Interactive video distribution systems – Use surveying or monitoring – By passively monitoring receiver operation
Reexamination Certificate
2001-05-17
2003-01-28
Kostak, Victor R. (Department: 2611)
Interactive video distribution systems
Use surveying or monitoring
By passively monitoring receiver operation
C725S021000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06513161
ABSTRACT:
FIELD OF THE INVENTION
The invention relates to the field of television audience research, and more particularly, to the detection of the viewing of television signals originating from a signal source within a statistically sampled household.
DESCRIPTION OF PRIOR ART
As disclosed by Thomas et al., in U.S. Pat. No. 5,481,294, which is assigned to the same assignee as the present invention and the disclosure of which is herein incorporated by reference, the signal (i.e., television or radio), that has been selected, and is being viewed or heard, by an audience member on a television or radio receiver in a statistically selected household, may be determined by ascertaining the channel to which the tuner of the television or radio is tuned. This channel information is stored locally for subsequent retrieval by a central data collection office. The central data collection office matches the retrieved channel information against a cable/station record which indicates which station corresponds to which channel and/or against a program record list of television or radio programs which were transmitted on that channel in order to determine the television or radio program that the audience member selected. As noted in U.S. Pat. No. 5,481,294 by Thomas et al., this process becomes cumbersome as the number of signal sources, the number of channels, the changes to channel mappings at a cable head-end, and/or the number of television or radio programs increase, and can fail to produce usable data if there is an error in the program record list that provides the concordance between channels and programs.
Several approaches have been proposed that are intended to avoid the cumbersome cable/station record and/or program record list manner of keeping track of which station and/or which programming is available from which signal source and channel within a sampled household. As an example, one such approach has employed a program monitoring system that reads an identifying code embedded in the program, and uses the ancillary code to identify the program to which the television or radio was tuned.
As another example, a program signature is extracted from the program signal selected for use (i.e., for viewing if the signal is a television signal, or for listening if the signal is a radio signal) in the sampled household and is later compared to previously extracted reference signatures in an effort to match the program signature to a previously extracted reference signature in order to thereby identify the selected program. Accordingly, this signature approach is a correlation system which uses a sample frequency that is less than the frequency of the program signal.
Such monitoring equipment in the sampled household also stores a time stamp in addition to the ancillary code or program signature. The time stamp is used to determine the time and date of viewing and/or listening relative to the selected program.
Thomas et al., in U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,425,100, and 5,526,427, both of which are assigned to the same assignee as the present invention, teach a hierarchical, multi-level encoding system for identifying a transmitted program by reading an ancillary program identifying code which is sequentially added to the program as it passes through various stages of a program distribution network. The disclosures of U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,425,100 and 5,526,427 are hereby incorporated by reference. Other program monitoring systems employing ancillary codes which are embedded in a transmitted program are taught by Hasel-wood et al. in U.S. Pat. No. 4,025,851, and by Crosby in U.S. Pat. No. 3,845,391.
A program monitoring system that exclusively relies on ancillary codes may produce inaccurate results when ancillary codes are either intentionally or accidentally omitted from program signals. Even when the original program signal is encoded with an ancillary code, there is a risk that the ancillary code will be intentionally removed before the program signal is viewed or heard. There is also the risk that ancillary codes may be accidentally removed before the program in which they are embedded is viewed or heard. For example, ancillary codes that are embedded in video or audio program signals so that they are undetectable to a viewer or listener, or so that they are at least unobtrusive enough to be no more than minimally detectable by a viewer or listener, are commonly stripped from the video or audio program signals when the video or audio program signals are compressed (e.g., such as by the MPEG II compression scheme used with digital television signals).
Moreover, ancillary codes, which are inserted into vertical blanking intervals (VBI) of the video portions of program signals, and which survive passage through the signal transmission chain so as to be received by a user's television receiver, are commonly removed from the video before the video is applied to the CRT of a television. As a result, non-intrusive acquisition of these VBI ancillary codes is impractical because such non-intrusive acquisition usually requires the use of probes which generally pick up the video sent by the tuner to the CRT after the VBI ancillary codes have already been stripped from the video.
Therefore, ancillary codes in the vertical blanking interval are more easily detected if the monitored television receiver is opened so that leads of the monitoring equipment can be soldered to video test points of the television receiver at which the ancillary codes are still present. However, such an arrangement is intrusive, leading to objections by the members of the statistically sampled households.
Signal comparison program monitoring systems, other than signature matching systems such as those described above, have also been used in order to determine the signal sources (e.g., channels) of the programs being viewed or heard. One of the oldest known signal comparison program monitoring systems compares a synchronization component of a television program signal selected by a television tuner with a corresponding synchronization component in a program signal selected by a reference tuner. This signal comparison program monitoring system credits viewing to the signal source selected by the reference tuner when and if the two synchronization components match within some predetermined error.
Currey, in U.S. Pat. No. 3,372,233, provided an early teaching of such a program monitoring system which compared the phasing of vertical synchronization signals for this purpose. Currey's approach was not particularly successful because there are times when the vertical synchronization components from different signal sources occasionally match. When this type of matching occurs, the program source measurement is ambiguous. Solar, in U.S. Pat. No. 4,764,808, and Gall, in U.S. Pat. No. 4,847,685, provided improved synchronization component measurement systems that did not entirely overcome the basic shortcoming of the Currey approach. In U.S. Pat. No. 5,294,977, Fisher et al. disclosed a synchronization component based measurement system operating in a restricted environment in which such phase coincidences can be avoided.
Another signal comparison program monitoring system correlates a receiver signal, which may be extracted from a receiver being monitored, with a reference signal, which may be supplied by a reference tuner that is tuned consecutively to the possible program signal sources to which the monitored receiver may be tuned. This correlation system determines the channel being viewed or heard when the correlation between the receiver signal from the monitored receiver and the reference signal from the reference tuner exceeds some predetermined value. This monitoring approach was initially adapted for the purpose of in-home identification of viewed television programs by Kiewit et al. in U.S. Pat. No. 4,697,209, the disclosure of which is herein incorporated by reference. The teachings of Kiewit et al. have been expanded upon by Thomas et al., in U.S. Pat. No. 5,481,294, who described the use of signatures extracted from either a video c
Lu Daozheng
Wheeler Henry B.
Katten Muchin Zavis & Rosenman
Kostak Victor R.
Nielsen Media Research, Inc.
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