JP2918934B2 - Teletext receiver - Google Patents

Description

Description: TECHNICAL FIELD The present invention relates to a teletext receiver, and more particularly, to a teletext receiver capable of outputting audio.

2. Description of the Related Art Television teletext (hereinafter, abbreviated as "teletext broadcasting") has been put to practical use in which a code or pixel data is superimposed and transmitted during a vertical blanking period of a television video signal. The conventional teletext receiver has a built-in generator of characters, figures, and musical sounds, decodes the received code or pixel data, and outputs the decoded data from a television screen or a speaker.

Considering the use of teletext regardless of the location or the form of use, it is not sufficient to simply display text information on the screen.
For effective use of character information, it is necessary that the character information can be heard by voice. However, such a function is not provided in a teletext receiving apparatus which has been practically used in the past.

Also, on the transmitting side of the teletext, it is possible to embed the operation position control information in the text information and transmit the text so as to display the text at an arbitrary position on the screen in an arbitrary order. For this reason, the teletext receiver does not always receive text data in the order of sentences. Further, there is a case where a screen where there is no same page is divided into a plurality of areas and different sentences are displayed. In this case, the area is divided into various directions such as up, down, left, and right. Unless a character sequence is cut out for each of these areas, it cannot be processed as a sentence. When converting the received character information into voice, the above-mentioned problems are conceivable.

Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 60-148290 discloses a teletext receiver for converting received character data into sound and outputting the sound, but the above-mentioned problem has not been solved.

Object The present invention has been made in view of the above-mentioned circumstances, and in particular, a method of embedding operating position control information in character information from a transmitting side and displaying characters at an arbitrary position on a screen in an arbitrary order. The character information sent to the user can be output as a meaningful character string by voice, and the screen in the same page is divided into multiple areas by the background color to display different sentences etc. The purpose of the present invention is to realize a teletext receiver that can output audio as a meaningful character string.

ConfigurationIn order to achieve the above object, the present invention provides a text broadcast receiving unit that receives a text broadcast signal, a text page memory that stores text information in page units, and the text information received by the text broadcast reception unit. A voice output including a character page memory writing unit for writing to a page memory, a text cutout unit for cutting out a series of character sequences from the character information stored in the character page memory, and a speech synthesis unit for converting the cutout character sequences into voice. In a possible teletext receiver, the text page memory has an address corresponding to the display coordinate position when displaying characters on the receiver, and the text page memory writing unit is based on the received operation position control information and the like, The character information is written to the address of the character page memory corresponding to the coordinate position to be displayed, and the text cutout unit writes the text Speech for character information that is cut out in units appropriate for speech conversion based on continuity on the page memory and transferred to the speech synthesis unit in a sequence appropriate for speech conversion of the characters in it. In the text broadcast receiving device capable of outputting, further, a background color page memory for storing background color information in page units, and a background color page memory writing unit for writing the background color information received by the text broadcast receiving unit to the background page memory. The background color page memory has an address corresponding to the display coordinate position when displaying characters on the receiver, and the background color page memory writing unit stores the received background information in the background color corresponding to the specified display coordinate position. The background color information is written to the address of the page memory, and the text cutout unit corresponds to the address area of the same background color page memory which is continuous on the display coordinates. The character sequence stored in the address area of the shaped page memory as a unit, is characterized in that the cut out. Hereinafter, a description will be given based on an example of the present invention.

FIG. 1 is a diagram for explaining an embodiment in which the present invention is applied to a code transmission (hybrid) type teletext broadcast implemented in Japan.
Is a pattern memory, 3 is a TV screen, 4 is a character generator,
5 is a tone generator, 6 is a speaker, 7 is a character page memory writing unit, 8 is an operation position counter, 9 is a character page memory, 10 is a text cutout unit, 11 is a speech synthesis unit, and a text broadcast receiving unit 1 is a television. It receives and detects John radio waves and extracts teletext data. The pattern memory 2 temporarily stores the pixel data in the teletext data and the character patterns generated by the character generator, and outputs them to the television screen 3.
The character generator 4 receives a character code in a text broadcast and generates a character pattern corresponding to the code.
Send to The tone generator 5 receives the music code in the teletext data, generates music corresponding to the code, and outputs the music from the speaker 6. The above parts are the same as those of the conventional teletext receiving apparatus, and the detailed description is omitted.

The character page memory 9 stores only the character code in the teletext data in page units, and has an address corresponding to the display coordinate position when displaying characters on the television screen. The operating position counter 8 is a register that holds the value of the current write target address in the character page memory 9. When receiving the operation position control code, the character page memory writing unit 7 calculates the address of the character page memory corresponding to the coordinate position to be displayed on the television screen, and updates the value of the operation position counter 8. When the character code is received, the character code is written to the address indicated by the operation position counter 8. Thus, the same arrangement as on the television screen is stored on the character page memory, regardless of the order in which the character codes are sent.

The text cutout unit 10 cuts out a character code string in a unit appropriate for voice conversion from the character code on the character page memory after the character code for one page is stored in the character page memory. The character codes in them are transferred to the speech synthesis unit 11 in an order appropriate for speech conversion. Appropriate units for voice conversion include, for example, paragraphs (which can be determined based on whether the beginning of a line is a space, etc.), lines, sentences (separated by punctuation marks), codes or patterns other than character codes. Units are conceivable. The proper order for speech conversion is right to left, top to bottom, and so on.

Next, a specific example of the operation in the above embodiment will be described.
FIG. 2 shows an example of teletext data input to the text page memory writing unit, where APS (r, c) is a code representing an operation position designation to r rows and c digits. The illustrated example is an example of a weather forecast, in which a portion that does not need to be rewritten daily, such as a place name, is transmitted first, and a portion that needs to be rewritten daily, such as weather, is transmitted later. FIG. 3 shows an example of a character code mapped on the character page memory by the character page memory writing unit. It is assumed that a blank is automatically written at an address where there is no character code to be written. 4th
The figure shows an example of a character code string cut out by the sentence cutout unit and sent to the speech synthesis unit. This is an example in which cutout is performed in units delimited by codes other than character codes (in this case, blank codes). is there. In this way,
A character code string (FIG. 2) that has been received with unknown meaning in Japanese is cut out in a unit and order in which speech conversion is possible, and a speech can be output as a meaningful character string (FIG. 4).

FIG. 5 is a diagram for explaining an embodiment in which the present invention is applied to a character transmission (hybrid) type teletext broadcast implemented in Japan. In the figure, 12 is a background color page memory, and 13 is a background color register. , 14 are background color page memory writing units, and the other parts are the same as those of the embodiment shown in FIG.

The background color page memory 12 stores only a background color code for displaying a character code on a television screen for each page, and has an address corresponding to a display coordinate position for displaying a character on the television screen. The background color register 13 is a register for holding a currently specified background color code. The background color page memory writing unit 14 updates the value of the background color register when the background color designation code is received, and when the character code is received, the background color register indicates the address indicated by the operation position counter. Write the background color code.

The text cutout unit 10 cuts out a character code string in a unit appropriate for voice conversion from the character code on the character page memory after the character code for one page is stored in the character page memory. The character codes in them are transferred to the speech synthesis unit 11 in an order appropriate for speech conversion. At this time, a character sequence stored in the address area of the character page memory corresponding to the address area of the background color page memory having the same background color continuous on the display coordinates is cut out as an appropriate unit for voice conversion.

Next, a specific example of the operation in the present embodiment will be described. FIG. 6 shows a text page memory writing text segmentation unit 7,
5 shows an example of text broadcast data input to the background color page memory writing unit 14. Here, COL (b) is a code designated as the background color code b. In this example, the character code is transmitted from the upper right to the lower left on the television screen in the order in which the characters are arranged. However, the character code is actually divided into two regions on the left and right depending on the background color, and each is a different sentence. FIG. 7 is an example of a character code mapped on a character page memory by a character page writing unit. FIG. 8 is an example of a background color code mapped on the background color page memory by the background color page writing unit. FIG. 9 is an example of a character code string cut out by the sentence cut-out unit and sent to the speech synthesis unit. In this way, the character code string as received (FIG. 6), which is unknown in Japanese, is cut out in a unit and order in which speech can be converted, and can be output as a meaningful character string (FIG. 9). Becomes

Effect As is apparent from the above description, according to the invention described in claim 1, character information is temporarily written to an address of a character page memory corresponding to a coordinate position to be displayed, and continuity on the page memory is written. A character sequence is cut out in a unit suitable for voice conversion based on the character sequence, and the characters in the character sequence are transferred to the voice synthesis unit in a sequence appropriate for voice conversion, so that the operation side control information is transmitted from the transmission side to the character information. The character information transmitted so as to be embedded in and displayed in an arbitrary position on the screen in an arbitrary order can be output as a meaningful character string by voice.

According to the second aspect of the invention, a character sequence stored in an address area of a character page memory corresponding to a display position of the same background color that is continuous in display coordinates is cut out as one unit. Thus, even if character information in a case where a screen in the same page is divided into a plurality of areas by a background color and different sentences are displayed, a sound output as a meaningful character string is possible.

[Brief description of the drawings]

FIG. 1 is a configuration diagram for explaining an embodiment of the present invention,
2 to 4 are diagrams for explaining the operation of the embodiment shown in FIG. 1, FIG. 5 is a block diagram for explaining another embodiment of the present invention, and FIGS. FIG. 9 is a diagram for explaining the operation of the embodiment shown in FIG. DESCRIPTION OF SYMBOLS 1 ... Teletext receiving part, 2 ... Pattern memory, 3 ... Television screen, 4 ... Character generation part, 5 ... Tone generation part, 6 ... Speaker, 7 ... Character page memory writing part, 8 ... Operating position counter, 9 ... Character Page memory, 10 ... sentence cutout,
11: Voice synthesis unit, 12: Background color page memory, 13: Background color register, 14: Background color page memory writing unit.

Claims (1)

(57) [Claims] 1. A text broadcast receiving section for receiving a text broadcast signal, a text page memory for storing text information on a page basis, and a text page memory writing the text information received by the text broadcast reception section to the page memory. A text output unit that outputs a series of character sequences from character information stored in a character page memory, and a speech synthesis unit that converts the cut-out character sequences into speech. The character page memory has an address corresponding to a display coordinate position when displaying a character on a receiver, and the character page memory writing unit determines a coordinate position to be displayed based on the received operation position control information and the like. Write the character information to the address of the character page memory corresponding to the, the text cutout unit, for the character information on the character page memory, Character broadcast receiver that cuts out a character string in a unit suitable for voice conversion based on continuity on the page memory and transfers the characters in the character sequence to a voice synthesis unit in a proper sequence for voice conversion. A background color page memory that stores background color information in page units; and a background color page memory writing unit that writes the background color information received by the teletext receiving unit to the background color page memory. The memory has an address corresponding to the display coordinate position when displaying characters on the receiver, and the background color page memory writing unit stores the received background color information in the background color page memory corresponding to the designated display coordinate position. The background color information is written in the address, and the sentence clipping section corresponds to the address area of the background color page memory having the same background color continuous on the display coordinates. That, teletext receiving apparatus characterized by cutting out a character sequence stored in the address area of the character page memory as a unit.