Television – Plural still images over conventional channel
Patent
1997-05-23
1999-12-21
Kostak, Victor R.
Television
Plural still images over conventional channel
348 13, 348 22, 455 42, H04N 700
Patent
active
060056061
DESCRIPTION:
BRIEF SUMMARY
FIELD OF THE INVENTION
The present invention relates to interactive value added information services, which are offered by television broadcasting such as terrestrial wave broadcasting, CATV, or satellite broadcasting, etc. and telephone, and in particular to a system for providing an interactive information service by combining picture media for television such as still picture television broadcasting, still picture video tape, still picture video disk, etc. with a telephone.
BACKGROUND ART
In the information-oriented society of today, various transmitting means are used to transmit electrical and electronic information such as sound, picture, text data, binary data, etc. Of such electrical and electronic information, low quality sound, monochrome still picture at low speed, character data at low speed, and binary data at low speed are transmitted by public telephone line as electric signals, and monochrome still picture at high speed, character data at high speed and binary data at high speed are transmitted by ISDN (Integrated Services Digital Network) line as an electric signal. High quality sound and moving picture are transmitted by terrestrial wave broadcasting, satellite broadcasting or CATV as a modulated radio wave or by optical fiber as modulated light.
In the present information-centered era, attention is now focused on interactive information systems as a promising major information system in future. The interactive information system is a system, in which information is selectively received and positively utilized by the general public, who, hitherto, have been merely receivers of the one-way information sent to them.
Interactive information systems currently used are answering systems using an automatic voice response system via public telephone line, videotex systems represented by CAPTAIN (Character And Pattern Telephone Access Information Network) using still picture, and VRS (Video Response System) using moving picture via dedicated line.
Of these interactive information systems, the answering system is disadvantageous in that sufficient information cannot be obtained because it depends upon audio information only and that input and output data cannot be visually confirmed.
The videotex system has drawbacks in that there is a limitation in the contents to be displayed because texts and pictures are displayed by using character codes, and the picture information using character codes provides a smaller amount of information than a natural picture.
The VRS system has no limitation in the contents of display because a natural moving picture can be used, while communication cost is expensive because a wide band dedicated line must be used.
On the other hand, various information services such as television shopping, application or subscription, weather forecast, traffic information, etc. are offered in the currently used television system, although these are not interactive. Most of the picture information needed in these information services is still picture information, and moving picture information is needed in very rare cases. Thus, in the current television system offering these information services, a still picture is broadcast as moving picture. Specifically, by transmitting several hundreds to several thousands of the same picture, a still picture is displayed on a television set.
Therefore, the transmitting cost of the still pictures is very expensive, and an interactive information service for transmitting still pictures to match the demand of the users is not currently available.
For example, television shopping is one of the information services using pictures. However, in the television shopping practiced to date, only the one-way product information, transmitted by the broadcasting station, is utilized, and interactive information service in which the desired picture from product information is displayed on the television set according to the intention of the users and the users carry out shopping based on the contents of the display is not practically available.
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