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:
May. 14, 2002
Filed:
Aug. 16, 2001
Brandon A. Grooters, Bedford, TX (US);
Gateway, Inc., North Sioux City, SD (US);
Abstract
A method and apparatus for allowing several applications to share a single video overlay resource via multiplexing are disclosed. The multiplexing is accomplished from the application end through a multiplexing abstraction layer provided to the developers of end applications as an application program interface. Through the application program interface, each applications may, at any time, request, release, or modify the attributes of the video overlay device such as picture quality, tuning, source, etc. The application program interface provides all basic functionality of the hardware as accessible through other means including normal operating system support and device driver services.