1. A method to control the display of media content on a media player with player preferences, the method comprising: analyzing the media content and computing a plurality of signatures representative of temporal portions of the media content; wherein the signatures are created by: analyzing a series of time successive portions of the media content for features; using a nearest neighbor fit to assign the features to a standardized array of different features; counting the number of each type of assigned feature in the time successive portions of the media content, creating an array of coefficients for the standardized array of different features, wherein the signature consists of the array of coefficients; wherein the media content is video media content, and the features are chosen so as to be invariant with respect to video resolution, orientation, or lighting; wherein the type of assigned features is determined by the visual content of the local spatio-temporal region of the video data surrounding the feature (feature descriptors); matching the plurality of signatures to a database of signatures; finding the closest corresponding signatures; retrieving the metadata associated with the closest corresponding signatures as matching metadata; and controlling the display of the media content using the player preferences and the matching metadata.