Thomson Consumer Electronics Inc.

Thomson Licensing S.a.

Thomson Licensing

Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd.

Thomson Electronic Consumers, Inc.

John William Chaney

James Edwin Hailey

Michael Scott Deiss

Kevin Elliott Bridgewater

Raymond Scott Horton

Michael Wayne Johnson

Billy Wesley Beyers

Gregory George Tamer

David Emery Virag

John Joseph Curtis, Iii

Bill Wesley Beyers, Jr

Juri Tults

Harold Blatter

Billy W Beyers, Jr

Kevin Elliot Bridgewater

Bill W Beyers, Jr

A localization process in a network of source devices and sink devices on a 1394 bus, is performed by a source device while it is communicating to a sink device, which determines local network links from nonlocal ones. An actual round trip time calculation is performed only by the source device and the sink device can be relatively passive. The duties of the sink device are performed in hardware and involve (trivially) modifying the received message while moving the message from the input isochronous channel buffer to the output isochronous channel buffer.

Localization determination process for 1394 serial bus

A method and an apparatus for processing a packetized transport stream that determines whether a sequence of transport packets are received in a proper sequence and whether an error is present in a particular transport packet. The method includes the steps of determining a packet identifier for identifying transport packets associated with a selected program and parsing a packetized transport stream to identify and capture the desired sequence of transport packets in response to the packet identifier. The method further includes the steps of detecting a counter portion, determining whether a desired sequence of transport packets has been received in response to the counter portion, detecting a one bit toggle portion, and determining whether an error exits in the associated transport packet in response to the one bit toggle portion. An apparatus for implementing the method is also disclosed.

Conditional access filter as for a packet video signal inverse transport system

A method of processing a packetized datastream that includes program information and ancillary information used to acquire desired program information packets. The method includes the steps of identifying a first data unit that includes channel information and identifying a plurality of second data units included with the first data unit. The plurality of second data units are of a fixed length, and thus, separated in the packetized datastream by a multiple of a fixed offset. The method further includes the step of acquiring desired second data units using the fixed offset and subsequently determining the available services associated with a program and acquiring the desired program packets from the datastream.

Apparatus and method for processing a program guide in a digital video system

A method and an apparatus for processing packetized signal having a plurality of channels carrying program information. The packetized signal also includes program guide information that includes channel identifier data. The program guide information comprises a sequence of data blocks including a segment map that includes information about the partitioning of the plurality of channels into segments and map block that includes information relating specific channels of the plurality of channels with respective channel identifier data.

Apparatus in a receiver, for processing transmitted entitlement control information, includes a packet transport processor for selecting signal packets having payloads containing a conditional access payload header and a remaining payload of entitlement data. Respective payload headers include groups of bytes which are coded in a manner to allow or disallow the respective receiver from processing the entitlement data. A conditional access filter preprogrammed with a subscriber specific conditional access codeword examines respective byte groupings of the conditional access header for a match with the subscriber specific conditional access codeword. Only if a match occurs is the processor permitted to process the entitlement data. The entitlement data is thereafter utilized to generate decryption keys for descrambling portions of the transmitted signal.

An access control system for signal processing applications includes an integrated circuit (IC) card, or &ldquo;smart&rdquo; card, that provides both security control and data descrambling functions. A security control processor in the smart card IC performs functions such as entitlement management and key generation. The smart card IC also includes a descrambler for processing data, such as video data, at high data rates. Mechanical characteristics of the smart card satisfy the ISO standard 7816-1. In addition, the interface to the smart card is via eight-terminals arranged on the surface of the card in accordance with ISO standard 7816-2. The eight terminal interface provides both high speed data I/O (input and output) required for data descrambling and ISO standard low speed serial data I/O.

High speed signal processing smart card

Apparatus and method for acquiring a program from a packetized signal in response to ancillary information included in the packetized signal. The packetized signal includes a plurality of program signals and ancillary information associated with the plurality of program signals. The apparatus includes means for identifying the ancillary information from the packetized signal, the ancillary information including master guide information for use in identifying and acquiring special guide information, and special guide information for use in acquiring program information associated with the plurality of program signals. The program signals may be acquired using identifier information that may be derived from the ancillary information. The apparatus includes means responsive to the ancillary information for acquiring a selected program from the packetized signal.

Program guide in a digital video system

System for processing a video signal via series-connected high speed

A digital video system receives a digital bitstream representing video and audio information and containing a plurality of packetized data programs in a data format and includes data units related to the selection of individual programs and individual packetized datastreams associated with a program. The system includes a first processor responsive to the bitstream for capturing program guide information and a second processor responsive to the bitstream for capturing selected program data. The program guide data includes a base data unit for selecting a first program and a second data unit of predetermined offset to the base data unit for selecting a second program. The second processor captures program data by capturing data with identifiers matching an identifier determined from the data units.

Smart-card based access control system with improved security

A television system for receiving a plurality of digitally-encoded television programs includes circuitry for selecting a particular digital data transmission channel from a plurality of digital data transmission channels containing a desired digitally-encoded television program in response to a control signal, at least one of the data transmission channels also including television program schedule data. The system also includes user-operable data entry circuitry for entering data, and a controller for generating the above-noted control signal in response to user-entered data. The controller selects a virtual channel from a plurality of virtual channels in response to user-entered data, each virtual channel being subject to reassignment to a different one of said a plurality of digital data transmission channels, the television program schedule data defining the relationship of each of the television programs to respective ones of the plurality of digital data transmission channels.

Digital television system channel guide having a limited lifetime

A color interpolation circuit allows information uniquely identifying one of six colors to be stored by using only two binary bits of memory storage, and allows information uniquely identifying one of 120 colors to be stored by using only four binary bits of memory storage. This is accomplished by storing only the foreground, edge, and background colors (i.e., herein referred to as 'independent' colors), and an 'interpolate operator' code, and by providing circuitry to properly interpret and process the interpolate operator code to generate 'intermediate colors'. This permits a 33% reduction of memory size and reduces the 'fetch speed' requirements of associated on-screen display (OSD) scan converter circuitry.

Color coding method for expanding palette by including colors derived by

Consumer interface for a digital television system

Conditional access filter as for a packet video signal inverse transport

A satellite receiver for digitally encoded television signals includes apparatus for generating a signal indicating the alignment of the receiving antenna which is responsive to the number of errors contained in the digitally encoded television signals. The antenna alignment signal has the form of an audio signal which is coupled to sound reproducing device associated with the satellite receiver. The audio signal corresponds to a continuous tone when the number of errors is less than a predetermined threshold indicating that error correction is possible. The elevation of the antenna is set according with the location of the receiving site. Thereafter, the azimuth of the antenna is coarsely aligned by first rotating the antenna in small increments so locate a region in which the continuous tone is produced. During this coarse alignment procedure, the tuner of the satellite receiver attempts to locate a tuning frequency at which and demodulation and error correction is possible. If no appropriate frequency is found after a range of frequencies have been searched, a tone burst or beep is produced. The beep prompts the user to rotate the antenna by another small increment. Once the continuous tone has been produced, a fine alignment procedure is initiated in which the antenna is rotated to locate boundaries of an azimuth are through which the continuous tone is produced. Thereafter, the antenna is set so that it is at least approximately midway between the two boundaries of the arc.

Growing community of inventors

Gilroy, CA, United States of America

John William Chaney