Patent ID: 7433582

Claim:
A method of machine learning for control of a personal video recorder (“PVR”), the method comprising: providing records of transmissions of messages, including transmitting messages to users including messages prompting for responses identifying commands and storing records of transmissions of messages including storing records of responses to messages, the records of transmissions of messages include messaging inputs and messaging outputs, the messaging inputs including message identifications, message point identifications, user identifications for a user to whom messages are transmitted, indications whether messages are sends or posts, and command identifications for commands associated with prompts for choices in messages, the messaging outputs including message point counts, message counts, and indications of users' responses to messages; creating mappings from messaging inputs to messaging outputs, the mappings including confidence ratings, messaging counts, messaging frequencies, and indications whether to transmit sends or posts at message points; identifying a message point in operation of a PVR; selecting, in dependence upon the message point, a message to be transmitted; determining in dependence upon the records of transmissions of messages whether to transmit the selected message, including determining whether to transmit the selected message in dependence upon a frequency with which the message is transmitted to a user, the frequency defined with respect to a count of the number of times an associated message point is encountered in PVR operations; recording a result of determining whether to transmit the selected message; structuring the selected message in dependence upon the records of responses to messages, including inserting in the selected message choices for a set of sequenced commands; transmitting to a user the selected message; and storing in the records of transmissions of messages a record representing the transmission of the transmitted message.