Patent ID: 6889383

Claim:
In a server system linked to a consumer system through a communication link, wherein the consumer system includes a processor, a memory, a decoder, and an output device for playing multimedia content, and wherein the server system enables the consumer system to filter multimedia content that is comprised of video content, audio content, or both, a method of assisting the consumer system to automatically identify portions of the multimedia content that are to be filtered and to thereafter automatically filter the identified portions, the method comprising the server system performing the acts of: creating an object store that includes a plurality of navigation objects which can be loaded into a memory of the consumer system, each navigation object defining a portion of the multimedia content that is to be filtered by defining a start position, a stop position, and a specific filtering action to be performed on the portion of the multimedia content defined by the start and stop positions for that portion; receiving a request for one or more navigation objects from the consumer system, the request identifying the multimedia content to be played at the consumer system; in response to the request, retrieving one or more navigation objects from the object store; sending the one or more navigation objects to the consumer system for processing, whereby the consumer system filters the multimedia content by activating the filtering action for each portion of the multimedia content defined by the start and stop positions of each navigation object, resulting in the exclusion of each portion of the multimedia content defined by the one or more navigation objects; sending a representation of the one or more navigation objects to the consumer system, the representation including a description of the one or more navigation objects; receiving a password from the consumer system to authorize disabling at least one of the one or more navigation objects; receiving a response to the representation of the one or more navigation objects sent to the consumer system, the response identifying at least one of the one or more navigation objects to be disabled; and disabling the at least one of the one or more navigation objects such that the filtering action assigned by the at least one of the one or more navigation objects is ignored.