Customized Video Playback: Standards for Content Modeling and Personalization

Early in the cellular telephone revolution, the call from the promoters of that industry went something like “anything, anywhere, anytime.” Nicolas Negroponte, director of MIT’s Media Lab, later coined what can be considered to be an important slogan of the personalized content revolution, "nothing, nowhere, never unless it is timely, important, amusing, relevant, or capable of engaging my imagination” (Negroponte, 1994). Indeed, with hundreds of television channels available via satellite and cable, pre-recorded programs from VHS tapes and DVDs, as well as video files available on the Web, the variety of content available to us is seemingly endless. Not only do consumers have access to the arrival of an incredible variety of programs via these various means, but they also can time-shift those programs via VCRs and now digital personal video recorders (PVRs) such as TiVo and ReplayTV.