Close caption support with timewarp

• US 5,537,151 A
• Filed: 02/16/1994
• Issued: 07/16/1996
• Est. Priority Date: 02/16/1994
• Status: Expired

• Current Assignee: ATI Technologies ULC (Advanced Micro Devices, Inc.)
• Original Assignee: ATI Technologies Incorporated (Advanced Micro Devices, Inc.)
• Inventors: Orr, Stephen J., Rinaldi, Antonio
• Primary Examiner(s): Kostak, Victor R.
• Application Number:
  US08/197,336
• Time in Patent Office: 881 Days
• Field of Search: 348/564, 348/588, 348/468, 348/589, 348/598, 348/600, 348/552, 348/739
• US Class Current: 348/564
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/14 Digital output to display device ; Cooperation and interconnection of the display device with other functional units
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/1423 controlling a plurality of local displays, e.g. CRT and flat panel display
• CPC Class Codes: G09G 2340/125 wherein one of the images is motion video
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/4122 additional display device, e.g. video projector digital output for controlling a plurality of local displays G06F3/1423
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/431 Generation of visual interfaces for content selection or interaction; Content or additional data rendering
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/435 Processing of additional data, e.g. decrypting of additional data, reconstructing software from modules extracted from the transport stream
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/47 End-user applications

Abstract

Method of providing closed captioned data to a television viewer comprised of detecting closed captioned data signals transmitted in conjunction with a television signal, decoding the data signals to caption display signals, and displaying the caption display signals on an auxiliary screen separate from a screen displaying the television signals.

Claims

1. A method of providing caption display signals to a computer microprocessor, providing said television signal to a computer video display circuit, processing said caption data signals to control at least the location of display of decoded signal, displaying said television signal on a display screen and displaying said caption display signals at said location on said display screen, said television screen being a window displayed on a computer screen, said decoded data being contained in a window on said display screen and constituting said auxiliary screen.

2. A method as defined in claim 1 including processing said caption display signals to additionally control at least one of font and size of said caption display signals.

3. A method as defined in claim 1 in which said display screen is a computer video display, and displaying said television signal in a first window on said video display and displaying said caption display signals in said window constituting said auxiliary screen on said computer video display above, below or to a side of said first window.

4. A method as defined in claim 2 in which the closed captioned data signal includes an initial sinusoidal run-in signal followed by data bits, and in which the detection step includes locking a phase locked loop to the run-in signal, locating the data bits and obtaining closed captioned data bits by sampling the data bits and computing the average value of several samples in the location of each data bit and determining whether each data bit is a zero or a one based on the average value being above or below a predetermined threshold.

5. A method as defined in claim 4 in which the data bits comprise a pair of bytes of data representing at least one of characters and captioning code, further including passing the bytes of data to a computer microprocessor, determining whether the bytes of data are captioning code and if so controlling at least one of a display cursor position on said auxiliary screen, character color, and style of subsequent characters to be displayed by means of said microprocessor, determining whether the bytes of data are character data and if so displaying corresponding characters in sequence on said auxiliary screen starting at either of a default cursor position or at a cursor position designated by the captioning code if preceded by a cursor position indicating captioning code.

6. A method as defined in claim 2 including manually controlling at least one of the position of and at least one of the location of said windows and the font and window and font size on the computer screen.

7. A method of providing closed captioned data to a television viewer comprising:

(a) detecting closed captioned data signals transmitted in conjunction with a television signal,

(b) decoding said data signals to caption display signals,

(c) displaying said caption display signals on an auxiliary screen separate from a screen displaying said television signals,

(d) providing said caption display signals to a computer microprocessor,

(e) processing said caption display signals to control at least one of font and size of said caption display signals,

(f) in which the closed captioned data signal includes an initial sinusoidal run-in signal followed by data bits, and

(g) in which the detection step includes locking a phase locked loop to the run-in signal, locating the data bits and obtaining closed captioned data bits by sampling the data bits and computing the average value of several samples in the location of each data bit and determining whether each data bit is a zero or a one based on the average value being above or below a predetermined threshold.

8. A method as defined in claim 7 in which the data bits comprise a pair of bytes of data representing at least one of characters and captioning code, further including passing the bytes of data to a computer microprocessor, determining whether the bytes of data are captioning code and if so controlling at least one of a display cursor position on said auxiliary screen, character color, and style of subsequent characters to be displayed by means of said microprocessor, determining whether the bytes of data are character data and if so displaying corresponding characters in sequence on said auxiliary screen starting at either of a default cursor position or at a cursor position designated by the captioning code if preceded by a cursor position indicating captioning code.