Electronic program guide and text channel data controller
First Claim
1. A system for controlling the presentation of text data from a text service provider to a customer'"'"'s television display, comprising:
- a database for storing text data from a plurality of sources of text data;
means for formatting text data stored in said database and associated display commands into transactions having a predetermined number of bytes, and for assigning each of said sources of text data to a unique video program channel for transmission to said customer'"'"'s television display;
means for inserting said transactions into predetermined intervals of the unique video program channel to which text data in said transactions is assigned; and
a text data receiver associated with said customer'"'"'s television display which extracts said transactions from their unique video program channel and presents a screen of text data from said transactions to said customer'"'"'s television display in accordance with said associated display commands in said transactions.
3 Assignments
0 Petitions
Accused Products
Abstract
A data controller which manages the flow of text and electronic program guide (EPG) information to a cable television viewer. The data controller of the invention receives text and EPG information from one or a plurality of authorized data sources via a communications link, processes the received data in its internal database manager to perform data compression and the like, and then provides this text information to the viewer under control of the head end controller. In a preferred embodiment, the text data is formatted on a screen basis into transactions of a predetermined length and the EPG data is formatted on a program basis into transactions of the same length. The transaction are then inserted into the vertical blanking interval of a channel to which the corresponding text or electronic program data has been assigned. At the viewer'"'"'s television tuner, the text data and/or EPG data is extracted from the vertical blanking interval and mapped to a virtual channel of the viewer'"'"'s television tuner for display. The viewer'"'"'s television tuner includes an EPG memory in which the EPG data may be stored to allow the viewer to scroll forward and backward through the stored EPG. The viewer'"'"'s television tuner also includes a text memory for storing a page of text data so as to allow automatic pagination of the text data on the display screen after a predetermined amount of time has passed during which the viewer may read the text data.
-
Citations
41 Claims
-
1. A system for controlling the presentation of text data from a text service provider to a customer'"'"'s television display, comprising:
-
a database for storing text data from a plurality of sources of text data; means for formatting text data stored in said database and associated display commands into transactions having a predetermined number of bytes, and for assigning each of said sources of text data to a unique video program channel for transmission to said customer'"'"'s television display; means for inserting said transactions into predetermined intervals of the unique video program channel to which text data in said transactions is assigned; and a text data receiver associated with said customer'"'"'s television display which extracts said transactions from their unique video program channel and presents a screen of text data from said transactions to said customer'"'"'s television display in accordance with said associated display commands in said transactions. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17)
-
-
18. A method of controlling presentation of text data from a text service provider to a customer'"'"'s television display, comprising the steps of:
-
authorizing one of a plurality of sources of text data to access a source database for storage of text data from said one source; transmitting said text data from said one source to said source database for storage; assigning said text data from said one source to a unique video program channel; reading said text data from said one source from said source database and formatting associated display commands and said text data stored in said source database into transactions having a predetermined number of bytes; inserting each transaction into a predetermined interval of the unique video program channel to which the text data in that transaction is assigned; at a customer'"'"'s text data receiver, extracting said transactions from their unique video program channel; processing said transactions at said customer'"'"'s text data receiver to extract said text data and said associated display commands; and presenting a screen of said text data in said transactions processed in said processing step to said customer'"'"'s television display in accordance with said associated display commands in said transactions. - View Dependent Claims (19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34)
-
-
35. A data controller for controlling the presentation of text data received from a text service provider to a customer'"'"'s television display associated with said data controller, wherein said text data is received from said text service provider as transactions which have been inserted into a vertical blanking interval of a video program channel to which the text data in said transactions has been assigned, each transaction comprising text data and associated display commands for controlling presentation of text data in said transaction to said customer'"'"'s television display, said data controller comprising:
-
a tuner for tuning said customer'"'"'s television display to said video program channel; and a processor which extracts said transactions from said vertical blanking interval of said video program channel and maps the text data received in said transactions to a text channel of the customer'"'"'s television display for presentation of a screen of said text data on said text channel in accordance with the display commands received in said transactions. - View Dependent Claims (36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41)
-
Specification