TiVo doesn’t yet know if their injunction against DISH DVRs will hold in court, but that hasn’t stopped them from expanding their patent portfolio. In a remarkable filing with the USPTO, TiVo appears to have now won an important patent for analyzing and displaying closed caption and meta data to DVR customers. That appears to encompass enhanced TV services, including a “clip and sling” type technology and could eventually allow TiVo users to automatically remove commercials from time shifted programs.
According to patent 7,661,121, TiVo now owns the right to use existing closed caption and Enhanced Television (ETV) signaling data to create an interactive experience for their customers. ETV data is the metadata that content owners embed into their programming. It’s been used by CableLabs and is part of the fundamental architecture behind big cable’s sinking “Canoe” DVR advertising venture. While I would suspect that the cable companies also have patents related to how ETV data can be utilized, it will undoubtedly be another series of rapids that the long delayed project will have to maneuver through.
While the abstract for TiVo’s latest patent is a little vague, devling into the details you start to understand why they’d try to seize this particular piece of intellectual property. Essentially, the patent allows TiVo to sync closed captioning (and metadata) from broadcast programs recorded on a DVR and then display that data in an interactive format. This data can be as simple as a menu or closed captioned text or can be as advanced as digital video and sound effects.
