Patent ID: 8081863

Claim:
A content playback apparatus that obtains a content section from content, and plays the obtained content section, the content playback apparatus comprising: a reference generation unit operable to generate a judgment reference that varies dynamically over a playback time axis of the content; and a content section obtaining unit operable to obtain the content section by comparing the content with the judgment reference, the content has a characteristic value that changes dynamically over the playback time axis, the judgment reference is a threshold value group, and the content section obtaining unit obtains a different piece of characteristic content from the content each time the characteristic value exceeds a threshold value in the threshold value group, and generates the content section from the at least one obtained piece of characteristic content, the content is divided into a plurality of segments, each segment is in correspondence with a different one of the threshold values in the threshold value group, and the content section obtaining unit compares the characteristic value with the threshold value corresponding to the segment having the characteristic value, and when the characteristic value exceeds the compared threshold value, obtains, as a piece of characteristic content, a piece of content that composes the segment corresponding to the compared threshold value, and after performing the comparison and obtaining operations with respect to each of the segments, generates the content section from the at least one obtained piece of content, the reference generation unit generates the threshold value group using a threshold value generation function for determining the threshold value with respect to each segment, and the content section obtaining unit, with respect to each segment, compares the characteristic value with the threshold value determined with respect to the segment using the threshold value generation function, the threshold value generation function has a property of monotonic increase and/or monotonic decrease on part of a domain with respect to the playback time axis, the reference generation unit calculates the threshold values in the threshold value group by, with respect to each segment, substituting, as an input value, a playback time of the segment on the playback time axis into the threshold value generation function, and, after performing the calculation operation with respect to each segment, generates the threshold value group from the calculated threshold values, and the content section obtaining unit compares, with respect to each segment, the characteristic value with the threshold value calculated with respect to the segment using the threshold value generation function.