Koninklijke Philips Corporation N.V.

U.S. Philips Corporation

Timothy J Everett

Octavius John Morris

Ronald Marcel Tol

Pieter Bas Ijdens

Robert Kettler

Andrew Jonathan Miles Wishart

Gikger Rikf Scholl

Robert A Van Der Haar

Andrew Simon Rimmer

Robert N Bates

Hendrikus H Van Der Weij

A communication system includes first and second devices which are matched to each other. At least one of the matched devices includes an input device for capturing content; a memory for storing the content, and a renderer configured to render the content under the control of at least one processor which is configured to affect rendering of the content on the first device and/or the second device in response to at least one trigger. The least one trigger may be generated in response to detection of a user of the first device; passage of time the content has been rendered since a previous trigger; location of the user; behavioral pattern of the user; and/or traffic flow patterns between the first device and the second device.

Matched communicating devices

A method and apparatus are provided to enable variable speed forwards or reverse play of motion-prediction coded sequences of video signal frames. Successive images of a sequence are MPEG encoded with some images of the sequence becoming I-frames and the remainder P- or B-frames. The frame data is formatted to sequences of fixed size data blocks (I,P,B) to form a data block stream into which further, information blocks (i) are inserted at periodic intervals. Each information block (i) carriers a pointer to the relative location in the data block stream of the first data block of the immediately preceding I-frame.

Encoded video image formatting

A file management system is provided which enables the peaceful coexistence of two or more file systems from different applications ( ) on the same medium ( ). Available free space can be assigned to each of the file systems. Static partitioning of the medium in fixed sized parts is not necessary, as partition sizes can be dynamically changed.

Flexible management of multiple file systems

A compound cursor arrangement for use in a graphic user interface of a computer system is described. The compound cursor comprises an active part (38) which acts in conventional manner and is manoeuvred directly by user commands from an input device (22) such as a mouse or trackball. Accompanying the active portion (38) is a passive cursor (40) which follows the active cursor around the display when the separation between the two cursor parts exceed a theshold value (42). The function of the passive cursor (40) is to drag icons (34) selected by the active cursor (38) and deposited on the passive cursor, the active cursor the being freed for other tasks.

User interface with compound cursor

Techniques for applying attenuation to audio signal frames in MPEG and similar compression systems are described, together with a method for mixing such signals without decompression. Each entry in a data frame (F) has an associated scale-factor index (SF), identifying a respective entry in a sequentially arranged and spaced table of scale-factor values. The attenuation technique (20), which suitably precedes mixing for at least one channel involves simple addition to scale factor index values to refer to a different scale-factor value. Respective sub-band data groups from each channel are compared in terms of their respective scale factors and following scaling the data for the two groups is added together. The scale-factor table spacing, which suitable corresponds to a 1 dB attenuation, is used for quick scaling of the results of the addition if overflow is determined to have occurred.

Compressed audio signal processing

Video data and TXT data are combined into a single image. The video data is representative of a mosaic of video windows. The TXT data form a plurality of TXT pages. Each TXT page is transparent in an area of one or more corresponding video windows. In an interactive application, a customized TXT page guides a user through a virtual world in video and TXT combined.

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Thakeham, United Kingdom

Timothy J Everett