The present invention is directed to a system and method for providing supplemental content during a broadcast. The supplemental content is provided by the operation of an interactive application resident on a receiver. The interactive application is initiated through a trigger that is received during an otherwise standard broadcast. The trigger includes an interactive prompt that is to be displayed during a particular portion of the broadcast. The prompt including a means for enabling receipt of a user input. The user input may be a request for further information.

A broadcast receiving apparatus includes a reception unit, sound controlling unit, and determination unit. The reception unit receives a signal of an analog broadcast and a signal of a digital broadcast having the same broadcast content. The sound controlling unit performs, when an output of the broadcast receiving apparatus switched into the analog broadcast from the digital broadcast, a switching control of switching the output into the analog broadcast from the digital broadcast so that an acoustic characteristic of the output digital broadcast gradually approaches an acoustic characteristic of the analog broadcast based on a reception intensity of the signal of the analog broadcast. The determination unit determines, after the sound controlling unit starts the switching control, whether or not the switching control performed by the sound controlling unit is to be continued, based on reception state of the signal of the digital broadcast.

Disclosed are a method and device for transmitting and receiving broadcast signals. The disclosed reception method comprises a step for extracting second program table information which indicates the association properties between a plurality of programs, the programs being obtained by using a broadcast stream which comprises at least one program, program table information which indicates the broadcast stream, and at least one broadcast service, from a received broadcast signal. The method further comprises a step for parsing the broadcast stream by using the extracted program table information; and a step for acquiring information about the groups to which the plurality of programs belong by using the extracted second program table information.

A method and apparatus for generating a personalized radio channel playlist by time division multiplexing songs from multiple received channels from one or more broadcast source streams in a queue. Users can specify favorite channels for building their personal playlists, or multiple default playlist channels can be provided by genre. If matches are found, the channel carrying the favorite is extracted and added to the playlist. Channel searching for matches involves monitoring real-time song and artist labels for all channels carried in a separate data channel. Preview times can vary depending on the size of the playlist or number of channels used. During a preview of a segment, users can, opt to listen to the full song or back up in the playlist to listen to a previous song. Connectivity options and web interfaces are provided to facilitate transfer and sharing of customization parameters for personalized radio configuration.

A radio system includes an audio device, and a control device operatively connected to the audio device to store a first radio frequency of the audio device as a preset frequency, wherein the control device may be configured to determine whether a second broadcast signal received through a second radio frequency is equal to a first broadcast signal received through the first radio frequency stored in a preset list when the second radio frequency of the audio device is added as the preset frequency, generate the preset list including the first and second radio frequencies when the first broadcast signal is different from the second broadcast signal, and generate the preset list including the first or second radio frequency when the first and second broadcast signals are broadcast signals of a same radio broadcast.

Systems and methods are configured to identify replacement content within various types of media and to facilitate the use of the identified replacement content in the generation of composited content. The generation of composited content optionally includes Chroma key processes. The content may include video and or multi-dimensional virtual environments. For example, loops of replacement content may be identified within video or time variant virtual environments. These capabilities are optionally facilitated by various artificial intelligence systems, e.g., trained neural networks.

Methods, systems, and apparatuses are described herein for providing alternate content in place of other content based on an issue associated with receiving the other content. The alternate content may be an advertisement associated with the other content. Output of the other content may resume once the issue is resolved and/or after output of the alternate content has concluded.

A content segmentation, categorization and identification method on consumer devices (clients) is described. Methods for content tracking are illustrated that are suitable for large scale deployment and applications such as broadcast monitoring, novel content publishing and interaction. Time-aligned (synchronous) applications such as multi-language selection, customized advertisements, second screen services and content monitoring applications can be economically deployed at large scales. The client performs fingerprinting, scene change detection, audio turn detection, and logo detection on incoming video and gathers database search results, logos and text to identify and segment video streams into content, promos, and commercials. A learning engine is configured to learn rules for optimal identification and segmentation at each client for each channel and program. Content sensed at the client site is tracked with reduced computation and applications are executed with timing precision. A method and user interface for time-aligned publishing of content and subsequent usage and interaction on one or more displays is described.

A method, reception device and host device are provided for aligning data streams at a multi-source receiver. Portions of data for a plurality of data streams are received at a reception device, the plurality of data streams carrying respective content, wherein the content of each data stream is misaligned with at least one other data stream with respect to time. The portions of data are forwarded to a host device to be stored in respective delay buffers. Indexing information is maintained for each of the delay buffers. The portions of data are forwarded to the host device along with the indexing information.

A targeted advertising system selects an asset (e.g., ad) for a current user of a user equipment device (e.g., a digital set top box in a cable network). The system can first operate in a learning mode to receive user inputs and develop evidence that can characterize multiple users of the user equipment device audience. In a working mode, the system can process current user inputs to match a current user to one of the identified users of that user equipment device audience. Fuzzy logic and/or stochastic filtering may be used to improve development of the user characterizations, as well as matching of the current user to those developed characterizations. In this manner, targeting of assets can be implemented not only based on characteristics of a household but based on a current user within that household.