Patent ID: 8539529

Claim:
A method comprising: under control of one or more processors specifically configured with executable instructions, creating a passive list of search terms by monitoring closed captioning streams of textual data of video signals that a viewer views or records, the search terms in the passive list comprising character strings extracted from the closed captioning streams of textual data based on a frequency of occurrence in the closed captioning streams of textual data; extracting, from a newly received first video signal, a first closed captioning stream of textual data; searching the first closed captioning stream for occurrences of textual data matching the search terms in the passive list; determining whether a number of matches of the search terms in the passive list with the first closed captioning stream exceeds a threshold number; when the number of matches of the search terms of the passive list does not exceed the threshold number after a predetermined period of time, ceasing to search the first closed captioning stream of textual data before an end of the first closed captioning stream is reached, deleting corresponding content programming of the first video signal from a buffer, and searching instead a second closed captioning stream of textual data from a newly received second video signal; and outputting a notification when the number of matches of the search terms of the passive list in comparison with the textual data exceeds the threshold number, indicating that content programming determined to be of interest to the viewer has been located.