Television – Receiver circuitry – Remote control
Reexamination Certificate
2000-02-03
2002-02-19
Kostak, Victor R. (Department: 2611)
Television
Receiver circuitry
Remote control
C348S552000, C348S569000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06348956
ABSTRACT:
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
(1) Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a display apparatus showing graphical interactive screens for remote control, and to the peripheral units.
(2) Description of the Prior Art
The use of remote controllers has spread to facilitate the manipulation of today's household appliances such as audio-visual apparatuses, and one remote controller is furnished for one appliance in general. However, it is quite cumbersome to manage a plurality of remote controllers.
In addition, a remote controller in a broad sense, or a display on the screen that enables the users to make a variety of selections, was developed and has been in practical use for the interactive TV (television) system and TV game players. However, this type of remote controller also faces problems such as facilitating manipulation and saving manufacturing cost.
To eliminate the above problems, a multi-remote controller, or otherwise known as a system remote controller, was developed and has been commercially available. The multi-remote controller includes a transmitter that controls a plurality of appliances of various types in one kind (for example, TVs made by a plurality of makers), or various kinds of appliances (for example, TV and VTR (video tape recorder)), so that the user can control a plurality of appliances with one multi-remote controller by selecting the appliance he wishes to control. Alternately, the multi-remote controller may include the buttons necessary for the manipulation of all the appliances. However, in either case, the user must select a desired appliance first, meaning that the multi-remote controller must include the selection button.
To compensate the drawback of the multi-remote controller, Japanese Laid-Open Patent Application No. 2-180497 discloses a remote controller comprising a remote control unit for transmitting remote control signals for a plurality of appliances to be controlled, and receiver units furnished with each appliance for receiving the remote controller signals for their respective appliances. Note that each receiver unit transmits a unique signal to the remote controller unit, so that the receiver unit stores data as to which control signal should be transmitted to which appliance, eliminating the appliance selection process and hence the selection button.
However, this remote controller is available only to the predetermined appliances and functions, and it must include a ultra red ray signal transmitter and buttons for each predetermined function. Thus, although the selection button can be omitted, the remote controller still includes a large number of buttons if it controls more than one kind of appliance (for example, TV and VTR), because the buttons for channel selection and volume adjustment for the TV receiver, and those for playback and record functions for the VTR must be furnished separately. Further, the design of the remote controller can not be changed flexibly, and unnecessary buttons under a particular situation are still furnished and the control signals for such buttons are stored in the memory as well. Thus, neither the design is adequate nor the memory is utilized efficiently, complicating the manipulation of the remote controller more than necessary.
Also, a TV-VTR compound apparatus, which is controlled by menu information defined in advance, has been developed However, it is impossible to control a plurality of appliances as an integral system; for the menu information varies depending on the state of each appliance, such as interconnection and power ON/OFF.
Further, a menu processing method, disclosed in Japanese Laid-Open Patent Application No. 3-233660, was developed. This method enables the retrieval of a desired application program by switching the menu displays regardless of which terminal or host computer stores the application program in a computer environment where a plurality of terminals are interconnected via a network.
However, the information as to which terminal or host computer stores the secondary and subsequent order menus must be written into each item in the menu in advance. Thus, it is impossible to control a plurality of appliances as an integral system; for the menu information varies depending on the state of each appliance, such as interconnection and power ON/OFF.
In addition, Japanese Laid-Open Patent Application No. 3-172086 discloses a program receiver which can display texts and graphics for the operation manual or guidance of the CATV (Cable TV) system, either related or unrelated to the program being broadcasted, on the screen. This will be explained more in detail while referring to
FIG. 1
depicting the structure of the program receiver. A terminal
101
includes a character generator
103
for generating texts and graphics displayed on a screen
102
, a memory
104
storing all the patterns for the texts and graphics transmitted from a head-end of the CATV station in advance, a switcher
107
for inputting signals from the character generator
103
or memory
104
into a TV receiver
106
instead of or together with the outputs from a tuner
105
. The text and graphical information, or namely the operation manual or guidance and the information either related or unrelated to the program being broadcasted, is transmitted from the head end in advance to upgrade the utility of the CATV system.
In this system, program distributors supply the interactive screen generation information for each program to the CATV station in advance, so that the information is transmitted from the head-end to the memory
104
each time a program is switched, supplying an adequate interactive screen for each program. However, this complicates the re-transmission of the program. As well, each time the user switches a channel, the head-end detects the switching and transmits the interactive screen generation information for the switched program to the memory
104
, making the process at the head-end cumbersome.
In addition, a technique such that enables the user to set the functions of the VTR and TV game players by using the display on the TV receiver was developed. The household appliances of this type include a circuit for generating a user interface screen, and a terminal for outputting image signals generated by the circuit to an external appliances. The external output terminal is connected to an external image signal input terminal of the TV receiver via an image signal cable to switch TV receiver's signal input to the external image signal input terminal. Thus, the TV receiver displays the input image signal from the external image signal input terminal, supplying the user interface screen to the user.
The graphical display apparatus used for CAD (Computer Aided Design) also employs the user interface screen. Here, the host computer transmits figure definition instructions: combination and display position of basic elements (segments, arcs, characters, etc.), and attribution specification such as display allowance or disallowance. The graphical display apparatus interprets the figure definition instructions and then displays figures as per instructions on the screen. The definition of a figure composed of the same,basic elements can be given only by copying the definition of the element and changing the display position attribute. Thus, the figure definition instructions for one element is transmitted from the host computer only once, saving the information transmission time for the host computer. However, in case of a multi-layer structure such as a menu manipulation screen to switch a layer as per user's instruction, the screen is cleared (the defined figure data are deleted) each time a layer is switched, and all the figure definition instructions are transmitted again for the switched layer. Alternately, the figure data for all the layers may be defined in advance, and an instruction is sent each time a layer is switched to disallow the display of the attribute of the figure data in the currently displayed layer, and another instruction is sent to allow the display
Mukai Masaki
Nakano Yoshio
Ohtsu Takashi
Tanigawa Hidekazu
Tsuji Seiji
Kostak Victor R.
Price and Gess
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