Broadcast interactive digital radio
US6588015B1 · kind B1 · utility
Assignee
Inventors
Key dates
| Filing date | Jan 14, 1998 |
| Grant date | Jul 1, 2003 |
| Priority date | — |
| Expiry date | Jan 14, 2018 |
Classification
- Technology area (CPC H)Electricity
- CPC primaryH04N21/812
- WIPO fieldAudio-visual technology
- WIPO sectorElectrical engineering
Abstract
A digital radio broadcast system provides various interactive features, including skip forward and skip backward. In one embodiment, data is transmitted at a faster than real time rate and accumulated in a buffer at a receiver. The user can play a current track or skip to subsequent or earlier tracks. In another embodiment, two or more programming service streams (i.e., user channels) are communicated such that a user can move directly from a current track to the beginning of a track of another stream. In another embodiment, tiers of service levels are provided so that paying subscribers can bypass some or all of the commercial messages, while non-paying subscribers can not bypass the commercials. Replacement programming may be transmitted in a portion of the bandwidth of the free service. At a receiver, control data may be used with multimedia data to provide a multimedia clip which identifies features of a track, such as artist, song title or lyrics. Identifying data may be communicated with the tracks to allow a user to skip disliked tracks or recover favorite tracks on another programming service stream.
Source: USPTO / EPO open patent data. Objective bibliographic and citation counts.