Hughes Electronics Corporation

Michael A Friedman

Jeffrey W Crosby

A multi-channel digital video receiver (e.g. DBS) includes a tuning unit with two tuner modules and a decoder unit with two decoder modules. These tuner and decoder units enable the receiver to simultaneously produce decoded video and audio signals for two separately-tuned channels. The signals for the channel currently selected by the user are tuned and decoded by one set of tuner and decoder modules. The decoded signals for the selected channel are sent to an output stage (e.g. encoder), where the signals and their output are encoded for use on an attached presentation device (e.g. television, audio processor, computer, etc.) Simultaneously, a microcontroller predicts the next channel the user will select and causes the other tuner and decoder modules to begin tuning to and decoding the signals for that predicted next channel. A third set of tuner and decoder modules can be added to enable the receiver to begin tuning to and decoding the signals for another likely next channel. Since the receiver begins tuning to the predicted next channel even before a new channel is requested, an expected channel-change command can be processed more quickly than in a conventional receiver.

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Fountain Valley, CA, United States of America

Michael A Friedman