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.

The disclosed technology relates to methods, devices, systems and computer program products that facilitate access to metadata associated with a content. In one example, a method is described that includes receiving a multimedia content at a receiver device, extracting a watermark message from a first segment of the multimedia content, using at least a portion of the first watermark message to obtain additional information regarding the first segment of the multimedia content that includes the first watermark message, and associating and storing one or more values of the first watermark message and the additional information. The method further includes repeating the above operations to extract additional watermark messages from additional segments of the content and to form a table or array of items that can be accessed by specifying the one or more values of the first watermark message or one or more values of the additional watermark messages.

Systems and techniques are provided to transmit data over a digital interface between a sender and a receiver. The digital interface is configured for transmitting a primary type of data as opposed to a secondary type of data. Nevertheless, systems and techniques are provided where the secondary type of data can be transmitted in the digital interface. As such, the primary and/or secondary types of data are transmitted from the sender to the receiver via the digital interface. The primary and secondary types of data may be different and/or unrelated and could be any type of data including, but not limited to, audio data, general data, and bulk data. Yet, the received primary and secondary types of data are still useful after the transmission.

A method and system for using steganographically-encoded time information as a basis to control when a client carries out a content-related action. The client processes for presentation one or more linear media streams, each defining a respective time sequence of frames of media content, and at least one of the streams being steganographically encoded with at least one watermark at a respective time-point within the linear media stream, the watermark encoding a timestamp of the respective time-point within the linear media stream according to a server clock. The client extracts the timestamp from the watermark and computes a time offset based on a difference between the extracted timestamp and a current time according to a client clock. And the client uses the computed time offset as a basis to determine when the client should carry out a content-related action in a given one of the one or more linear media streams.

An apparatus for receiving a broadcast signal, includes a receiver configured to receive the broadcast signal including physical layer signaling data, signaling data, content data and service guide information, wherein the signaling data is included in a signal frame indicated by the physical layer signaling data, wherein the signaling data includes mapping information between a service and a PLP, and information supporting channel scanning and service acquisition, wherein the service guide information includes a service fragment having information about the broadcast service and a content fragment having information about content data of the broadcast service, wherein the content fragment further includes a content-level PrivateExt element having component information of the content data, wherein the component information includes information for a component in the broadcast service, and wherein the component is one of a video component, an audio component, and a closed caption component (CC).

Methods and apparatus to perform audio watermarking and watermark detection and extraction are disclosed. Example apparatus disclosed herein are to select frequency components to be used to represent a code, different sets of frequency components to represent respectively different information, respective ones of the frequency components in the sets of frequency components located in respective code bands, there being multiple code bands and spacing between adjacent code bands being equal to or less than the spacing between adjacent frequency components in the code bands. Disclosed example apparatus are also to synthesize the frequency components to be used to represent the code, combine the synthesized frequency components with an audio block of an audio signal, and output the audio signal and a video signal associated with the audio signal.

Methods, apparatus, systems, and articles of manufacture to improve watermark detection in acoustic environments are disclosed. An example apparatus includes at least one memory, instructions in the apparatus, and processor circuitry to execute and/or instantiate the instructions to encode a first symbol in a media file at a first symbol position on a first encoding layer of a multilayered watermark, and encode a second symbol in the media file at a second symbol position on a second encoding layer of the multilayered watermark, the first encoding layer and the second encoding layer including a plurality of symbol positions, one or more of the plurality of the symbol positions on at least one of the first encoding layer or the second encoding layer to be empty.

A method for video management within a CCTV system includes receiving, at a computing device via one or more intermediate devices in the CCTV system, a video stream generated by a sensor device of the CCTV system. The video stream includes a plurality of video frames. The computing device sends, via the one or more intermediate devices of the CCTV system, an instruction to a sensor device configured to generate a video stream including a plurality of video frames. The computing device receives, via the one or more intermediate devices of the CCTV system, one or more frames of the plurality of video frames embedded with metadata associated with performance of the instruction by the sensor device. Performance of the CCTV system is evaluated using the metadata embedded within the one or more video frames.

A media presentation device determines a voice command associated with media content presented by the media presentation device. The media presentation device then listens for and detects utterance of the determined voice command during presentation of the media content, and the media presentation device responds to the detected utterance by performing an action that facilitates user purchase of the good or service associated with the media content segment.

A method of processing supplementary content in a digital receiving apparatus, includes connecting to an external device being different from a broadcaster; receiving uncompressed audio/video (A/V) content from the external device being different from the broadcaster; extracting audio watermark from the uncompressed A/V content, wherein the audio watermark includes domain type information, time information and event flag; constructing a first uniform resource locator (URL) based on the audio watermark, transmitting a request to a remote server based on the first URL; receiving a second URL for the supplementary content from the remote server, and presenting the supplementary content based on the second URL.