Patent ID: 8904440

Claim:
An apparatus for favorite program recommendations, comprising: a user interface module, executed by a processing unit and a memory, receiving a channel indication signal indicating a TV channel; a tuner receiving a digital TV signal comprising program guide information and current program information corresponding to the TV channel; said processing unit analyzing at least one program keyword from the current program information to determine a current program type corresponding to a current program, accumulating a favor weighting value of the current program type in a program weightings record keeping a plurality of favor weighting values respectively corresponding to a plurality of program types, selecting from the program guide information at least two recommended programs according to at least one of the program types with the corresponding favor weighting value over a first predetermined threshold in the program weightings record, sorting at least two of the recommended programs by their corresponding program schedules, and when at least two of the sorted recommendation programs have overlapping program schedules, generating a plurality of recommendation lists according to at least two of the sorted recommended programs with the corresponding favor weighting values over the first predetermined threshold, wherein the recommendation programs that have overlapping program schedules are in different recommendation lists, wherein the processing unit further counts a continuous viewing time corresponding to the current program, and performs the analyzing of the at least one program keyword and the accumulating of the favor weighting value only when the continuous viewing time exceeds a second predetermined threshold, and wherein the processing unit further stores a plurality of keywords for each of the program types in a keyword table, and the current program type is determined by comparing the keywords in the keyword table with the at least one program keyword from the current program information, and the processing unit is further configured to analyze the program keywords from the current program information to determine the current program type in the memory according to a pre-stored specified sorting rules for classifying the programs defined by a user or by a keyword database.