JPH0132704B2 - - Google Patents

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION When reserving a program for radio broadcasting or television broadcasting, the program channel is set in advance and the broadcast start time is set in advance using a timer. However, with this program reservation method, it is necessary to know what time and minute the program will be broadcast. Furthermore, if the timer stops operating due to a power outage or the like, the timer time and the current time will be different, making it impossible to correctly select a reserved program. Also, there are many mistakes in setting the program channel and reservation time. When recording while the user is away using a tape recorder or the like, these mistakes become a decisive flaw.

In view of this point, the present invention aims to provide a device that allows a user to reliably find a desired specific program.

That is, in the present invention, for example, in the case of a television broadcast wave, the characteristics of the program are extracted from the television audio signal or video signal, and this is stored in advance in the memory. Then, the corresponding program characteristics are extracted from the transmitted television broadcast signal, and this is compared and contrasted with the characteristics of the stored program, and by finding a match between the two, the desired program is detected. Power is applied to the audio circuit and image receiving circuit so that the program can be played back.

In this case, the characteristics of the program are extracted from, for example, the title music or title image of the program.

Furthermore, if the image of the program itself has characteristics, the characteristics are extracted from the image information as well. In other words, for example, in the case of a weather forecast program using meteorological satellite photographs, the black level of the meteorological satellite photograph is usually low, since the satellite photograph has many black areas and the white color indicating the clouds hardly occupies the entire screen. Features can be extracted by sampling the portion that becomes the video signal. Furthermore, in the case of baseball broadcasts or sumo wrestling broadcasts, white text is displayed in a specific screen position, so it is also possible to sample this part and extract features.

Next, an embodiment of the present invention will be described with reference to the drawings, taking as an example a case where a television broadcast program is searched and the characteristics of the program are extracted from the title music or title announcement.

The example in the figure is an example using a microcomputer. That is, 20 indicates a microcomputer, 21 its central processing unit, and 22 its central processing unit.
RAM 23 is a ROM in which a predetermined program is stored; 24 to 29, 29I and 52, 54 are input/output ports. The RAM 22 stores time-series changes in waveform analysis of characteristic signals of a desired program. In this case, the RAM 22 stores a signal in which the characteristic sounds of the program, such as the program's title audio and tile announcements, are converted into digital data by a voice recognition device, which will be described later.

Writing to the RAM 22 is performed as follows.

That is, when a magnetic card, for example, on which program characteristic data is stored is loaded into the card player 51, data is read from the card according to the program in the ROM 23, and is supplied to the microcomputer 20 through the port 52 and stored in the RAM.
22.

On the other hand, 10 is the receiving circuit part of the television receiver,
11 is a receiving antenna, 12 is, for example, an electronic tuning tuner, 13 is a video intermediate frequency amplification circuit, and the output signal of this video intermediate frequency amplification circuit 13 is supplied to a video circuit 14 consisting of a video detection circuit, a video amplification circuit, and a color demodulation circuit. The demodulated video signal is supplied to the cathode ray tube 15, and a color image is displayed on the screen.

Further, the output signal of the video intermediate frequency amplification circuit 13 is supplied to the audio detection circuit 16, and the detected output is supplied to the speaker 18 through the audio amplification circuit 17 to reproduce audio.

30 is a program feature extraction circuit, which in this example consists of a voice recognition device. 40 is a channel selection scanning circuit. Further, 50 is a VTR.

Next, we will explain how programs are searched using the above device.

First, the recipient instructs the microcomputer 20 to search for a program by pressing a predetermined key on the keyboard 53 and also specifies a desired program. Then, although not shown, Chuyuna 12,
Video intermediate frequency amplification circuit 13, audio detection circuit 16,
Power is supplied in advance to the program feature extraction circuit 30 and the channel selection scanning circuit 40, and these become ready for operation.

Then, port 2 of the microcomputer 20
6, the tuning scanning circuit 40 sequentially obtains the tuning voltage corresponding to each channel in a time-division manner, and this is supplied to the tuner 12, which broadcasts the broadcast waves of each channel in a time-division manner. are sequentially selected and extracted. Then, the detection output of the television sound among the broadcast wave signals of each channel is sequentially obtained in a time-division manner from the sound detection circuit 16, and is supplied to the preamplifier 31 of the speech recognition device 30.

This preamplifier 31 emphasizes middle and high tones. The output of this preamplifier 31 is supplied to subsequent bandpass filters 32 to 34, and is decomposed into a low range, a middle range, and a high range. Also, preamp 3
1 is supplied to the F-V conversion circuit 36 to obtain a voltage corresponding to the fundamental frequency of the input voice, which is used as information indicating the pitch of the voice.

The outputs of these filters 32 to 34, the output of the F-V conversion circuit 35, and the output of the preamplifier 31 are supplied to a multiplexer 36. This multiplexer 36 is connected to the microcomputer 20.
A is sequentially switched by a switching signal according to the program written in the ROM 23 from the port 24 of the A
- It is supplied to the D converter 38 and converted into digital data. This digital data is then supplied to the microcomputer 20 through the port 25, and stored in the RAM 22 according to the program in the ROM 23.
compared and contrasted with digital data stored in

When the digital data from the A-D converter 38 matches the specified program characteristic data from the RAM 22, the control signal from the port 26 causes the channel selection voltage of the channel selection scanning circuit 40 to match. Stop with channel stuff. At the same time, a control signal from the port 29 turns on power to the audio amplification circuit 17, the video circuit 14, and the peripheral circuitry of the cathode ray tube 15, and the image of the searched and selected program is displayed on the screen. Further, the power of the VTR 50 is turned on by a control signal from the port 28, and the VTR 50 is put into a recording state by a control signal from the port 27, so that television audio signals and video signals are recorded. Furthermore, in this example, the identification code LD corresponding to the program is obtained from the ROM 23 at this time, and this is transmitted to the port 2.
9I, and this is recorded on the unused audio track of the VTR 50.

This identification code ID is used to identify the program when editing a tape.

As described above, according to the device of the present invention, a desired program can be extracted by extracting the characteristics of each program and comparing and contrasting the characteristics with the characteristics of the received broadcast wave. Therefore, since it is only necessary to specify the program, there is no need to check the broadcast channel and broadcast start time of the program as in the past, and there is no need to set complicated reservation times and the like.

Furthermore, since the time set by the timer does not match the set time, the program can be detected reliably.

Note that in the above example, features are extracted from the audio signal, but as described above, features can also be extracted from the video signal. In addition, features can be extracted from any signal that is used for broadcasting and shows the characteristics of each program.

It is also possible to store one day's worth of program feature data in the ROM 23 and to sequentially search this data according to the program.

[Brief explanation of drawings]

The figure is a system diagram of an example of the device of this invention. 10 is a receiving circuit of a television receiver, 20 is a microcomputer, 30 is a program feature extraction circuit, 40
32 is a channel selection scanning circuit, 32 to 34 are band pass filters, 34 is an F-V conversion circuit, 38 is an AD converter, and 22 is a RAM.

Claims (1)

[Claims] 1. A plurality of filters having different passbands, a frequency-voltage converter, a multiplexer, and an A/D converter; a plurality of filters and the frequency-to-voltage converter; outputs of the plurality of filters and outputs of the frequency-to-voltage converter are input to the multiplexer; an output of the multiplexer is input to the A/D converter; A program search device that finds a specific broadcast program by comparing and contrasting an output digital signal of an A/D converter with characteristic signals of the specific program stored in advance.