The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Feb. 08, 2000
Filed:
Mar. 07, 1996
Alexander G MacInnis, San Carlos, CA (US);
Jiann-Tsuen Chen, Cupertino, CA (US);
PowerTV, Inc., Cupertino, CA (US);
Abstract
A graphics blending feature for a terminal such as a home communication terminal (HCT) allows an overlay image to be selectively blended with a background image through the use of a chroma key function and one or more alpha control bits. The chroma key function is used to determine whether the overlay will be completely transparent or not, and the one or more alpha control bits are used to look up a larger alpha value used to blend the overlay and background images. By using a small number of alpha control bits to retrieve a larger alpha value for blending, memory requirements per pixel are reduced. The chroma key function may be implemented by comparing each overlay pixel value to a chroma value and, responsive to a match, making the overlay pixel transparent (i.e., no blending occurs). A dithering function is included in various embodiments to smooth out the resulting image.