Scientific-atlanta, Inc.

Other

Alex M Cook, Jr

James O Farmer

Lamar E West, Jr

Michael T Hayashi

Kinney Chapman Bacon

Michael P Harney

Luis A Rovira

Julius B Bagley

Curt M Kuban

Emory L McGinty, Jr

William P Lafay

James E Raiser

Jeffrey C Ting

Majid Ghanouni

Rueenguang A Shyu

A remote control system including a hand held remote control unit with an alphanumeric information display, for controlling and communicating with a first controlled device, such as a digital music tuner connected to a community antenna television (CATV) cable, and for controlling a selected one of a plurality of second controlled devices, such as CATV set-top units, VCRs, or television sets. A first, high speed, error free display information communications protocol is utilized for transmitting program content or other information from a device, such as the CATV-connected music tuner, to the remote control unit for display. A second or control communications protocol is utilized by the remote control unit for controlling the first controlled device and a selected one of the second controlled devices. The CATV cable-connected music tuner utilizes the 44.1 kHz Compact Disk (CD) clock signal embedded in digital music signals provided via the cable to derive clocking signals for implementing the display information communications protocol, resulting in an efficient, low cost electronic design.

Methods and apparatus for communication program data signals via a

A television system having sync suppression scrambling and descrambling which includes in band and out of band signaling methods. The in band signaling method modulates the IF sound carrier of a premium video channel with timing and data pulses while the out of band signaling method modulates the previously modulated IF sound on a separate carrier onto a separate out of band data carrier. The in band signaling method uses a descrambler which tunes a channel before demodulating the timing and data pulses from the sound carrier while the out of band signaling method tunes a selected data carrier to demodulate the timing and data pulses. In both methods, the timing pulses are used to restore the levels of the synchronization pulses in the sync suppressed video signal, and thus descramble the signal, while the data pulses are used for addressable messaging to the descrambler including authorization. The out of band descrambler provides broadband sync restoration for a particular channel and thus does not need a broadband tuner for the video signal.

System for broadband descrambling of sync suppressed television signals

Networks which remove the jamming signal from the television signal supplied to subscribers for a premium T.V. channel in a cable (CATV) or other subscription television system utilizes surface accoustic wave (SAW) devices arranged to provide a broadband all pass response across the entire band covered by all of the transmitted television channels except for a notch at the frequency of the jamming signal. The narrow band response of the filter in the premium channel is such that the notch presents insertion loss at the jamming signal frequency and over a frequency range to accommodate shifts in the frequency response of the SAW devices with respect to the frequency of jamming signal, which insertion loss is about 100 times the insertion loss at the picture carrier frequency of the television signal, even though the picture carrier and the jamming signal frequency may be within about 200 KHz apart from each other. The network includes circuit elements which utilize the characteristics of the SAW devices to create a filter network which has a transmission null (notch) at the frequency of the jamming signal.

Television signal processing network for subscription television jamming

Method and apparatus is disclosed for programming a CATV channel authorization unit. In a cable television (CATV) system, a CATV transmitter provides a plurality of CATV system channels to a channel authorization unit which in turn supplies only selected ones of the system channels to a user. The CATV authorization unit determines which selected channels the user will receive by receiving channel authorization data from a CATV system programmer. The channel authorization data is received via an infrared data communication link such that programming can be done without physical disassembly of the CATV channel authorization unit and without the system programmer being physically present within the users household. In a further embodiment, the CATV channel authorization unit is also responsive to a user transmitter for determining which of the selected channels the user is presently viewing.

Remote programming of CATV channel authorization unit

Growing community of inventors

Lawrenceville, GA, United States of America

Alex M Cook, Jr