Systems and methods for creating aggregations of episodes of series programming in order

Abstract

A viewer of an episode of a series such as a television series may wish to access episodes of the series that the viewer missed when they were originally broadcast. Interactive applications may receive the viewer's indication of interest to record missed episodes of the incomplete series, which may include instructions regarding recording options for including the missed episodes in a series aggregation. Interactive applications may identify the episodes to be included in the series aggregation, and record the missed episodes, which may then be stored and organized to create a series aggregation, in the order that they were first broadcast with episodes that the viewer may already have available. Interactive applications may present the episodes of the series aggregation in the order that they were originally broadcast, by providing the viewer with options on how to access the episodes.

Description

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION [0001] This invention relates to interactive media guidance systems and more particularly to interactive media guidance systems that record media presented as episodes in a series, such as episodes of a television program series, any other program series, or any other type of series. This invention is an improvement on the basic series recording functionality that exists today (sometimes called a “Season Pass”). Series recording functionality relates to a user selecting to record a program that is part of a series. When the user selects to record a program that is part of a series, a media guidance system automatically schedules to record each episode of the series that is aired or will record “new” episodes of the series that are aired for the first time. [0002] When users of an interactive media guidance system discover a series late (such as late in the season of a television program series), or miss viewing or recording some or all episodes of a serie...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

[0016] The media guidance application may also, for example, provide the user with an option to wait for the series aggregation to be available after the episodes are available from the user's “free” sources, or to pay a certain amount of money immediately to get the series aggregation on-demand, on a DVD, or any other suitable option. The media guidance application may also, for example, provide the user with information on how long the user would have to wait until the episodes are available from the user's “free” sources, so that the user can make a decision whether to pay a certain amount of money immediately to get the series aggregation on-demand, on a DVD, or any other suitable option. Also, the media guidance application may make the decision whether to get the series aggregation on-demand, on a DVD, or any other suitable option automatically based on user preferences. For example, the user may set the media guidance application always to pay a certain amount of money immediately to get the series aggregation on-demand, on a DVD, or any other suitable option, when the user would have to wait more than three months or any other user-defined time until the episodes are available from the user's “free” sources.

Problems solved by technology

When users of an interactive media guidance system discover a series late (such as late in the season of a television program series), or miss viewing or recording some or all episodes of a series (within a season or one or more seasons of an entire series), it is often difficult for users to access or to view the episodes of the series in episode order or to capture the repeats (i.e., re-runs) of episodes that were not originally recorded.

This often causes the viewer to be confused or to lose interest in the media content.

Thus, for serial series, while the sequence for future viewing is particularly important, re-runs of episodes of the series will not always be available in the sequence that they were originally presented.

For example, a user who watches some episodes of the series “Seinfeld” out of sequence may not recognize or understand certain characters, themes, or plot elements that were introduced in previous unwatched episodes.

Viewers may also simply miss an episode or series of episodes.

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