Thomson Multimedia S.a.

Zing Systems, L.p.

Sedna Patent Services, LLC

Discovery Communications, Inc.

Open Tv Corporation

John P Lappington

Susan K Marshall

Cameron A Wilson

Wayne Y Yamamoto

John S Hendricks

Alfred E Bonner

Eric C Berkobin

Richard E Wunderlich

Richard S Simons

Several cable headend configurations that utilize digital technology are disclosed. The present invention provides greater capability and flexibility than existing cable headends. Specifically, a modular design for a cable headend and a combiner component for cable headends are disclosed. The invention is particularly useful in cable television program delivery systems transponding large numbers of digitally compressed program signals. The combiner disclosed allows cherry-picking of programs from transponded signals.

Digital cable headend for cable television delivery system

A system for providing security on an interactive television system. Two sets of interactive data, with time stamps, are separately sent to a remote location. At the remote location, the time stamps are checked against a remote clock, a time difference being noted for both sets of data. The two time differences are compared to determine if one set of data has been delayed as compared to the other. Non-delayed data can be used to update a game score for an interactive game. After the game is completed, the remote clock is compared to a central clock. the difference between the two clocks are compared to the time difference for non-delayed data to determine whether the entire aggregate of interactive data was delayed.

Interactive television security through transaction time stamping

An interactive television system where interactive information is inserted in the vertical blanking interval of a standard television signal or some other appropriate medium. The signal is received and decoded by a settop device which sends the decoder signal, via an infrared signal, to a handheld device. The system includes an interactive program authoring system, and programmer tables in the memory of the handheld device which store data for the various interactive events. This system allows a viewer to enter and exit events at any time without having to wait for information to be downloaded and without losing scores. Furthermore, this system allows many interactive programs to run concurrently over extended periods of time while maintaining cumulative scores in the handheld for each interactive program or series of programs.

Transaction based interactive television system

The present invention provides greater capability and flexibility than existing cable headends. Specifically, the invention comprises a modular design for a cable headend and a combiner component for cable headend. The invention is particularly useful in cable television program delivery systems transponding large numbers of digitally compressed program signals. The combiner allows cherry-picking of programs from transponded signals.

An interactive television system where interactive information is inserted in the vertical blanking interval of a standard television signal. The signal is received and decoded by a settop decoder which sends the decoded signal via an infrared signal to a handheld device. The viewer using the handheld device can interact with a game, sports, or educational event or other presentation on the television. The system includes a proprietary high level command language and programmer (PIU) tables which are maintained in the memory of the handheld device. The PIU tables store the transactions of the various events presented on the television. The transactions are sent from the insertion system to the decoder throughout the broadcast of the television program. Thus, for a sports event with interleaved commercials, one or more of the PIU tables would be used to store a collection of transactions used for the main event and one or more additional PIU tables are used for storing transactions for each of the interleaved commercials. This system allows a viewer to enter and exit any event at any time without having to wait for information to be downloaded and without losing any scores. Further, the system allows the user to change from event to event such as, for example, by tuning to different stations and be able to immediately interact and have responses scored and stored.

A system for providing security on an interactive television system. Two sets of interactive data, with time stamps, are separately sent to a remote location. At the remote location, the time stamps are checked against a remote clock, a time difference being noted for both sets of data. The two time differences are compared to determine if one set of data has been delayed as compared to the other. Non-delayed data can be used to update a game score for an interactive game. After the game is completed, the remote clock is compared to a central clock. The difference between the two clocks are compared to the time difference for non-delayed data to determine whether the entire aggregate of interactive data was delayed.

An interactive television system where interactive information is inserted in the vertical blanking interval of a standard television signal. The signal is received and decoded by a stetop decoder which sends the decoded signal via an infrared signal to a handheld device. The viewer using the handheld device can interact with a game, sports, or education event or other presentation on the television. The system includes a proprietary high level command language and programmer (PIU) tables which are maintained in the memory of the handheld device. The PIU tables store the transactions of the various events presented on the television. The transactions are sent from the insertion system to the decoder throughout the broadcast of the television program. Thus, for a sports event with interleaved commercials, one or more of the PIU tables would be used to store a collection of transactions used for the main event and one or more additional PIU tables are used for storing transactions for each of the interleaved commercials. This system allows a viewer to enter and exit any event at any time wit hot having to wait for information to be downloaded and without losing any scores. Further, the system allows the user to change from event to event such as, for example, by tuning to different stations and be able to immediately interact and have responses scored and stored.

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Lawrenceville, GA, United States of America

John P Lappington