Patent ID: 9635423
Date: 2017-04-25
CPC Classifications: G06Q,H04N,H05K

Claim:
1. A method for providing video-on-demand services to a tuner associated with a TV service subscriber, the method comprising: (a) receiving, at the tuner, which is operatively connected to TV equipment of the TV service subscriber, via a closed system from a video-on-demand content delivery system comprising one or more computers and computer-readable memory operatively connected to the one or more computers of the video-on-demand content delivery system, respective video-on-demand application-readable metadata that is associated with respective video content and is usable to generate a video-on-demand content menu; wherein the respective video content was uploaded to a Web-based content management system by a respective content provider device associated with a respective video content provider via the Internet in a digital video format along with respective specified metadata including respective title information, category information, and subcategory information designated by the respective video content provider to specify a respective hierarchical location of a respective title of the respective video content within the video-on-demand content menu displayed on the TV equipment, wherein the respective video-on-demand application-readable metadata is generated according to the respective specified metadata; (b) providing, to the TV subscriber at the tuner, the video-on-demand content menu for navigating through titles, including the respective titles of the respective video content, in a drill-down manner by category information and subcategory information in order to locate a particular one of the titles whose associated video content is desired for viewing on the TV equipment, wherein the video-on-demand content menu lists the titles using the same hierarchical structure of respective category information and subcategory information as was designated by the respective video content provider in the respective specified metadata for the respective video content, wherein the video-on-demand content menu is generated based at least upon the respective specified metadata, and wherein a plurality of different video display templates are accessible to the tuner for generating a templatized display that is used in the video-on-demand content menu; wherein the templatized display comprises a plurality of layers, comprising: (1) a first layer comprising a background screen to provide at least one of a basic color, logo, or graphical theme to the templatized display; (2) a second layer comprising a particular video display template layered on the background screen, wherein the particular video display template comprises one or more reserved areas that are reserved for displaying content provided by a different layer of the plurality of layers; and (3) a third layer comprising reserved area content generated using the received video content, the associated metadata, and the associated plurality of images to be displayed in the one or more reserved areas in the particular video display template as at least one of text, an image, a navigation link, and a button; wherein the navigating through titles in a drill-down manner comprises navigating from a first level of the hierarchical structure of the video-on-demand content menu to a second level of the hierarchical structure to locate the particular one of the titles, and wherein a first template of the plurality of different video display templates is used as the particular video display template for the templatized display for displaying the first level of the hierarchical structure and wherein a second template of the plurality of different video display templates is used as the particular video display template for the templatized display for displaying the second level of the hierarchical structure, (c) in response to the TV service subscriber selecting, via a control unit in communication with the tuner, a first respective title associated with a first video content from the hierarchical structure of respective category information and subcategory information of the video-on-demand content menu using drill-down navigation, transmitting the selection to the tuner for display on the TV equipment; and (d) receiving, at the respective tuner, the first video content for display on the TV equipment of the TV service subscriber, wherein in response to the selection the first video content was retrieved from a video server associated with the video-on-demand content delivery system.