Hughes Electronics Corporation

Hughes Aircraft Company

The Directv Group, Inc.

Jim C Williams

Chao-Kung Yang

Patrick J Loner

Robert H Plummer

Stanley Krutsick

James H Schaffner

John P Godwin

Leon J Stanger

Richard E Sklar

Dickey J Berry

Ralph P Phillipp

Lawrence E Girard

David C Frankenbach

A method, apparatus, article of manufacture, and a computer memory structure adaptively controlling a transmission signal from a satellite to at least one terrestrial receiver in a terrestrial region is disclosed. The method comprises the steps of receiving information describing a deleterious time-varying propagation characteristic of the transmission signal to the terrestrial region; generating the transmission signal having a transmission characteristic which mitigates the undesirable aspects of the time-varying propagation characteristic; and transmitting the generated transmission signal from the satellite to the terrestrial receiver. The article of manufacture comprises a controller device tangibly embodying instructions to perform the method steps described above. The apparatus comprises a receiver for receiving information describing a time-varying signal propagation characteristic of the signal to the terrestrial region; a signal generator for adaptively generating a transmission signal having a transmission characteristic mitigating the propagation characteristic; and a transmitter for transmitting the generated transmission signal.

Adaptive transmission system

A system for redistributing a broadband audio-visual-data signal to a multiplicity of receiver units within a multiple dwelling unit (MDU) includes a main receiving antenna that receives a broadband video/audio/data signal having a number of individual program multiplex signals therein and a transmodulator device that transmodulates a selected subset of the individual program multiplex signals associated with the broadband signal from a first modulation scheme to a second modulation scheme. The transmodulated signals are broadcast over a cable network, along with terrestrial signals, to individual receiver units at the MDU. The receiver units send requests for user-selected ones of the individual program multiplex signals to the transmodulator device, demodulate the transmodulated and/or terrestrial signals and provide user-specified channels to television sets for display.

Transmodulator with dynamically selectable channels

A signal distribution system and method distributes an error-encoded satellite communication signal over a cable network to a number of receiver units within a multiple dwelling unit. The system and method receives and decodes the satellite communication signal to produce a data signal and an error indication that indicates whether an uncorrected transmission error is present in the data signal. The error indication is then combined with the data signal and an information signal to produce a combined signal which is then error encoded and transmitted over the cable network to the receiver units. The receiver units decode the combined signal to produce the data signal, the information signal, the error indication and a further error indication that indicates whether the data signals have experienced an uncorrected error during communication over the cable network. The receiver units use both the error indication and the further error indication to determine if the received data signal has one or more errors therein.

Error encoding method and apparatus for satellite and cable signals

An apparatus for temporally shifting video data within a video signal is provided with a video data source for providing a video signal and a signal splitter for generating a first video data stream and a second video data stream, the first video data stream comprising video data in excess of a threshold. The apparatus includes means for temporally shifting the excess video data in the first video data stream relative to the second video data stream and means for recombining the first video data stream with the second video data stream after the first video data stream has been temporally shifted relative to the second video data stream. The means for temporally shifting the excess video data in the first video data stream relative to the second video data stream may include a first delay buffer for delaying the first video data stream by an adjustable time period and a second delay buffer for delaying the second video data stream by a fixed time period.

Video broadcast system with video data shifting

A system for redistributing a broadband audio-visual-data signal to a multiplicity of receiver units within a multiple dwelling unit (MDU) includes a main receiving antenna that receives a broadband video/audio/data signal having a number of individual program multiplex signals therein and a transmodulator device that transmodulates the individual program multiplex signals associated with the broadband signal from a first modulation scheme to a second modulation scheme to reduce the bandwidth of the broadband signal. The transmodulated signals are broadcast over a cable network, along with terrestrial signals, to individual receiver units at the MDU. The receiver units demodulate the transmodulated and/or terrestrial signals and provide user-specified channels to television sets for display. A dual mode receiver is compatible with the MDU system and with a known digital satellite system commonly used in single family housing (SFH). An adapter enables a standard SFH receiver used in a digital satellite system to be compatible with the MDU system.

Transmodulated broadcast delivery system for use in multiple dwelling

A low profile, low cost receiver/transmitter system includes a planar waveguide-to-microstrip adapter, a dielectric loaded waveguide fed slot array antenna, and a downconverter all formed on a single dielectric substrate made of polytetrafluoroethylene. The waveguide antenna includes a set of slots disposed in a surface thereof to receive/transmit a microwave/millimeter wave signal. The waveguide-to-stripline adapter is connected to the waveguide antenna and includes a taper section attached to a microstrip line. The taper section, which may be linear or may follow some other more complex taper function such as a Chebyshev function, adapts a signal propagating within the waveguide antenna to the microstrip line or vise versa.

Receiver/transmitter system including a planar waveguide-to-stripline

An apparatus for statistically multiplexing a plurality of video signals is provided with a complexity detector, coupled to receive a pre-compressed video signal, for generating a complexity signal which relates to the complexity of the pre-compressed video signal, an encoder for compressing a non-compressed video signal at a variable compression rate to generate a compressed video signal, a controller for controlling the variable compression rate of the encoder based on the complexity signal, and a multiplexer coupled to receive the pre-compressed video signal and the compressed video signal. The apparatus may be provided in a broadcasting system, such as a satellite broadcasting system. The broadcast system may include a transmitter coupled to receive the video signals from the multiplexer, a satellite coupled to receive the video signals from the transmitter, a receiver for receiving video signals from the satellite, and one or more decoders connected to receive video signals from the receiver.

Statistical multiplexer for live and pre-compressed video

A system for redistributing a broadband audio-visual-data signal to a multiplicity of receiver units within a multiple dwelling unit (MDU) includes a main receiving antenna that receives a broadband video/audio/data signal having a number of individual program multiplex signals therein and a transmodulator device that transmodulates the individual program multiplex signals associated with the broadband signal from a first modulation scheme to a second modulation scheme to reduce the bandwidth of the broadband signal. The transmodulated signals are broadcast over a cable network, along with terrestrial signals, to individual receiver units at the MDU. The receiver units demodulate the transmodulated and/or terrestrial signals and provide user-specified channels to television sets for display.

A machine independent high resolution digital screen recorder provides high quality video displays with manageable storage capacity and bandwidth. The screen recorder includes an analog to digital frame grabber for converting the high resolution video signal that modulates a video display into RGB sequences of digital frames. A video compression unit separates the high and low variance portions of the digital frames, encodes them with respective lossy and lossless compression algorithms and stores them in a mass storage device.

High resolution digital recorder and method using lossy and lossless

A system that provides live television programming to passengers by integrating direct broadcast satellite services into an in-flight aircraft entertainment system. The present invention is a satellite television system that has an antenna disposed on the aircraft that is pointed at a plurality of satellites that are part of a direct broadcast satellite system. The antenna is controlled by an antenna controller and antenna interface unit that send control signals and process status signals to steer the antenna. The antenna is steered to lock it onto RF signals transmitted by the satellites. The antenna interface unit downconverts the received RF signals to provide left hand circularly polarized RF signals and right hand circularly polarized RF signals that contain different sets of television channels. The downconverted RF signals are processed by a receiver/decoder that decodes them to provide video signals corresponding to different television channels. The video signals for the different channels are routed to an video and audio distribution system on the aircraft which distributes live television programming to the passengers. A low-cost single channel receiver/decoder version of the system is also disclosed that provides a single channel of television programming to overhead monitors in an aircraft.

Aircraft satellite television system for distributing television

A method for specifying a video window's boundary coordinates directly from a multi-color video signal to separate the signals high and low variance components. The method converts the analog multi-color video signal into respective color sequences of digital frames and transforms them into another sequence of digital frames that represent the intensity of the multi-color video signal. The method generates difference frames between successive transformed intensity frames and computes a row activity measure and a column activity measure from at least one of the difference frames. The video window's approximate boundary coordinates are determined from said row and column activity measures.

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Anaheim, CA, United States of America

Jim C Williams