Abstract:
An apparatus and a method of automatically displaying multiple assets on a screen comprising receiving a composite video feed, the composite video feed including a plurality of assets, obtaining user preference data to determine which of the plurality of assets to display on each of a plurality of display regions, aligning and scaling assets to be displayed in corresponding display regions according to the obtained user preference data, and displaying the aligned and scaled assets with the elementary video feed.

Description:
CROSS REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS:  
       [0001]    The present application claims priority from the U.S. provisional application No. 60/228,926 entitled “STRUCTURED OVERLAYS—A FRAMEWORK FOR ITV” filed Aug. 29, 2000, and application No. 60/311,301, entitled “METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR DISTORTION CORRECTION AND DISPLAYING ADD-ON GRAPHICS FOR REAL TIME GRAPHICS” filed Aug. 10, 2001, by the same inventor which is herein incorporated by reference. 
     
    
     
       FIELD OF THE INVENTION  
         [0002]    The present invention relates generally to audio/visual content, and more particularly to an apparatus and method for automatic layout using meta-tags for multiple camera view while accounting for user preferences.  
         BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION  
         [0003]    Digital television (DTV) allows simultaneous transmission of data along with traditional AV content. Digital television broadcasts now reach tens of millions of receivers worldwide. In Europe, Asia and the US, digital satellite television and the digital cable television have been available for several years and have a growing viewer base. In the U.S., the Federal Communication Commission has mandated a transition period from analog NTSC over-the-air broadcast to its digital successor, ATSC, by the year 2006.  
           [0004]    The current generation of DTV receivers, primarily cable and satellite set-top-boxes (STB), generally offer limited resources to applications. From a manufacturer&#39;s perspective, the goal has been building low-cost receivers comprised of dedicated hardware for handling the incoming MPEG-2 transport stream; tuning and demodulating the broadcast signal, demultiplexing and possibly decrypting (e.g., for pay-per-view) the transport stream, and decoding the AV elementary streams. The focus has been on the STB as an AV receiver rather than a general-purpose platform for downloaded applications and services. However, the next generation of DTV receivers will be more flexible for application development. Receivers are becoming more powerful through the use of faster processors, larger memory, 3 dimensional (3-D) graphics hardware and disk storage.  
           [0005]    Most digital television broadcast services, whether satellite, cable, or terrestrial, are bases on the MPEG-2 standard. In addition to specifying audio/video encoding, MPEG-2 defines a transport stream format consisting of a multiplex of elementary streams. The elementary streams can contain compressed audio or video content, “program specific information: describing the structure of the transport stream, and arbitrary data. Standards such as DSM-CC and the more recent ATSC data broadcast standard give ways of placing IP datagrams in elementary data streams.  
           [0006]    The expanding power of STB receivers and the ability to transmit data along with the AV transmission has allowed for the possibility of changing television viewing by moving control of broadcast enhancements from the studio for mass presentation into the living room for personalized consumption. The goal of allowing viewer interactions has become an achievable goal. Therefore, there is a need for a method and apparatus allowing user interactivity in molding the broadcast presentation, and specifically allowing viewer input in the presentation of the assets transmitted along with the AV signal.  
         SUMMARY OF THE PRESENT INVENTION  
         [0007]    Briefly, one aspect of the present invention is a method of automatically displaying multiple assets on a screen comprising receiving a composite video feed, the composite video feed including a plurality of assets, obtaining user preference data to determine which of the plurality of assets to display on each of a plurality of display regions, aligning and scaling assets to be displayed in corresponding display regions according to the obtained user preference data, and displaying the aligned and scaled assets with the elementary video feed.  
           [0008]    The advantages of the present invention will become apparent to those skilled in the art upon a reading of the following descriptions and study of the various figures of the drawings. 
       
    
    
     BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS  
       [0009]    [0009]FIG. 1 illustrates a representative transmission and reception system for the present invention;  
         [0010]    [0010]FIG. 2 is a block diagram of one embodiment for the transmission and reception system for a digital television;  
         [0011]    [0011]FIG. 3 is an illustrative example of the data communication between the transmission and reception systems in a Digital Television (DTV) system;  
         [0012]    [0012]FIG. 4 is a flow diagram of one embodiment for the generation of a composite broadcast signal;  
         [0013]    [0013]FIG. 5 is a diagram of one embodiment for the recovery of a composite broadcast signal illustration of the data flow on the receiver side;  
         [0014]    [0014]FIG. 6 is an example of one embodiment of the use of meta-data  52  for region definitions;  
         [0015]    [0015]FIG. 7 is one embodiment for representative region definition layout for possible overlaying of assets on the live video feed;  
         [0016]    [0016]FIG. 8 shows some examples of display renderings of some possible assets within the in a car race scenario broadcast;  
         [0017]    [0017]FIG. 9 is an example of a display rendering of the effect of the user preferences on the displaying of assets;  
         [0018]    [0018]FIG. 10 is another example of a display rendering of the effect of the user preferences on the displaying of assets  
     
    
     DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENT  
       [0019]    Digital Television (DTV) is an area where viewer interaction is expected to become increasingly prevalent in the next few years. Digital TV allows simultaneous transmission of data along with traditional AV content. It provides an inexpensive and high bandwidth data pipe that enables new forms of interactive television and also new types of games, and other applications.  
         [0020]    [0020]FIG. 1 illustrates a data acquisition and transmission system for a typical Digital Television system. In this illustrative example of a car-racing event, the Audio Video (AV) elementary stream is generated using several cameras  10  that are capturing the live event and feeding the AV equipment  13 . Instrumentation data  12  is also collected on each camera and input to the data acquisition unit  16 . Concurrently, sensors  14  collect various performance data such as each racecar&#39;s speed and engine RPM, and feed the data to the data acquisition unit  16 . Furthermore, in a car-racing event such as the one illustrated in the present example, the position of each racecar may be tracked using a Global Positioning Satellite (GPS system), and the positional data on the individual cars  14  is fed to the data acquisition unit  16 . The collected data of each racecar may be used on the receiver side to create viewer specific assets, based on that viewer&#39;s input. The term assets as used henceforth refers to the event related data transmitted down stream to the viewer&#39;s receiver and used to display various windows alongside the AV signal. The data collected by the data acquisition module  16  includes positional and instrumentation data  12  of each of the cameras  10  covering the race, as well as positional and instrumentation data  14  on the each racecar. The AV signal and the corresponding data are multiplexed and modulated by module  18  and transmitted via a TV signal transmitter  20 .  
         [0021]    [0021]FIG. 2 is a block diagram of one embodiment for the transmission and reception system for a digital television. At the AV signals from the AV production unit  13  (broadcaster) are fed into an MPEG-2 encoder  22  which compresses the AV data based on an MPEG-2 standard. In one embodiment, digital television broadcast services, whether satellite, cable or terrestrial transmission are based on the MPEG-2 standard. In addition to specifying audio and video encoding, MPEG-2 defines a transport stream format consisting of a multiplex of elementary streams. The elementary streams may contain compressed audio or video content, program specific information describing the structure of the transport stream, and arbitrary data. It will be appreciated by one skilled in the art that the teachings of the present invention is not limited to an implementation based on an MPEG-2 standard. Alternatively, the present invention may be implemented using any standard such as MPEG-4, DSM-CC or the Advanced Television System Committee (ATSC) standard that allows for ways of placing IP datagrams in elementary streams. The generated and compressed AV data out of the MPEG-2 encoder is inputted into a data injector  24 , which combines the AV signals with the corresponding instrumentation data coming from the data acquisition unit  16 .  
         [0022]    The data acquisition module  16  handles the various real-time data sources made available to the broadcaster. In the example used with the present embodiment, the data acquisition module  16  obtains the camera tracking, car tracking , car telemetry and standings data feeds and converts these into Internet Protocol (IP) based packets which are then sent to the data injector  24 . The data injector  24  receives the IP packets and encapsulates them in an elementary stream that is multiplexed with the AV elementary streams. The resulting transport stream is then modulated by the modulator  25  and transmitted to receiver devices via cable, satellite or terrestrial broadcast.  
         [0023]    Typically, DTV receiver tunes to a DTV signal, demodulates and demultiplexes the incoming transport stream, decodes the A/V elementary streams, and outputs the result. A DTV receiver is “data capable” if it can in addition extract application data from the elementary streams. The data capable DTV receiver is the target platform for the system and method of the present invention. These data capable DTV receivers can be realized in many ways: a digital Set Top Box (STB) receiver that connects to a television monitor, an integrated receiver and display, or a PC with a DTV card. In one embodiment, composition engine based on a declarative representation language such as an extended version of the Virtual Reality Markup Language (VRML) may be used to process the incoming data along with the elementary data stream, and render the graphics desired.  
         [0024]    It would be apparent to one skilled in the art that any number of declarative representation languages including but not limited to languages such as HTML and XML may be used to practice the present invention. VRML is a web-oriented declarative markup language well suited for 2D/3D graphics generation and thus it is a suitable platform for implementing the teaching of the present invention.  
         [0025]    The Audio/Video (AV) elementary stream and the corresponding data may be delivered via cable or satellite or terrestrial broadcast as represented by the TV transmitter antenna  20 . At the receiving end, a receiving unit (antenna, or cable receiver) delivers the signals to a Set Top Box (STB)  23 . In alternative embodiments, a gaming platform used in combination with a digital tuner may comprise the receiving unit. Alternatively, other digital platforms may incorporated and host rendering engines that could be connected to a digital receiver and act in combination as the receiving unit. The STB  23  as disclosed by the present invention includes a tuner  26 , a demultiplexer (Demux)  28  to demultiplex the incoming signal, a MPEG2 Decoder  30  to decode the incoming signal, a presentation engine  32  using a declarative representation language. In an alternative embodiment, an application module (not shown here) may be included as a separate or integral part of the presentation engine  32 . The application module may interface with a gaming platform also not shown here. The presentation engine  32  processes the incoming AV signals and the corresponding data, and renders a composite image as requested, on the digital television  36  of FIG. 3.  
         [0026]    [0026]FIG. 3 illustrates an example of the type of data communication between by the transmission and reception system of the present invention. On the transmission side  14 , the broadcaster sends a combination of AV elementary stream data  41 , data recognized by the receiver down the line as broadcaster created region definitions  42  and various event related assets  44  using the TV transmitter antenna  20 . As used here, an asset refers to an event related camera view or data to be displayed on the user&#39;s screen. The event related assets may include race car performance data such as the racecar&#39;s engine RPM and speed, or may include the racecar driver&#39;s standing in the race, performance statistics of the pit crew, or other broadcaster defined data.  
         [0027]    If the asset consists of event related data, such as performance data on individual race cars, the graphics associated with displaying the data may be generated by the broadcaster and transmitted to the viewer&#39;s receiver, or the graphics may generated down stream by a presentation engine residing on the viewer&#39;s receiver. It would be appreciated by one skilled in the art that asset graphics generation down stream reduces the amount of data that needs to be transmitted down stream and thus requires less bandwidth. In one embodiment of the present invention, the presentation engine rendering the accompanying graphics for each asset may be based on a declarative representation language such as an extension to the Virtual Reality Markup Language (VRML).  
         [0028]    On the receiver side, the presentation engine  32  residing in the set top box  23 , uses the elementary streaming video feed  41  and the related assets  44  to create a composite scene shown on the digital TV screen. The overlaying of the related assets on the elementary video feed is at least partially controlled by the asset region definitions  42  the scene the viewer sees on the digital TV  36 . Furthermore, the presentation engine  32  automatically rearranges the screen layout based on the user preference input and taking into consideration the broadcaster&#39;s asset region definition.  
         [0029]    [0029]FIG. 4 is a flow diagram of one embodiment for the generation of a composite broadcast signal. In operation  50 , the broadcaster defines a specific region for overlaying each of the assets on the video feed. In one embodiment, regions are defined using meta data and the assets displayed are associated with a defined region using meta tags. A meta tag is a tag (a coding statement) used in a markup language such as Virtual Reality Markup Language (VRML), that describes some aspect of the contents of the corresponding data. Meta tags are used to define meta data. In the most general terms, meta data is information about a document. In one embodiment, the broadcaster defines regions of asset overlay by creating meta data  52 , and transmitting the meta tags down stream to the receiver 23. The receiver uses the meta data to create or define particular regions or placards used for displaying assets. The broadcaster may have preferences on how the screen layout should look like. For example, the broadcaster may be using certain regions of the TV screen for the display of broadcaster-defined messages such as an advertising message or a commercial logo. In operation  54 , the broadcaster creates assets  44  that may be overlaid on the elementary video feed. The created assets may include such information as performance data for individual racecars. Sensors located on each racecar gather the information necessary to generate the assets and the broadcaster compiles all the sensor data and transmits the information down stream to the viewer. In an alternative embodiment, the graphics associated with each set of assets may be rendered by the presentation engine  32  residing on the receiver  23 . In operation  58 , the broadcaster creates meta tags  60  that associate the assets  44  to the region definitions. The meta tags  60  convey additional information about the assets to be rendered. This may include data used by the composition engine  32  to display particular assets in the corresponding defined regions. The resulting output of operation  58  is the creation of meta tags  60 . In operation  62 , the broadcaster transmits the elementary AV signal along with the meta data  52  used for region definition, the assets created  44  and the corresponding meta tags  60  to the receiver over satellite or broadband. In the present example, the video/data transmission is based on the ATSC standard. However, it would be appreciated by one skilled in the art that many other standards allowing for the transmission of the combined AV/data signal may be used.  
         [0030]    [0030]FIG. 5 is a diagram of one embodiment for the recovery of a composite broadcast signal illustration of the data flow on the receiver side. In operation  64 , the presentation engine  32  residing on the receiver  23  receives the meta data  52  for region definition, meta tags  60  for assets definition, and association to the defined regions, and the assets  44  to be overlaid on the elementary video feed. As referred to here, an asset  44  refers to a camera view of an activity related to the broadcast event. A broadcast event may be covered by multiple camera views and thus multiple assets may be available for display on the viewer television screen, based on the viewer&#39;s selections. Furthermore, meta data  52  may be used by the broadcasters to define the display regions  42 , whereas meta tags  60  may be used to associate a particular asset  44  with a particular display region  42 . In operation  68 , the meta data for regions definitions and meta tags for assets definitions are used to determine corresponding broadcaster defined region of display for each asset. In operation  70 , the presentation engine  32  accepts the user preferences  65  as inputs in order to determine which assets to display. Since the ultimate goal of DTV is interactivity, once the enhancements are under the control of the viewer, it is essential to make these accessible through an intuitive interface. Television is typically a very passive experience and consumer acceptance will fall off as the interface strays from the simple button press on a remote control. Web-based content typically involves a mouse-driven cursor that can point to an arbitrary region of the screen and thus declarative representation languages such as VRML includes a Touch-Sensor node. However, in one embodiment, interactive television applications are driven by a ButtonSensor node which is adapted to accept input from devices such as a TV remote control. The buttons on the input devices such as PC keyboards, remote controls, game controller pad, etc. trigger this node. Below is an example of one ButtonSensor declaration:  
                                                                       ButtonSensor {                field SFString buttonOfInterest “Enter”           field SFTime pressTime 0           field SFTime releaseTime 0           field SFBool enabled TRUE                }                      
 
         [0031]    In an embodiment of the present invention, in implementing the presentation engine  32  using a declarative markup language such as VRML, in addition to the standard computer keyboard keys, the declarative presentation language has predefined a set of literal strings that are recognizable as values for the buttonOfInterest field. Depending on the type of the input device, these literal strings are then mapped to the corresponding buttons of the input device. For example, if the buttonOfInterest field contains the value of “REWIND”, the corresponding mapping key for a keyboard input device would translate to ‘←’, whereas on a TV remote it would map to the ‘&lt;&lt;’ button.  
         [0032]    The design of the graphical user interface (GUI) for the present invention is based on the assumption that TV viewers are typically limited to four arrow buttons, a select button, and an exit button. Furthermore, for the most part the GUI interface of the present invention is based on the traditional 2-D menu-driven interface. Typically, the menu selections are located on the left side of the screen It would be apparent to one skilled in the art that other input devices and GUIs may be used to implement the method and apparatus of the present invention.  
         [0033]    In operation  72 , based partially on the user preferences and partially on the broadcaster predefined region definition and their association with the respective regions, the presentation engine  32  determines which assets to display in a particular region. In operation  73 , based on the assets being displayed, the presentation engine  32  aligns and scales the assets in order to fit the layout on the screen. In operation  74 , the scaled and aligned assets are overlaid on the video feed  41  and composited prior to displaying on the TV screen.  
         [0034]    [0034]FIG. 6 is an example of one embodiment of the use of meta-data  52  for region definitions. Using meta data  52 , the broadcaster transmits its desired region definitions to be used for displaying the viewer desired assets. The broadcasters may limit each region to be used for displaying the assets to regions 1 ( 78 ), region 2 ( 80 ), region 3 ( 82 ) and region 4 ( 84 ). The broadcaster may have preferences on which areas need to remain free from overlay for use by the broadcaster specific purposes such as displaying commercial messages. The broadcaster region definition may include the broadcaster&#39;s preferences in limiting the use of a particular region for the display of specific assets. An example of the use of meta data  52  used for region definition is as follows:  
                                                                                                                         &lt;PROGRAM_LAYOUT&gt;                &lt;TITLE&gt;Cart Racing&lt;/TITLE&gt;           &lt;REGION&gt;                &lt;NAME&gt;Region 1&lt;/NAME&gt;           &lt;POSITION&gt;0,0&lt;/POSITION&gt;           &lt;TYPE&gt;Data&lt;/TYPE&gt;           &lt;TYPE&gt;Graphics&lt;/TYPE&gt;                &lt;/REGION&gt;           &lt;REGION&gt;                &lt;NAME&gt;Region 2&lt;/NAME&gt;           &lt;POSITION&gt;0,1&lt;/POSITION&gt;           &lt;TYPE&gt;Data&lt;/TYPE&gt;           &lt;TYPE&gt;Graphics&lt;/TYPE&gt;                &lt;/REGION&gt;           &lt;REGION&gt;                &lt;NAME&gt;Region 3&lt;/NAME&gt;           &lt;POSITION&gt;1,0&lt;/POSITION&gt;           &lt;TYPE&gt;Video&lt;/TYPE&gt;                &lt;/REGION&gt;                      
 
         [0035]    As shown in this illustrative example, each region definition includes position parameters (“POSITION”) defining its location within the display screen, and type parameters defining the content that may be displayed in the particular region. Each region definition also includes a region name such as “Region 1” or “Region 2”.  
         [0036]    [0036]FIG. 7 is one embodiment for representative region definition layout for possible overlaying of assets on the live video feed. The background scene  76  is rendered using the elementary video feed  41 . Overlaid on top of the AV feed  41 , the meta data  52  are used to define each region used for the display of the assets  44  and meta tags  60  are used to correspond each defined region to a particular asset. Two or more assets may share a window or defined region. The meta tags  60  definition shown below is an illustrative example of how meta tags may be used to associate an asset with a particular region definition. In this example meta tags  60  for three of the assets of FIG. 8 are shown.  
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                       &lt;ASSET&gt;                &lt;NAME&gt;Virtual Viewer&lt;/NAME&gt;           &lt;ASSOCIATED REGION&gt;Region 1           &lt;/ASSOCIATED REGION&gt;           &lt;TYPE&gt;VRML&lt;/TYPE&gt;           &lt;ADDITIONAL DATA&gt;Data Stream 2&lt;/ADDITIONAL                DATA&gt;                &lt;ADDITIONAL DATA&gt;Data Stream 3&lt;/ADDITIONAL                DATA&gt;                &lt;LEVEL&gt;Option 1&lt;/LEVEL&gt;                &lt;/ASSET&gt;           &lt;ASSET&gt;                &lt;NAME&gt;Telemetry for Favorite Driver&lt;/NAME&gt;           &lt;ASSOCIATED REGION&gt;Region 1&lt;/ASSOCIATED                REGION&gt;                &lt;TYPE&gt;VRML&lt;/TYPE&gt;           &lt;ADDITIONAL DATA&gt;Data Stream 1&lt;/ADDITIONAL                DATA&gt;                &lt;LEVEL&gt;Option 0&lt;/LEVEL&gt;                &lt;/ASSET&gt;           &lt;ASSET&gt;                &lt;NAME&gt;Map View&lt;/NAME&gt;           &lt;ASSOCIATED REGION&gt;Region 2&lt;/ASSOCIATED                REGION&gt;                &lt;TYPE&gt;VRML&lt;/TYPE&gt;           &lt;ADDITIONAL DATA&gt;Data Stream 1&lt;/ADDITIONAL                DATA&gt;                &lt;LEVEL&gt;Option 0&lt;/LEVEL&gt;                &lt;/ASSET&gt;                      
 
         [0037]    As shown in the example above, each asset meta tag may include a title for the asset, a region association relating the asset to the region within which the asset may be displayed, and type declarations declaring the type content that may be displayed in the placards or defined regions associated with each asset.  
         [0038]    Accordingly, as shown in FIG. 7, region  86  may be used to display statistics and replays. Region  88  may be shared by two assets, “favorite driver” and the “virtual view”. The selection of a driver from the “favorite driver” asset may trigger the display of information specific to the selected driver, while the virtual view may display the favorite driver in a virtual view. Region  90  may be shared by the map view, the game table or game score. Region  92  overlapping regions  90  and  94  may be used for the quiz asset, and region  94  may be used for the driver selection menu. Since various regions overlap and because each region may be used to display multiple assets, the presentation engine  32  has to align and scale the assets to fit within the defined regions based on the viewer&#39;s selection of what he or she chooses to see.  
         [0039]    [0039]FIG. 8 shows some examples of display renderings of some possible assets within the in a car race scenario broadcast. The “virtual view” asset  96  may allow the viewer to select a front, back TV camera, ring or blimp view of the ongoing race. The “favorite driver” asset  98  may display the viewer selected favorite driver car telemetry data such as the speed, engine RPM, the gear, and the driver standing within the race for each racecar as it continues along the race. The information necessary to produce this asset may be supplied by sensors  14  located on the particular race cars. In a preferred embodiment, the rendition of the graphics of the “favorite driver asset” may be composed locally, by the STB receiver  23 .  
         [0040]    The “map view” asset  100  may show a virtual aerial view of the race and particularly depicting the viewer selected racecars as they move around the race track. A “game table” asset displays a ranking of the racing teams and may allow several viewers to play against each other. In one embodiment of the present invention, the STB receivers  23  may be connected to each other via a wide area network such as the Internet. The “game score” asset  104  displays the game score between the game playing viewers. This score may span over several broadcast, wherein at the completion of each broadcast, the local STB boxes  23  would save the required data for reintroduction in the next broadcast.  
         [0041]    The “statistics 1” asset  106  displays the performance statistics such as the lateral acceleration acting on each viewer selected racecar as they are moving around the track. The “statistics 2” asset  108  displays car information such as the type and size of engine used in the viewer selected racecar, the car chassis, the type of tires used and even the members of a particular race team.  
         [0042]    The “quiz” asset  110  may present trivia questions of the viewer and the viewer responses may be used to keep scores and compared against other viewers, and displayed in the game score asset  104 . The “replays” menu  112  allows the viewer to select replays on particular highlights such as a particularly difficult move by selected drivers. In the present example, the GUI interface is simple and very intuitive so as not to discourage viewers to use the various functionalities offered to them by the new digital TV technology.  
         [0043]    [0043]FIG. 9 is an example of a display rendering of the effect of the user preferences on the displaying of assets. In the upper region of the screen displaying the elementary video feed  76 , the “favorite driver” asset  98  is displayed. In the left hand comer of the display screen, a menu of various replays  112  may be displayed. A table of the options selected by the viewer is shown below:  
                                                             Config1                                        Replays   Yes           Favorite   Yes           Virtual View   No           Favorite Driver   Gordon           Quiz   No.                      
 
         [0044]    The user has inputted its preferences result in the selection and display of the Replays asset  112  and the Favorite driver  98  asset with Gordon as the favorite racecar driver to be tracked. The Virtual View asset  96  is not selected and thus not displayed.  
         [0045]    [0045]FIG. 10 is another example of a display rendering of the effect of the user preferences on the displaying of assets. In this configuration, overlaid upon the elementary video feed  76 , based on the user preferences  65 , the “favorite driver” asset  98  and the “virtual view” asset  96  are sharing the upper placard region defined for use by both assets. In the lower left hand comer of the screen, the “replays” menu  112  is still displayed and in the right hand comer of the screen, the “quiz” asset  110  is displayed. The Config 2 table below illustrates the viewer preferences selected for the current display (as shown in FIG. 10):  
                                                             Config 2                                        Replays   Yes           Favorite   Yes           Virtual View   Yes           Favorite Driver   Gordon           Quiz   Yes                      
 
         [0046]    In the current scenario, the viewer preference inputs result in the selection and display of the Favorite Driver  98 , the Virtual View asset  96 , the Replay asset  112  and the Quiz asset  110 . Since the upper region or region 1 is shared by both the Favorite Driver asset  98  and the Virtual View asset  96 , each asset is scaled and adjusted to fit in the defined region.  
         [0047]    Although the present invention has been described above with respect to presently preferred embodiments illustrated in simple schematic form, it is to be understood that various alterations and modifications thereof will become apparent to those skilled in the art. It is therefore intended that the appended claims to be interpreted as covering all such alterations and modifications as fall within the true spirit and scope of the invention.