Philips Electronics North America Corporation

Koninklijke Philips Corporation N.v.

Nxp B.v.

U.S. Philips Corporation

Alan Peter Cavallerano

Richard C Shen

Claudio Ciacci

Richard Chi-Te Shen

Carlo Basile

Jill Forer Goldenberg

Kiran Srinivas Challapali

Karl R Wittig

Samuel Akiwumi-Assani

Viktor L Gornstein

Murali Mani

Sheau B Ng

Kenneth S Singh

Olu Akiwumi-Assani

John D Dean

Multi-frame trick play clips of the stored performance are selected for playing in a trick play mode, portions between the trick play clips, at least as long as the trick play clips, are skipped in the trick play mode. The trick play clips are sufficiently long and presented at a sufficiently low speed so that the content of the trick play clips can be understood by a human audience.

Clip based trick modes

A method and system for synchronizing signals. First and second signals are sent (compressed or uncompressed) from a source to a receiving apparatus of a receiving system. The first signal has content of a first modality (e.g., audio) and the second signal has content of a second modality (e.g., video). The first and second signals are to be displayed on a display apparatus of the receiving system. The first and second signals have been time-synchronized at the source. If the first and second signals are not synchronized in time when received at the receiving apparatus, then the first and second signals may be time-synchronized at the receiving apparatus either manually or through timestamping of both signals at the source, in conjunction with use of a real-time clock at the receiving apparatus.

Synchronization of signals

A method for trick-mode play of an encrypted transport stream containing audio/video/data information comprising: extracting and decrypting data used as local metadata for programs in the encrypted transport stream; creating trick-mode pointers from the metadata; and storing the trick-mode pointers and the encrypted transport stream on a storage medium.

Method and apparatus for trick-mode support of audio/video/data streams with conditional access

A device for automatically providing program information to a television display upon detection of an event in the program. The event being a user definable event. The device also provides automatic PIP display of the program having the event and a delay of the event so that it is not missed by the viewer.

Method and device for detecting an event in a program of a video and/or audio signal and for providing the program to a display upon detection of the event

A method and apparatus for the selective peaking of portions of a video signal is provided. The video signals, such as those transmitted in compressed form, in accordance with MPEG Standards, can be presented as blocks of data encoded using Discrete Cosine Transforms (DCT). The Discrete Cosine Transform coefficients corresponding to the chrominance values of the signal can be obtained and analyzed. The analysis and corresponding amounts of enhancement (peaking) can be performed on a block-by-block, I-frame by I-frame, basis to selectively peak portions of a video signal. If the DCT coefficients for a portion of the signal exceed or fall within a pre-selected value or range, that portion of the signal can be subjected to peaking. For example, if the high frequency horizontal DCT coefficients exceed (or fall within) a pre-set threshold value or range, a horizontal peaking circuit can be set to peak that portion of the signal. The signal processor can be set for gain in proportion to how much the coefficients exceed the threshold. A similar approach can be applied in the vertical spatial direction.

Chroma based adaptive signal peaking

A pixelated image display system comprising: a first panel including an array of pixel elements, each pixel element partially masked by an opaque region; one or more additional panels, each additional panel including an array of pixel elements, each pixel element partially masked by an opaque region; means for directing a different subset of pixel data from an image dataset to each the panel to control the pixel elements of each panel; and means for aligning and projecting interleaved pixel elements, in at least one of the horizontal and vertical directions, from each panel onto a screen to form a pixelated image.

Method and apparatus for increasing the spatial resolution of a projected pixelated display

The invention relates in general to a television receiver that is capable of displaying two video programs and an electronic program guide (&ldquo;EPG&rdquo;) simultaneously. The EPG is displayed in a first portion of a split screen containing a picture-in-picture (PIP) display. Scanning of the electronic program guide causes different video programs to be displayed in the PIP display while the user is still able to watch the original video program on a second split screen.

Multi-window pip television with the ability to watch two sources of video while scanning an electronic program guide

A system for minimizing screen burn on a display screen caused by the display of video images that do not occupy the entire area of the display screen includes video image processing circuitry for formatting a received video signal to display an active image of the video signal on a portion of the display screen, and for displaying a screen saver on portions of the display screen that are not occupied by the formatted active image. A screen saver library provides a screen saver from a plurality of screen savers. Each screen saver in the plurality of screen savers occupies portions of the display screen that are not occupied by an active image.

System and method for a video display screen saver

Method and device for detecting an event in a program of a video and/ or audio signal and for providing the program to a display upon detection of the event

When viewing a 4:3 aspect ratio image on a widescreen display, disturbing black bands appear to the left and right of the displayed image. Similarly, when viewing a letterbox image on a 4:3 aspect ratio display, disturbing black bands appear above and below the displayed image. These black bands result in uneven ageing of the phosphors in the display screen. An apparatus is provided which detects these black bands and automatically expands the image in the appropriate direction such that these black bands are automatically eliminated.

Method and apparatus for preventing display screen burn-in

A display device for receiving encrypted or scramble video data and for decrypting or descrambling the video data such that a signal is not provided &ldquo;in the clear&rdquo;. The video data is stored in a memory array in an encrypted form and read out from the memory array using a decryption key. The encrypted data is then read out from the memory elements in accordance with known methods.

Method and device for providing controlled access video signals without providing a signal in the clear

A LCD display device for receiving encrypted video data and for decrypting the video data such that a signal is not provided &ldquo;in the clear&rdquo; before receipt by the display device. The video data is encrypted within a row of video and decrypted at the display. Alternatively the rows are encrypted by altering the time sequence of display of each row.

A display or projection of an image as an array of pixels is, effectively, a sampling process, and pre- and post-filtering must be applied to avoid aliasing and to properly reconstruct the image. Because the sampling is performed by the display/projection of the pixels forming the image, the pre-filtering must be applied to the video signal before it is formed into pixels, and the post-filtering must be applied, optically, after the pixels are formed. The pre-filtering process can also compensate for the non-uniform characteristics of the display or the post-filtering process. As such, the occurrence and severity of visual artifacts introduced into the display or projection of an image are reduced.

Method and apparatus for minimizing visual artifacts caused by the pixel

A slow Phase Locked Loop (PLL) is utilized to prevent an abrupt change to a video display containing multiple images, when the source of the synchronization is changed. Such displays include Picture in Picture (PIP) television systems and computer displays. By appropriate buffering and memory management, visual disruptions can be minimized by slowly synchronizing the display synchronization signals to the new synchronization source. The slow synchronization also produces a less disruptive visual image when the source, or channel, of a single image display is changed, and allows for smooth visual transitions on displays having inertial elements, such as color wheels.

Synchronization of multiple video and graphic sources with a display

An apparatus for automatically synchronizing a video system to one of a plurality of composite synchronizing signals in accordance with a plurality of known video formats, includes a number of synchronizing signal stripper circuits, corresponding, respectively, to a number of types of composite synchronizing signals, a horizontal analyzer, having a plurality of horizontal standard identification circuits corresponding to a identification circuits for each known horizontal synchronizing signal rate for each type of composite synchronizing signal, for determining an approximate horizontal synchronizing signal rate and, a vertical analyzer, having a plurality of vertical rate identification circuits corresponding to the number of different known vertical rates, for determining the vertical synchronizing signal rate.

Growing community of inventors

White Plains, NY, United States of America

Alan Peter Cavallerano