Identification and presentation of internet-accessible content associated with currently playing television programs

• Main Authors: Verrilli, Michael, Sandland, Nathan Leslie
• Format: Patent
• Language: English
• Published: 19.03.2019
• Subjects: CALCULATING; COMPUTING; COUNTING; ELECTRIC COMMUNICATION TECHNIQUE; ELECTRIC DIGITAL DATA PROCESSING; ELECTRICITY; PHYSICS; PICTORIAL COMMUNICATION, e.g. TELEVISION

Features of various implementations are used to enable identifying and presenting, in real time, Internet-accessible and/or Internet-based functionality, content and/or services associated with a particular television program concurrently playing on a television or display, as a part of an interactive television suite of technologies. In some implementations, the process of identifying Internet-accessible and/or Internet-based functionality, content and/or services associated with a particular television program is enabled to reduce communication between a primary set-top box and a supplemental set-top box and/or television integrated device, thereby reducing the need for one or more provider specific APIs. For example, one aspect of the disclosure is a computer-implemented method of identifying a media program by capturing display data from the media program, and extracting information from the display data in response to determining that the display data includes a program information overlay associated with the media program.