Unisys Corporation

Mitsubishi Electric Visual Solutions America, Inc.

Edwin Jou

Polly Stecyk

James Henry Jeppesen, Iii

Shawn Graham

Systems, methods and apparatuses are provided for allowing a user to supervise personal exposure to a program exhibited by a consumer electronics device, such as, e.g., a television system. The consumer electronics device includes 'V-chip' circuitry that analyzes a program signal and either blocks or passes the program signal based on certain content and time based criteria. In this connection, a user can program the 'V-chip' circuitry with the content- and time-based criteria in the form of one or more content-based specifications, which specify a rating and/or a subject matter category, and finite time range specifications, which are associated with the content-based specifications. The &#x201c;V-chip&#x201d; circuitry receives one or more content-based indicators, which are indicative of a rating and/or a subject matter category of the program, and a reference time from an external source, such as the program signal. The &#x201c;V-chip&#x201d; circuitry compares the content-based indicators with the content-based specifications when the reference time falls within one of the finite time ranges. Based on this comparison, the &#x201c;V-chip&#x201d; circuitry either passes the program signal to an output device for transformation of the program signal into the program or blocks the program signal from being sent to the output device.

V-chip hours

A system for equal utilization of blocks of flash memory whereby a processor using algorithmic software functions to sort the usage-value of each block of flash memory so that the system will select the least-used memory block for the next cycle of memory usage. The described system provides direct and immediate access of flash memory to the microprocessor without any intermediate modules or vias which would delay that access. Further, a minimal amount of overhead header information is only required for each flash memory block thus allowing greater areas of memory usage for instructional code data.

Growing community of inventors

Irvine, CA, United States of America

Edwin Jou