Image/tone control device and television apparatus equipped with same

• US 20080068509A1
• Filed: 09/14/2007
• Published: 03/20/2008
• Est. Priority Date: 09/19/2006
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Funai Electric Co., Ltd.
• Original Assignee: Funai Electric Co., Ltd.
• Inventors: Nishimura, Shoichiro
• Granted Patent: US 8,294,828 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 348/649
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/4398 involving reformatting operations of audio signals details of audio signal transcoding G10L19/173
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/4402 involving reformatting operations of video signals for household redistribution, storage or real-time display details of conversion of video standards at pixel level H04N7/01; video transcoding H04N19/40; adapting incoming signals to the display format of the display terminal G09G5/005; media handling at the source in data packet switching networks H04L65/764
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/485 End-user interface for client configuration
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 5/202 Gamma control circuits for controlling camera response irrespective of the scene brightness H04N23/82
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 5/44 Receiver circuitry for the reception of television signals according to analogue transmission standards H04N5/14 takes precedence
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 5/57 Control of contrast or brightness
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 9/73 Colour balance circuits, e.g. white balance circuits or colour temperature control camera processing pipelines for colour balance H04N23/88

Abstract

A television apparatus 100 is so designed as to store into ROM 14 the table that contains image control parameters and tone control parameters used for approximating the image and tone characteristics from different manufacturers wherein a microcomputer 13 reads and uses the image control parameters and the tone control parameters from the ROM 14 to thereby issue a signal processing instruction to a video processing circuit 11 and an audio processing circuit 12 in order to approximate the image and tone of each manufacturer. This allows collective control of image and tone and also allows a user to select collectively controlled image and tone easily.

Claims

1. A television apparatus, comprising:

an image and tone control device, including a video processing circuit that receives video signals composed of image signals and audio signals, and performs predetermined signal processing on the image signal, and an audio processing circuit that performs predetermined signal processing on the audio signal;

a display panel that displays an image based on the image signal processed by the video processing circuit;

a speaker that outputs an audio based on the audio signal processed by the audio processing circuit;

a microcomputer that issues signal processing instructions to the image and tone control device based on a user'"'"'s operation; and

a memory Integrated Circuit (IC) that stores programs and tables to be executed by the microcomputer, the memory IC, including;

an image and tone characteristics table that serves to collectively store, for a television apparatus of each manufacturer, image control parameters of contrast, tint, brightness, sharpness, gamma value, and color temperature with which the video processing circuit performs signal processing and tone control parameters with which the audio processing circuit performs signal processing, for approximating the image and tone characteristics from different manufacturers; and

an image and tone control program configured so that when a user selects a manufacturer to which a user wants to approximate the image and tone, the microcomputer refers to the image and tone characteristics table, refers to signal processing parameters used for approximation to the selected manufacturer-specific image and tone of the television apparatus, and issues image and tone control instructions to the video processing circuit and the audio processing circuit.

2. An image and tone control device equipped with an image control circuit that performs predetermined signal processing on a video signal and a tone control circuit that performs predetermined signal processing on an audio signal, comprising:

an image and tone characteristics recording unit that collectively stores, in a manufacturer-dependent manner, image control parameters with which the image control circuit performs the signal processing and tone control parameters with which the tone control circuit performs the signal processing as control values, the image control parameters and the tone control parameters used for approximating the image and tone of television apparatuses from different manufacturers; and

a unit of issuing image and tone control instruction that issues instructions for controlling image and tone to the image control circuit and the tone control circuit, based on the parameters stored in the image/tone characteristics recording unit.

3. An image and tone control device according to claim 2, wherein the image/tone characteristics recording unit is configured to store such parameters as of contrast, tint, brightness, sharpness, gamma value, and color temperature as image control items in order to approximate to the image characteristics of television apparatuses from different manufacturers.

4. An image and tone control device according to claim 2, wherein the image and tone characteristics recording unit is configured to store a tone control parameter as a tone control item in order to approximate to the tone characteristics of television apparatuses from different manufacturers.

5. An image and tone control device according to claim 2, wherein the unit of issuing image and tone control instruction is implemented with a microcomputer.

6. An image and tone control device according to claim 5, wherein the image and tone characteristics recording unit is stored in a memory IC available for the microcomputer refers to.

7. An image and tone control device according to claim 2, wherein:

the unit of issuing image/tone control instruction is configured to accept a predetermined instruction and to issue instructions to the image control circuit and the tone control circuit based on the accepted instruction; and

the image and tone characteristics recording unit is configured to issue an instruction by combining image and tone control parameters from different manufacturers, based on an instruction from the unit of issuing image and tone control instruction.