Pulse or digital communications – Pulse code modulation – Length coding
Reexamination Certificate
1998-03-23
2001-10-02
Pham, Chi (Department: 2631)
Pulse or digital communications
Pulse code modulation
Length coding
C375S246000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06298091
ABSTRACT:
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
This invention relates generally to the digital data decoding systems, and more particularly, to the use of such systems with compressed input from various sources beyond a base network connection.
Full motion video displays based upon digital video signals are becoming more widely available. While these displays have many advantages, they also often require massive amount of raw digital data. The transmission of these massive amounts of video information is often impractical or infeasible. For this reason, digital video signals are often compressed before being transmitted.
Various video compression standards or processes have been established, including MPEG-1 and MPEG-2. These conventional video compression techniques utilize similarities between successive image frames, referred to as temporal or interframe correlation, to provide interframe compression in which pixel based representations of image frames are converted to motion representations. In addition, the conventional video compression techniques use similarities within image frames, referred to as spatial or intraframe correlation, to provide intraframe compression in which the motion representations within an image frame are further compressed.
After the video data is compressed, or encoded, it is transmitted to a decoder that decodes, or decompresses, the compressed data to reconstruct the original video data. That data may then be shown on a video display device, such as a conventional television. Decoders that are used with television sets are often referred to as set-top box (STB) systems.
Stand-alone audio/video decoders currently used in set-top box systems generally utilize a dedicated interface to a specific transport chip and/or network interface module (NIM). As the required utility of these STB systems expands, it is becoming desirable to adopt compressed input from various sources in addition to the base network (cable/satellite) connection. These additional sources could be, for example, a local digital video disc (DVD) player or an internet connection. Oftentimes, this is accomplished by providing a feedthrough path from the application processor in this same interface, allowing the processor to directly load this data. However, this method has the possibility of being relatively slow and may require a significant portion of the processor bandwidth.
As the integration of audio/video decoders and other components of STB systems onto common silicon progresses, new options become viable. Integration allows greater flexibility in the interconnection of functional units and access to memory, such as a common memory subsystem architecture.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
An object of this invention is to play audio and video clips through MPEG decoders.
Another object of the present invention is to use a digital data decoder to play short segments of video that are not received directly from the normal cable/satellite network.
These and other objectives are attained with a method and system of operating a digital data decoder. In accordance with this method, generally, a first stream of encoded data is transmitted to the decoder, and a second stream of encoded data is stored in a memory device. One of the first and second streams of encoded data is selected, and the decoder is used to decode that selected stream of encoded data.
This second stream of data could have been placed in the memory device by other devices or processes present in an STB system. In this case, all the decoder needs to process the data is a pointer to it and some additional information about, for example, its size. Since the processor has access to all memory, it can do any necessary parsing/manipulation required by the stream format. This provides a large degree of flexibility in this area. The processor can then pass location and attributes of data to the decoder. This also minimizes data movement to/from memory, reducing bandwidth requirements.
Further benefits and advantages of the invention will become apparent from a consideration of the following detailed description, given with reference to the accompanying drawings, which specify and show preferred embodiments of the invention.
REFERENCES:
patent: 4885632 (1989-12-01), Mabey et al.
patent: 5835033 (1998-11-01), Mita
patent: 5933536 (1999-08-01), Fukuzawa
Buerkle Daniel J.
Lloyd Bryan J.
Svec Ronald S.
International Business Machines - Corporation
Pham Chi
Phu Phuong
Scully Scott Murphy & Presser
Steinberg William H.
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