Electronic news reception apparatus that selectively retains sections and searches by keyword or index for text to speech conversion

• US 5,924,068 A
• Filed: 02/04/1997
• Issued: 07/13/1999
• Est. Priority Date: 02/04/1997
• Status: Expired due to Fees

• Current Assignee: Matsushita Electric Industrial Company Limited (Panasonic Holdings Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Matsushita Electric Industrial Company Limited (Panasonic Holdings Corporation)
• Inventors: Hanson, Brian A., Hofmann, Judson, Richard, Ronald B., Pearson, Steve D., Johnson, Stephen, Hata, Kazue
• Primary Examiner(s): Hudspeth, David R.
• Assistant Examiner(s): Storm, Donald L.
• Application Number:
  US08/794,503
• Time in Patent Office: 889 Days
• Field of Search: 348/7, 348/2, 345/901, 345/978, 434/317, 704/260, 704/270
• US Class Current: 704/260
• CPC Class Codes: G10L 13/00 Speech synthesis; Text to speech systems
• CPC Class Codes: H04M 2201/60 Medium conversion
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 7/088 the inserted signal being digital
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 345/901 Electronic book with display

Abstract

An electronic news receiving device receives text data for an electronic edition of a newspaper in the evening and audibly reads the newspaper to the user the next day. The newsreader includes a receiver which receives an electronic edition of a newspaper transmitted by a transmitter at an electronic news preparer'"'"'s facility. The news preparer may mark words that do not conform to conventional letter-to-sound rules with a pronunciation flag and provide pronunciation data for the words with the electronic edition of the newspaper. The data may be compressed by providing a dictionary in the news receiving device and, at the preparer'"'"'s facility, translating each word into a dictionary address. The transmission channel may include a telephone line, the vertical blanking interval of a television signal, a cable television channel, an AM/FM subcarrier signal or a satellite channel. The received electronic edition of the newspaper is processed by a section filter to retain desired sections of the newspaper and to discard unwanted sections. The retained news articles are stored in memory. A text-to-speech converter produces an audible output corresponding to the spoken text of the news articles. A user can input one or more keywords to cause the device to selectively read articles containing the keywords. The text to speech converter of the device uses rules and a dictionary to provide syntactic and semantic prosody for morpheme reconstructions. The user may determine which articles are read and may vary the rate at which articles are read using manual controls or spoken commands.

Claims

1. A news receiving apparatus for receiving an electronic edition of a newspaper, the apparatus comprising:

receiving means for receiving the electronic edition of the newspaper including text data of news articles;

section filtering means for retaining or discarding the text data corresponding to specified sections of the electronic edition of the newspaper;

memory means for storing the text data corresponding to the retained sections of the electronic edition of the newspaper;

text-to-speech conversion means for converting portions of the stored text data into a spoken representation of words represented by the portions of the stored text data; and

user interface means including;

means for establishing which sections of the electronic edition of the newspaper are retained by said section filtering means and for controlling which portions of the electronic edition of the newspaper are provided to said text-to-speech conversion means;

input means for receiving at least one keyword entered by a user, and

search means for retrieving the news articles that contain the at least one keyword.

2. A news receiving apparatus of claim 1, wherein said search means comprises an index engine.

3. A news receiving apparatus of claim 1, wherein said memory means only stores at least X bytes, where X is an integer and

4. A news receiving apparatus of claim 3, wherein:

Y=two;

M=three hundred;

N=two; and

P=seven.

5. A news receiving apparatus of claim 1, wherein the news receiving apparatus is implemented in a portable computer.

6. A news receiving apparatus of claim 1, wherein the news receiving apparatus is a stand alone product.

7. A news receiving apparatus of claim 1, wherein the receiving means includes telephone interface means for receiving the electronic edition of the newspaper from a telephone line.

8. A news receiving apparatus of claim 1, wherein the receiving means includes cable interface means for receiving the electronic edition of the newspaper from a cable television system.

9. A news receiving apparatus of claim 8, wherein the receiving means includes means for receiving the electronic edition of the newspaper on an entire cable channel.

10. A news receiving apparatus of claim 8, wherein the receiving means includes means for receiving the electronic edition of the newspaper during the vertical blanking interval of a television signal.

11. A news receiving apparatus of claim 1, wherein the receiving means includes interface means for receiving the electronic edition of the newspaper from a subcarrier modulated signal.

12. A news receiving apparatus of claim 1, wherein the receiving means includes satellite interface means for receiving the electronic edition of the newspaper through satellite communications.

13. An electronic news receiving apparatus of claim 1, further comprises speech recognition means for receiving and recognizing speech commands to control the operation of the electronic news receiving apparatus.

14. A news receiving apparatus of claim 1, wherein the text-to-speech conversion means includes:

letter to sound conversion means for providing pronunciation data for words in the electronic edition of the newspaper based on the letter to sound rules; and

a dictionary which stores pronunciation data for words that do not comply with the letter to sound rules.

15. An electronic news receiving apparatus of claim 14, wherein the electronic edition of the newspaper is compressed and predetermined words in the electronic edition of the newspaper that correspond to words stored in said dictionary means are compressed using a dictionary address corresponding to each of the predetermined words and wherein the dictionary means includes means for decompressing each of the predetermined words in response to the dictionary address.

16. An electronic news receiving apparatus of claim 14, wherein words in the electronic edition of the newspaper that do not comply with pronunciation rules are assigned a pronunciation flag and pronunciation data and are transmitted with the text data, and the words which are assigned the pronunciation flag and the corresponding pronunciation data are stored in a temporary area of the dictionary means as the electronic edition of the newspaper is received.

17. An electronic news receiving apparatus of claim 14, further comprises acoustic processing means for modifying the pronunciation data according to grammatical data and phonemic context.

18. An electronic news receiving apparatus of claim 14, wherein the stored electronic edition of the newspaper includes intonational phrases and the electronic news receiving apparatus further comprises acoustic processing means for assigning intonation patterns to the intonational phrases.

19. An electronic news receiving apparatus of claim 14, wherein the stored electronic edition of the newspaper includes phoneme segments and the electronic news receiving apparatus further comprises acoustic processing means for converting the phoneme segments to acoustic parameters.

20. An electronic news receiving apparatus of claim 14, wherein the stored electronic edition of the newspaper includes phoneme segments and the electronic news receiving apparatus further comprises acoustic processing means for assigning durations for the phoneme segments.

21. An electronic news receiving apparatus of claim 14, further comprises acoustic processing means for assigning stress data to the words in the electronic edition of the newspaper.

22. A method for receiving and audibly reproducing an electronic edition of a newspaper, the method comprising the steps of:

receiving, as text data, the electronic edition of the newspaper at a receiver;

retaining or discarding portions of the received text data corresponding to news articles in specified sections of the electronic edition of the newspaper;

storing the received text data corresponding to the retained sections of the electronic edition of the newspaper in a memory;

converting portions of the stored text data into a spoken representation of words represented by the stored text data;

processing user commands to determine which sections of the electronic edition of the newspaper are specified to be stored in said memory and which portions of the electronic edition of the newspaper are specified to be converted to said spoken representation;

receiving at least one keyword entered by a user; and

searching the news articles in said memory to identify the articles that contain the at least one keyword and to retrieve the identified articles to be converted into the spoken representation.

23. A method for receiving and audibly reproducing an electronic edition of a newspaper as recited by claim 22, further comprising the step of:

receiving the electronic edition of the newspaper from a telephone interface.

24. A method for receiving and audibly reproducing an electronic edition of a newspaper as recited by claim 22, further comprising the step of:

receiving the electronic edition of the newspaper via a cable television interface.

25. A method for receiving and audibly reproducing an electronic edition of a newspaper as recited by claim 24, wherein the electronic edition of the newspaper is received via the cable television interface from an entire cable channel.

26. A method for receiving and audibly reproducing an electronic edition of a newspaper as recited by claim 24, wherein the electronic edition of the newspaper is received via the cable television interface during the vertical blanking interval of a television signal.

27. A method for receiving and audibly reproducing an electronic edition of a newspaper as recited by claim 22, further comprising the step of receiving the electronic edition of the newspaper via a subcarrier modulation interface.

28. A method for receiving and audibly reproducing an electronic edition of a newspaper as recited by claim 22, further comprising the step of receiving the electronic edition of the newspaper via a satellite communications interface.

29. A method for receiving and audibly reproducing an electronic edition of a newspaper as recited by claim 22, wherein the step of converting the electronic edition of the newspaper to an audible output signal further comprises the steps of:

providing pronunciation data for words in the electronic edition of the newspaper based on dictionary and letter to sound rules.

30. A method for receiving and audibly reproducing an electronic edition of a newspaper as recited by claim 29, wherein the electronic edition of the newspaper is compressed and the method further includes the set of:

decompressing predetermined words in the electronic edition of the newspaper that correspond to the stored pronunciation data by converting a received dictionary address corresponding to each of the predetermined words.

31. A method for receiving and audibly reproducing an electronic edition of a newspaper as recited by claim 29, wherein words in the electronic edition of the newspaper that do not comply with the dictionary and letter to sound rules have a pronunciation flag and pronunciation data transmitted with the electronic edition of the newspaper and wherein the method further comprises the step of storing the words assigned the pronunciation flag and the corresponding pronunciation data in a temporary memory.

32. A system for providing an electronic edition of the newspaper to an electronic news receiving apparatus, said system comprising:

means for generating an electronic edition of a newspaper;

means for marking the electronic edition of the newspaper by inserting markers into the electronic edition of the newspaper;

means for transmitting the electronic edition of the newspaper to the electronic news receiving apparatus;

the electronic news receiving apparatus including;

means for receiving data representing the transmitted, marked electronic edition of the newspaper;

means for retaining and discarding portions of the received data corresponding to sections of the electronic edition of the newspaper based on the marks inserted into the electronic edition of the newspaper;

means for storing the received data representing the retained sections of the electronic edition of the newspaper;

means for generating a spoken representation of words represented by the stored data;

means for receiving at least one keyword entered by a user; and

means for searching the news articles in said memory to identify the articles that contain the at least one keyword and retrieving the identified articles to be converted into the spoken representation.