Interesting PVR patent

TiVo gets lots of press attention because of their broad patent portfolio, even though they haven’t been overly aggressive about using it for leverage. However, they’re not the only ones with interesting PVR-related patents. Time-Warner has a patent that covers inter-scene tagging and playback. Scenes within a broadcast program can be tagged with codes that indicate their content; through an unspecified interface, the user can selectively play back or omit certain types of scenes. For example, I guess you could use this to implement a V-chip-like device that would do on-the-fly editing of the program stream at the PVR, skipping over the naughty bits during playback. The patent also mentions that it could filter content from live TV broadcasts (paging Ms. Jackson!) Interestingly, it was filed in January 2000 and approved in February 2002, but I can only find one later patent that references it.