM.. The printed program guide lists the various television shows in relation to their scheduled viewing time on a day-to-day basis.

Cable TV systems often include a channel with an electronic version of the printed program guide. The cable channel is dedicated to displaying listings of programs available on the different available channels. The listings are commonly arranged in a grid. Each column of the grid represents a particular time slot, such as 4:00 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. Each row represents a particular broadcast or cable channel, such as ABC, PBS, or ESPN. The various scheduled programs or shows are arranged within the rows and columns, indicating the channels and times at which they can be found. The grid is continuously scrolled vertically so that a viewer can scan a number of different channels within three or four time slots.

Data regarding available programs is typically received by a cable system as a plurality of data records. Each available program has a single corresponding data record indicating a variety of information about the program such as its channel, its starting and ending times, its title, names of starring actors, whether closed-captioning and stereo are available, and perhaps a brief description of the program. It is not difficult to format a grid such as described above from this type of data records. The grid is typically formatted once at the cable system's headend and broadcast repeatedly and continuously to the thousands of homes served by the cable system.

Newer, interactive cable distribution systems feature electronic program guides (EPGs) which function somewhat similar to the broadcast program listing channels described above. Rather than scrolling automatically, however, an EPG allows a viewer to use a remote control device to scroll as desired both horizontally and vertically through a program grid. This functionality utilizes the two-way communications capabilities of interactive cable systems.

An EPG runs on a user interface device, also referred to as a set-top box (STB), connected in a viewer's home between a TV and a cable system home entry line. When scrolling to a new column or row, the set-top box requests new information from the cable system's headend regarding the programming information which needs to be presented for the new row or column. For instance, when scrolling to a new column, programs falling within a new time slot need to be displayed. The STB requests new information from the headend regarding programs available on the displayed channels falling within the new time slot.

The headend must be able to process such requests very quickly so that the viewer sees no significant delay. However, determining which data records refer to programs occupying a given time slot is not a trivial task. Even though data records might be arranged chronologically by starting times, it is not sufficient just to search for those records having starting times matching the starting time of the time slot. For example, when using half-hour time slots, many programs align perfectly along time slot boundaries. A show starting at 4:00 p.m. and ending at 4:30 p.m. would align perfectly with the 4:00 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. time slot. Other shows, however, might start before the time slot or end after the time slot. Still other shows might begin and end completely within the time slot. Generally, it can only be said that each program will correspond to a scheduled time period and that the scheduled time period of an individual program will occupy at least a portion of one or more of the discrete time slots.

Accordingly, it is necessary to assume a maximum program duration, calculate the earliest possible time a program of the maximum duration might have started while still ending after the start time of the time slot, and then examine all data records representing programs starting between that earliest possible time and the ending time of the time slot. In light of the fact that the maximum program duration might be eight hours or more, such a search involves a great number of records.

The search and retrieval task for a single cable subscriber can be quite involved. Now consider a situation where many subscribers request information from the headend at the same time. A typical interactive cable system might have a single headend which services some 250,000 subscribers. Following conclusion of a program, for example, it is common for the viewers of that program to switch to the EPG to view the shows being offered for the next time segment. When each EPG begins displaying the program lineup for the next time slots, the EPG requests the information from the headend. Since many programs begin and conclude at similar times (e.g., on the half- or whole-hour time periods), the headend often experiences very high peak demands between shows as many EPGs simultaneously request the same information. Such peak times typically coincide with a time interval covering an ending portion of one time slot, say 3:00-3:30, and the beginning portion of a subsequent time slot, say 3:30-4:00. Another peak demand time occurs following a power failure because all of the EPGs on the interactive entertainment network system are attempting to reinitialize their information.

These peak demand times of high subscriber requests significantly burden the headend and can potentially impede the responsiveness and delivery efficiency of the entire system. This results in slow response time which is frustrating to the viewer. Present interactive television systems do not have a solution for satisfactorily servicing the high volume of requests that occur during these peak times. It is an object of this invention to reduce the number of simultaneous requests received by the headend during such peak times.

One prior art system in the non-interactive broadcast television environment is the StarSight.TM. system which has an automatic scrolling program grid (i.e., not an interactive EPG), similar to the cable version described above. The central station broadcasts information via the airwaves to continuously update the program grid. The information is timely broadcast during the vertical blanking interval (VBI) which is the period that the electron beam of a conventional tube-type television retraces from the end of one frame (i.e., when the beam is located at the lower right corner of the screen) to the beginning of the next frame (i.e., when the beam is returned to the upper left corner of the screen). Since the StarSight.TM. system is not interactive with the headend, however, it is not faced with the problem of accommodating large numbers of requests during peak demand times.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION

This invention provides an interactive entertainment network system and method which alleviate the bottleneck associated with handling many requests during peak activity times. The system transmits at least some program data records, which are likely to be requested by the EPGs during peak demand times, to many of the subscriber's during off-demand times prior to the peak times. This large scale, one-to-many network transmission is conducted solely by the headend at its own initiation, and not in response to any requests from the EPGs. The program data records are stored at the set-top boxes for use during the peak time. As a result, during the ensuing peak time, the EPG displays the programming information contained in the stored program data records rather than requesting the information from the headend. This pre-peak transmitting scheme significantly reduces the number of requests made to the headend during the peak time. If the viewer wishes to view the entire menu of available programs, the EPG might still request such information from the headend; but a substantial amount of the demand will be met by early-transmitting some of the program data records to the EPGs.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

FIG. 1 is a block diagram of a interactive entertainment network system according to this invention.

FIG. 2 is an exemplary screen illustration of an electronic programming guide.

FIG. 3 is a simplified example of database records organized by bucket numbers.

FIG. 4 is a flow chart of a method for operating an interactive entertainment network system in accordance with this invention.

FIG. 5 is a block diagram of a user interface unit in accordance with a preferred embodiment of the invention.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENT

FIG. 1 shows an interactive entertainment network system 20 in the form of an interactive cable television system. System 20 includes a centralized headend or headend server 22 which is configured to provide programs to multiple subscriber homes. Representative homes 24a-24d are shown. Programs provided by headend 22 might include traditional broadcast TV shows, on-demand movies, and other services such as those commonly provided in the past by on-line computer services. A single headend might service 250,000 or more homes.

Each home has a user interface unit 26a-26d. In the illustrated implementation, the user interface unit is embodied as a set-top box (STB) coupled to a television set (TV) 28a-28d. The user interface units receive digital video signals from headend 22 and control which programs are displayed on the associated TVs. Instead of separate STBs, a user interface unit can be incorporated in the TV itself in other implementations. In addition to televisions, the user interface unit might be implemented as other computing devices with visual display units, such as a computer and monitor.

Current and proposed technology allows video image and other data transmission over different types of cable and satellite systems, employing both analog and digital transmission formats. Moreover, current and proposed technology permits image transmission from a server over conventional data networks, such as the Internet, to computers or network terminals which display the images. In the context of this invention, the terms "visual display unit," "display unit," or "display" are not to be limited to any form or type of receiver, nor to any type of distribution network or transmission format. Accordingly, a visual display unit might include broadcast televisions, cable-ready televisions, television/set-top box units, computers, and the like. For purposes of discussion, however, the visual display unit will be described in the context of a familiar television with a set-top box.

Headend 22 is interconnected to the subscribers' homes 24a-24d via a multi-tier network or distribution structure 30. Distribution structure 30 includes a high-speed, high-bandwidth fiber optic cable network 32 coupled to regional distribution nodes (represented by distribution node 34). The speed and bandwidth of the fiber optic cable affords the desired performance for supporting a fully interactive system. Each distribution node 34 is connected to multiple user interface units 26a-26d via conventional home entry lines 36, such as twisted-pair lines or coaxial cable. As an example, each distribution node 34 supports approximately 1200 homes. As technology continues to improve, it is believed that parts of the distribution structure can be replaced with wireless forms of communication, such as RF communication or satellite communication.

Each user interface unit 26a-26d is configured to run an electronic program guide (EPG) 38a-38d. An electronic program guide provides an on-screen listing of various programs or program titles categorized by discrete time slots. The listing is organized in a predetermined arrangement that is displayed on the television. The EPG might also include other program descriptive information, including whether the program is provided in closed caption or stereo.

FIG. 2 shows an example screen display 40 of an EPG. The EPG screen display 40 includes a channel panel 42, a time pan