Koninklijke Philips Corporation N.v.

Philips Electronics North America Corporation

North American Philips Corporation

Ipg Electronics 503 Limited

James Wallace Wendorf

Dinesh C Verma

Kamlesh Rath

Dagnachew Birru

Yingwei Chen

Stephen A Herman

Erwin B Bellers

Johan Gerard Janssen

Kenneth S Singh

Adam S Hocek

In a transmitter, a standard stream of encoded multi-media data and uniform error correction data is transmitted through a first channel. The uniform error correction data provides substantially the same error correction for all portions of the encoded multimedia data. Simultaneously, additional unequal error correction data is generated for critical portions of the standard stream and not for other portions of the standard stream, and the additional error correct data is transmitted through a second channel. In a receiver, the additional error correct data is used to error correct just the critical portions of the standard stream, and then the uniform error correction data is used to error correct all the portions of the encoded multimedia data of the standard stream.

Digital television transmission with error correction

Pixels in a video image may be segmented based upon selected criteria, such as a common color, texture, shape, amplitude range or temporal variation. Color values for these pixels may be used to calculate a color probability function which indicates the probability that the color value of the pixel will lie within a designated range of values. The pixels are also used to calculate a texture probability function that indicates whether the pixel represents a designated texture. Pixels that are assigned to a given segment may then be further processed to improve the quality of an image. In this manner, pixels that identify grass, sky, human skin, etc. may be identified and processed in order to achieve a more pleasing appearance.

Automatic segmentation-based grass detection for real-time video

An operating system that provides protection domain support is arranged so to be compatible with &ldquo;well behaved&rdquo; threads, i.e., threads that obtain all their memory allocations from the operating system, that were written without regard for protection domains. This may be achieved by associating each protection domain with one or more pages of memory, so-called &ldquo;primary memory pages&rdquo;, for which the protection domain has read and write access permission. Requests by such a &ldquo;protection-domain-unaware&rdquo; thread to the operating system for a memory allocation, e.g., for memory in which to create a data structure, are automatically fulfilled by the operating system from the memory available in the primary memory pages of the protection domain of the requesting thread. The operating system informs the thread of the location of the created data structure, e.g., by passing to the thread a pointer to the data structure. Note that threads may have read and/or write access to memory pages that are not primary pages for their protection domains. Thus, the operating system controls 1) the access permission for each page; 2) the allocation for use as primary pages of pages from &ldquo;free memory&rdquo; pages, e.g., memory pages available in the system domain; and 3) which particular pages are primary pages for each protection domain at any particular time.

Operating system for use with protection domains in a single address space

Protection among threads executing in the same address space of a computer system is provided without using virtual memory techniques. This is achieved by grouping the threads into protection domains, each of the threads in a protection domain having the same rights to access memory as the other threads in that protection domain, so that each thread in a protection domain can access all the information available to the others. At least one protection domain, referred to herein as the 'system' domain, which typically is the protection domain of the operating system and has unrestricted access to the entire memory, is predefined prior to execution of any threads. Prior to execution, the single address space is divided into non-overlapping pages. Each page has at least one access permission set for it. Only threads that belong to a protection domain having permission to access a page may do so. During operation, when a request to access memory is issued by an executing thread, it is determined whether or not the protection domain of the executing thread has permission to perform the requested type of access. If the protection domain of the executing thread is permitted to perform the type of access requested, access is granted and the executing thread's execution proceeds normally. However, if the protection domain of the executing thread does not have permission to perform the requested type of access, a protection fault is generated.

Protection domains in a single address space

The availability and location of a multiplicity of multiplexed digital information streams, transmitted over one of a multiplicity of channels, are identified by transmitting a Global Channel Map which includes a version number, one Band Map Table, one Channel Map Table, and at least as many Service Map tables as there are combinations of identical service types transmitted over different channels. The Band Map Table preferably contains an entry for each frequency band used by the system, and a Band Map Table version number. A Global Channel Map Updates file is transmitted in each band. Where a plurality of channels contain similar-types of services, one Service Map Table contains relative service identification numbers for those service types. The entries for relevant channels in the Channel Map Table contain base service identification data which are combined with the relative service identification number to locate a particular service transmitted over that channel.

Method of and apparatus for channel mapping with relative service

The contents of a digital data file, interspersed as packets of data in a bit stream containing entertainment signals and/or other data files, are quickly identified without a high system overhead for identification of each packet. The data file is divided into packets, and sequential groups of packets making up the file are identified as segments. The first packet of each segment has a prefix containing a service identification number, a block number, a segment number, and possibly segment length information, followed by data contents. The following packets of the segment have only the service identification number and block number, followed by the data contents. Where the file data are transmitted repeatedly, often without change in many segments, receiver processing time or power can be greatly reduced by including a version number or toggle bit in the segment prefix, so that a receiver can ignore the unchanged data.

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Cortlandt Manor, NY, United States of America

James Wallace Wendorf