Patent ID: 6898799

Claim:
In a computerized system for enabling a consumer to digitally filter multimedia content that is comprised of video content, audio content, or both, and wherein a consumer computer system includes a processor, a memory, a decoder, and an output device for playing the multimedia content, a method for assisting the consumer 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 acts of: creating an object store which can be loaded into a memory of the consumer computer system, the object store including a plurality of navigation objects, each of which defines a portion of the multimedia content that is to be filtered by defining a start position and 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; decoding the multimedia content on the consumer computer system and as the multimedia content is output from a decoder of the consumer computer system, continuously updating a position code; as the multimedia content is decoding, continuously monitoring the position code to determine whether the position code of the multimedia content falls is within the star and stop positions defined by one of the navigation objects; when the position code is determined to fall within the star and stop positions defined a particular navigation object, activating the filtering action assigned to the particular navigation object in order to filter the portion of the multimedia content defined by the particular navigation object; transferring the multimedia content to an output device, whereby the multimedia content is played at the output device excluding each portion thereof which is filtered in accordance with the plurality of navigation objects; displaying a representation of the plurality of navigation objects, the representation including a description of each of the plurality of navigation objects; receiving a password to authorize disabling at least one of the plurality of navigation objects; receiving a response to the representation of the plurality of navigation objects, the response identifying the at least one of the plurality of navigation objects to be disabled; and disabling the at least one of the plurality of navigation objects such that the specific filtering action specified by the at least one of the plurality of navigation objects is ignored.