Apple has been granted a patent (number 10,091,558) for a “channel bar user interface” that may simply involve its TV app or an upcoming Apple Video subscription service.
The Apple TV App is available in select countries and regions. You can use the TV app on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch with the latest version of iOS, or on your Apple TV with the latest version of tvOSThe patent involves a media content provider that includes storage for storing and serving video content to subscribers.
The media content provider records and or otherwise stores video content from around the world. Subscribers are provided a user interface to the system that includes a channel bar. The channel bar is dynamically scoped responsive to interactions of a viewer with the system. Selectable elements within the channel bar provide direct access to related content regarding video content, such as television series information and cast information.
In addition, the channel bar is operable in multiple modes. An EPG mode displays live video for multiple channels simultaneously. Themed modes permit channel bars that display content according to various themes which may be defined by a viewer, the provider, or both.
Apple has 25 TV series in various stages development. Upcoming original programming titles include “Amazing Stores,” “Are You Sleeping,” “Home,” “Little America,” “See,” “Swagger,” an untitled Damien Chazelle drama, an untitled Reese Witherspoon/Jennifer Anniston dreamed, “Dickinson” (a half-hour comedy starring Hailee Stenifeld), an untitled Ronald D. Moore drama, an untitled M. Night Shyamalan thriller series, a TV series adaption of “Foundation,” the Isaac Asimov science fiction novel trilogy, and the half-hour dramedy “Little Voices” from producers J.J. Abrams and Sara Bareilles, “Little America” from the screenwriters (Emily V. Gordon and Kumail Nanjiani) of “The Big Sick” and producer/writer Lee Eisenberg, a drama series about pre-teen investigative reporter Hilde Lysiak, a TV series based on the “Time Bandits” movie, an English-language adaptation of the French short-form series Canal+, “See,” a world-building drama set in the future, a series based on the bestselling 2017 novel “Pachinko,” a half-hour scripted comedy from Rob McElhenney and Charlie Day, “Defending Jacob” starring Chris Evans, and a series produced by Anonymous Content and based on the New York Times article, “Losing Earth: The Decade We Almost Stopped Climate Change.”
Of course, Apple files for — and is granted — lots of patents by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office. Many are for inventions that never see the light of day. However, you never can tell which ones will materialize in a real product.
