Motion video signal processing for recording or reproducing – Local trick play processing – With randomly accessible medium
Reexamination Certificate
1998-08-20
2001-02-20
Garber, Wendy (Department: 2715)
Motion video signal processing for recording or reproducing
Local trick play processing
With randomly accessible medium
C386S349000, C386S349000, C348S901000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06192187
ABSTRACT:
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to video recorders and, in particular but not exclusively, to arrangements for locating desired contents on a video tape.
2. Description of the Related Art
Known indexing systems in video recorders provide an attractive and user friendly way of obtaining easy access to a desired position on the tape for recording or playback of a program. Such arrangements generally enable access to a non-volatile memory in the video recorder in which a list of the contents of a number of tapes are stored. Access to the list relevant to a particular tape is by means of entering a tape number allocated to that tape. This access may be manual or automatic if means for identifying a particular tape is provided. This list can be viewed on the associated television display and moving a cursor to a desired item can be made to cause the tape to wind automatically to the corresponding position ready for playback or to record a new item.
Such an arrangement is disclosed in for example Patent Abstracts of Japan, Publication No. 07021748A. Such systems have, however, the disadvantage that the indexing only functions when the tapes are inserted into the VCR on which they were recorded, since the information as to what is on the tape is only present in the memory within that VCR. As a result, the indexing system will not work if the tape is played in a different VCR.
A system is described in European Patent Application EPA 0692790 for indexing magnetic tapes. This publication discloses a magnetic recording/reproducing apparatus having a capability of allowing contents of records on a magnetic tape to be discriminatively identified, and a capability for displaying closed captions includes a tape map memory for storing contents recorded on a tape and a tape map controller. As a manual input facility, a tape map button, a caption button, a playback button, a stop button and others, are provided. Upon loading of a tape undergone recording(s), the tape map button is pushed to display, on a monitor screen, tape map information concerning the contents of program(s) recorded on the loaded tape, temporal duration(s) of the programs and history of playback of the tape.
The closed caption data transmission facility is one provided in the USA and is not widely available elsewhere. It has been designed for the provision of subtitles for the hard of hearing and has been designed as a system in such a way that it is readily recordable on a VHS standard video recorder. As described in EPA 0692790, the closed caption data is extended to enable indexing information to be encoded in the same way and to derive program information from the transmitted closed caption transmissions. Such an arrangement is not useful in most European countries as there are no closed caption transmissions.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
It is an object of the invention to enable the provision of a tape indexing arrangement in video cassette recorders, in which tapes recorded on one video cassette recorder can be replayed using the indexing facility on a different video cassette recorder.
The invention provides a method of controlling a video recorder according to the VHS standard, the video recorder including means for decoding data defining displayable text and/or control functions recorded on a tape as a multilevel code at a data rate lower than that of the original data and within the bandwidth of the recorder, wherein the data includes row and column address codes for defining cursor positions on a display screen of an associated television receiver, and function codes defining tasks to be performed on initiation of a command instruction when the cursor is displayed at a given location, the method comprising the steps of reading data from the tape, positioning the cursor at a desired one of the defined positions on the display screen, and initiating the task to be performed using the function codes associated with the cursor location.
In this way, the user can cause the video recorder to wind the tape to a selected position, the selected position being defined by data written onto the tape the data having an original data rate greater than that which can be recorded and reliably reproduced by a VHS recorder. The data may be, for example, according to the Multimedia Hypertext Expert Group MHEG-5 standard or in Hypertext Mark Up Language HTML format. In the embodiments described with reference to the drawings, the data is teletext data and, in particular, but not exclusively, teletext data according to the World System Teletext Standard. The invention, however, is not limited to using data encoded according to a teletext standard and the person skilled in the art will be capable of adapting it to any given data format. By appropriately preprogramming these data codes, a degree of interactivity can be obtained. Then, one out of a multiplicity of choices can be selected and further choices made from the displayed result in a branching fashion. In an alternative scenario, a quiz sequence could be generated, the function codes selecting a page which gives an indication as to whether a multiple choice answer selected by means of the cursor was correct and, if not, showing a teletext page explaining the correct answer.
When the data is teletext data as defined in the World System Teletext Standard, the row and column address codes and the associated function codes may be contained in teletext packets X/26.
This enables a standard teletext decoder to decode the function codes and the indexing decoder to control the tape winding circuits to wind the tape to the correct position for display of video clips etc.
The function codes may be arranged to cause one or more of the following actions:
selecting a teletext page number;
selecting the audio status;
selecting audio description channel;
selecting the video status;
causing a video tape to wind to a defined position;
causing a command to be sent to associated equipment;
selecting a data channel or service.
The invention further provides a video recorder according to the VHS standard including means for reading and decoding data defining displayable text and/or control functions recorded on a tape as a multilevel code at a data rate lower than that of the original data and within the bandwidth of the recorder, the data including row and column address information for defining cursor positions on a screen of associated display apparatus, and function codes associated with the cursor positions, means for enabling a user to position the cursor at a desired position on the display screen, means for receiving command instructions from a user, and means for performing the commands using the function codes associated with the cursor position.
When the data is teletext data as defined in the World System Teletext Standard, the row and column address information and associated function codes may be contained in teletext packets X/26 read from the tape.
The function codes may be arranged to cause one of the following actions to be performed:
selecting a teletext page number;
selecting the audio status;
selecting audio description channel;
selecting the video status;
causing a video tape to wind to a defined position;
causing a command to be sent to associated equipment;
selecting a data channel or service.
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Boccio Vincent F.
Garber Wendy
Goodman Edward W.
U.S. Philips Corporation
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