Development of a TV reception navigation system personalized with viewing habits

Digitalization of television broadcasting results in an increasing number of broadcast channels and is making general viewers difficult to do program select operations. In view of this, we have developed a TV reception navigation system that helps different types of viewers to easily select TV programs in accordance with their occasional mood and interests. The system recommends programs suited for viewers' allocation of living hours, while providing an electronic program guide (EPG) personalized for their interests, it also incorporates a facility to search a program schedule with keywords such as person names and place names, as well as a facility to modify the viewer profile according to the selection result for personalization purpose. Experimental tests on this system have been conducted in the manner that testing evaluators select programs among approximately 100 channels of actual satellite and terrestrial broadcasting in Japan. System functions have been evaluated in terms of different types of programs aired in the morning, afternoon and evening. The result of subjective evaluation tests reveals the usefulness of this personal TV reception navigation system.