A media switch enables a terminal to access content by receiving a content request from a terminal for a first piece of content to be distributed over a cable system, identifying.sup., a personal channel within resources available in the cable system to distribute the first piece of content to the terminal, transmitting access information to the terminal to enable the terminal to access the first piece of content through the personal channel, and interfacing with a cable headend to provide the first piece of content on the personal channel.

A user device includes a viewer tracking module that tracks viewer events to form a viewer tracking log and a recommendation module that generates a timeslot viewing profile based on the viewer tracking log. The timeslot viewing profile includes television programs watched previously and a prioritized timeslot series profile determined by summing and prioritizing the count of a plurality of watched programs in a series. The recommendation module compares the timeslot viewing profile of available television programs during the timeslot, generates a first content recommendation list of available television programs, receives related content identifiers for related content that identify content that is available and is related to the television programs of the first content recommendation, and, based on the related content identifiers, generates a second content recommendation list including content that is available during the timeslot different from the first content recommendation list.

The playback of video content upon a display is enhanced through the unobtrusive presentation of extrinsic data upon the same display. A video content feature is rendered on a display. A quantity of extrinsic data relevant to a current time in the video content feature is determined based at least in part on viewing history of a user. A graphical element presenting at least a portion of the extrinsic data is rendered on the display while the video content feature is also being rendered on the display.

A main stream contains successive content elements of video and/or audio information that encode video and/or audio information at a first data rate. A computation circuit (144) computes main fingerprints from the successive content elements. A reference stream is received having a second data rate lower than the first data rate. The reference stream defines a sequence of the reference fingerprints. A comparator unit (144) compares the main fingerprints with the reference fingerprints. The main stream is monitored for the presence of inserted content elements between original content elements, where the original content elements have main fingerprints that match successive reference fingerprints and the inserted content elements have main fingerprints that do not match reference fingerprints. Rendering of inserted content elements to be skipped. In an embodiment when more than one content element matches only one is rendered. In another embodiment matching is used to control zapping to or from the main stream. In another embodiment matching is used to control linking of separately received mark-up information such as subtitles to points in the main stream.

Processes, systems and devices are described to enhance the television or other media viewing experience based upon excitement data that is associated with the program. Excitement data can be used to identify the most exciting portions of media programs, therefore allowing for improved identification of programs or portions of programs for viewing, streaming, recording or other purposes.

A method for reporting information related to the consumption of the audio-visual content is provided. The method comprises: reporting the information including component; wherein the component is comprised of a component type, a component role, a component name, a component ID and time interval information, wherein the component type includes audio, video, closed caption, and application, the component role presents a role or kind of the component, the component name indicates a string representing a human name of the component, the component ID indicates a string representing a component identifier, and the time interval information which includes a start time and an end time.

A multimodal recommendation identification system analyzes data describing a sequence of past content item interactions to generate a recommendation for a content item for a user. An indication of the recommended content item is provided to a website hosting system or recommendation system so that the recommended content item is displayed or otherwise presented to the user. The multimodal recommendation identification system identifies a content item to recommend to the user by generating an encoding that encodes identifiers of the sequence of content items the user has interacted with and generating encodings that encode multimodal information for content items in the sequence of content items the user has interacted with. An aggregated information encoding for a user based on these encodings and a system analyzes the content item sequence encoding and interaction between the content item sequence encoding and the multiple modality encodings to generate the aggregated information encoding.

The present disclosure provides a system and method for switching to a real time, dynamic, adaptive and non-sequentially assembled video during streaming of a live video. The method includes fetching an interest profile of a user. The fetching of the interest profile is done based on one or more interactive behaviors of the user. Further, the method includes recommending a set of video recommendations to the user. The method includes assembling one or more logical cluster of mapped fragments of one or more tagged videos virtually to obtain an assembled video. The method includes rendering the assembled video. In addition, the method includes switching the live video to the assembled video dynamically in the real time.

Methods and systems are disclosed herein for a media guidance application that alerts a user to the appearance of objects in media content that may be of interest to the user. For example, as media content progresses, the media guidance application may determine objects that may interest a user. The media guidance application may record the number of determined objects and present the number to the user as well as supplemental content associated with each object.

In various embodiments, an optimization engine regenerates items included in an interactive page while the user is interacting with the interactive page. In operation, an optimization engine displays a portion of the interactive page during a viewing session. Subsequently, the optimization engine computes a probability distribution for the viewing session over a set of interests based on model parameters and operations performed by the user during the viewing session. The optimization engine then regenerates items that are included in a second portion of the interactive page based on the probability distribution for the viewing session. The optimization engine displays a least a part of the resulting regenerated interactive page. Advantageously, by regenerating items included in the interactive page based on operations performed by the user during the viewing session, the optimization engine reduces the time required for the user to view an item that piques an interest.