KR20000016300A - Program selection system for a digital television receiver - Google Patents

Abstract

PURPOSE: A system is provided for selecting programs in television receivers that operate according to the digital television standard. CONSTITUTION: A numeric keypad and scrolling keys for selecting a channel through which a multi-program bit-stream is received are comprised. The numeric keypad and the scrolling keys are used to select an individual program from the multi-program bit-stream. The numeric keypad is used first to select a channel and then to select a program within the channel. scrolling keys are used to select the next channel or the next program within the channel depending on whether the currently selected program is the last program in the bit-stream that is carried by the channel.

Description

Program selection system for digital television receivers

Current analog television systems transmit one program per channel. Selecting one channel among the channels being broadcast at a given time is accomplished by tuning the tuner to the frequency of the desired channel.

There are several digital television systems that transmit several programs over a satellite link. These systems include an electronic program guide that maps each program number to a specific transponder signal and a particular channel and specific programs within the channel transmitted by the transponder. Therefore, an electronic program guide is required to tune to a program transmitted by one of these digital satellite systems. Therefore, the electronic program guide must be decoded by the receiver and generated at the headend to tune to the particular program.

DOC, entitled "ATSC Digital Television Standards," published by the Advanced Television Systems Committee, incorporated herein by reference to digital television signals. The digital television standard described in A / 53 describes the transmission of programs over one terrestrial broadcast channel or cable channel. Therefore, within a given area, each of several broadcasters that transmit signals can transmit multiple programs that are signals containing one high resolution program or high resolution or standard resolution programs. When each broadcaster transmits several programs over a channel, the standard does not describe the preferred way in which these programs are selected. The digital television standard is included within the present invention to refer to the theory of the MPEG-2 digital video coding standard, and is available from the International Standards Organization, ISP / IEC 13818-2, IS, 11/94, "Generic Coding of A subset of the MPEG-2 standard defined by the Moving Pictures Experts Group (MPEG) described in Moving Pictures and Associated Audio, Recommendations H.626.

The present invention relates generally to digital television receivers and, more particularly, to a method of selecting programs in a television receiver that operates in accordance with digital television standards.

1 is a block diagram illustrating a television receiver including an embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 2 is a block diagram illustrating the digital audio / video processor shown in FIG. 1;

3 is a plan view showing a remote control device used in combination with the television receiver shown in FIG.

4 and 5 show program number indications and representative channel numbers generated by the digital receiver shown in FIG.

6, 7, and 8 are flowcharts describing the operation of the program selection mechanism of the television receiver shown in FIG.

The present invention is realized in a digital television receiver having a program selection device. The program selection device includes second means for selecting respective programs in the television channels, and means for selecting a frequency corresponding to the television channels.

1 is a block diagram of a digital television receiver used in the present invention. In FIG. 1, a radio frequency (RF) containing a digital television signal is received at the tuner 110. In a representative embodiment of the present invention, such a signal has a bandwidth of 6 MHz and contains one or more digital television programs. Each program complies with the ATSC standard referenced above and contains at least video and audio components. If the signal contains only one program, the program will contain a high definition television (HDTV) signal. (Ie, the main profile, high level (MP ＠ HL) signal defined in the MPEG-2 standard). If the signal contains five programs, each program will be an HDTV program or a standard definition television (SDTV) signal (eg, the main profile, high level (MP ＠ ML) signal defined by the MPEG-2 standard).

The tuner 110 demodulates the RF signal and supplies the digital signal to the digital audio / video signal processor 112. The audio / video signal processor is controlled by the microprocessor 114 to separate at least one program from the digital signal. The signal is then stored in memory 116 as an existing bit stream or program basic system (PES) packet. The digital audio / video processor 112 decodes the audio portion of the program and converts it to an analog signal. This signal is supplied to the analog audio processor 118. The processor 118 amplifies the analog audio signal and performs functions controlled by the viewer such as loudness, bass, treble and balance. The processed analog audio signal is provided to an audio output port 122. An audio system (not shown) is connected to the audio output port 122 to play the audio portion of the selected television program.

The digital audio / video processor 112 decodes the encoded video component of the program stored in the memory 116, and supplies an analog video signal to the analog video processor 120. Processor 120 adjusts the characteristics of the analog video signal, such as color saturation, hue, brightness, and contrast, and provides the processed video signal to video output port 124. A television monitor (not shown) is connected to the video output port 124 to play the video portion of the selected television program.

The microprocessor receives instructions for controlling the tuner 110, the digital audio / video processor 112, the analog processor 118, and the analog video processor 120 from the optical receiver 130. In an exemplary embodiment of the invention, such an optical receiver is responsive to optical signals generated by the remote control device. A representative lightning control device is described in detail below and shown in FIG.

FIG. 2 is a block diagram illustrating a digital audio / video processor used as the processor shown in FIG. In FIG. 2, demodulated digital television signals from tuner 110 are received by channel data processor 210. In FIG. This signal contains a sequence of transport packets and defines a transport bit stream. Each transport packet contains 188 bytes, one program, such as the Program Mapping Table (PMT), and data defined for all bit streams, such as the Program Associatipn Table (PAT). It contains the data used for the group of elements that define the, and the data used for only one element of a program.

Processor 210 monitors the transport bit stream to extract PAT transport packets and supplies these packets to microprocessor 114 via microprocessor interface 228. These packets are identified when the packet identifier (PID) value becomes "0". The PAT contains a table of programs carried in the transport bit stream and the PID of the PMT corresponding to the program. The microprocessor 114 decodes these packets to determine the PID value of packets that have a PMT for each program contained in the transport bit stream. The microprocessor 114 uses the interface 228 to send these PID values to the channel data processor 210. Processor 210 separates the PMT packets from the transport bit stream and provides these packets to microprocessor 114. The microprocessor 114 recovers the PMTs from the packets sent by the channel data processor 210. Therefore, the microprocessor always has a set of program mapping tables for the received transport bit stream.

Using the PMT, the microprocessor 114 controls the transfer processor 220 to recover the program elements for the program selected by the viewer from the transport bit stream. Program elements are contained in transport packets. Each element has its own PID, as described below with reference to Table 3. The transmission processor, in response to the PID values provided through the microprocessor interface 228, captures each packet having a PID corresponding to the selected program and extracts a payload portion from the transmission packets. The payload portion for each element is then stored in each FIFO (first in first out) data in memory 116. Transferring data from the transfer processor to the memory 116 is via the memory controller 116, using direct memory access (DMA) technology.

In accordance with the ATSC and MPEG-2 standards referenced above, transport packets are relatively small (188 byte) fixed length packets containing variable length program elementary stream (PES) packets. The payload portion of the PES packets is the elementary bit streams that define the encoded elements. Exemplary transmission processor 220 is controlled by microprocessor 114, thereby decoding transport packets into PES packets or PES packets into respective elementary bit streams. PES packets or bit streams are stored in the FIFO data structure.

Since the packet contents for the video and audio elements of the program are stored in the FIFO data structure, the microcontroller 114 causes the memory controller 222 to transmit the data in the FIFO data structure to the audio decoding processor 224 and the video decoding processor ( 226). If processors 224 and 226 process data in the form of PES packets, then transport decoder 220 stores the payload portion of the transport packets in the FIFO data structure. If the decoding processor 224 or 226 receives the bit stream data, the transmission processor decodes each PES packet and provides the elementary bit stream to the processor.

The audio processor 224 and the video processor 226 decode the compressed digital data in each bit stream and provide analog audio and video signals to the analog audio processor 118 and the analog video processor 120, respectively. do.

As described above, in a representative embodiment of the present invention, a viewer selects a program that can be viewed on a television monitor connected to the decoder shown in FIG. 1 using a remote control apparatus. The selection signals are transmitted from the remote controller to the microprocessor 114 which controls the transmission processor 220. Therefore, the transfer processor 220 extracts another program stream from the transport bit stream. The memory interface 222 transmits the extracted audio and video program streams to the audio and video decoders. To understand how the various program streams are extracted, it is helpful to understand the structure of the PAT and PMT. This is shown in Table 1 and Table 2.

A Program Related Table (PAT) is made up of one or more parts. Each part has a structure defined in Table 1.

Number of program-related table structures Table ID 8section_syntax_indicator 1'0 '1reserved 2section_length 12transport_stream_id 16reserved 2version_number 5current_next_indicator 1section_number 8last_section_number 8for (i = 0; i 〈N; I ++) {program_number 16if (program_number == 0 {network_Pprogram 13map } CRC_32 32

In a representative embodiment of the present invention, assume that the PAT has only one part, that is, part "0".

The PAT is used by the microprocessor 114 to identify packets containing the PMTs for each program carried in the transport bit stream. That is, each program in the transport bit stream has a PID of packets containing a PMT for the program and an input in the PAT that defines the program number for the program. As shown in Table 1, there are N program-number values and N program-mapping-PID values in the PAT. That is, for each of the N programs included in the transport bit stream. Table 2 defines the structure of the program mapping table.

Program Mapping Table Number of Bits Table ID 8section_syntax_indicator 1'0 '1reserved 2section_length 12program_number 16reserved 2version_number 5current_next_indicator 1section_number 8last_section_number 8reserved 3PCR_PID 13reserved 4program_info_length 12for (i = 0; i <M; i ++) {descripti = 0 () M; i ++) (stream_type 8reserved 3elementary_PID 13reserved 4ES_info_length 12 for (i = 0; i <N; I ++) {descriptor ()} CRC_32 32

As defined in Table 2, there are M base-PI values defined for each PMT. Each elementary PID value identifies packets containing each program elementary stream corresponding to each element of the program. The stream-type field of the PMT input indicates whether the elementary stream is audio, video, or data and identifies the encoding method used to create the bit stream. Therefore, after identifying the stream type and the underlying PID for each program element in the PMT, the microprocessor 114 instructs the channel data processor 210 and the transfer processor 220 to display the elements for the selected program in the memory 116. In the FIFO data structure, and from this data stream to the audio and video processors 224,226.

Television programs encoded according to the program time standard defined by ATSC are separated from the transport bit stream using only the PMT PID extracted from the PAT. The standard PMT PID for programs is used to derive the PID for at least the audio and video elements of the program. It is assumed that a program clock reference (PCR) value for a program is included in the video bit stream. According to this standard, the PMT PID (also known as the base PID) has two parts, a value between 1 and 225, the program number stored in eight higher-order bits (11: 4), It is a 13-bit value that contains a low order 4-bit value (3: 0) for the elements. The program number portion of the PMT PID is the same as the program number field of the PMT input, as shown in Table 1. Representative sets of elements for television programs corresponding to the standard are shown in Table 3.

name PID definition Explanation PMT_PIDVideo-PIDAudio_PIDData_PID base_PID + 0x0000base_PID + 0x0001base_PID + 0x0004base_PID + 0x000A PID of the bit stream containing the program_mapping table for the program PID of the bit stream containing the video for the PID program of the bit stream containing the video for the program

A program based on the standard has a logical 0 in the most significant bit of the 13-bit PMT_PID. Programs conforming to the standard have a logic 1 in these bits.

After synchronizing on the transport bit stream, the microprocessor 114 constructs a program matching table that associates the PIDs of each element of the program identified in the PMT or by the standard with each program number identified in the PAT. .

The digital audio / video processor 112 shown in Figs. 1 and 2 processes several program streams simultaneously, sending the elements of each program to their respective FIFO structures. This is an advantage when the viewer wants to select one of several programs transmitted on one channel. To help high speed switching among the various programs transmitted in one channel, all the programs carried by the transport bit stream are decoded and allocated within each set of FIFO structures. When a request to switch to another program in the channel is received, the microprocessor 114 (shown in FIG. 1) instructs the memory controller 222 (shown in FIG. 2) to replace the bit stream present in the previous program. Each bit stream in the selected program is provided to audio and video processors 224 and 226.

3 is a plan view of a remote control apparatus used in the present invention. Exemplary remote control device 300 includes a numeric keypad 310, an input key 312, a program selection key 314 and down-scrolling keys 316, 318. As will be described below, the keys on this device are in various programs in accordance with the ATSC standard referred to above, and are used to select programs and channels in a set-top converter or television receiver that receive television signals encoded in digital format. .

4 and 5 show representative on-screen displays made by a television receiver or set top converter used in the present invention. These indications include the channel part and the program part. Representative representations shown in FIG. 4 appear when the microprocessor 114 has switched the tuner to channel 4. If there is no selection of a particular program, the system extracts the first program, in this case program 1, from the transport bit stream. If the viewer later selects the program 2 by one of the methods described below, the on-screen display shown in Fig. 5 appears. Then, while maintaining the same channel number, the program number is changed to "2".

The television receiver or set top converter according to the invention switches the program using one or more of the three methods described below. According to the first method described with reference to Fig. 6, the viewer selects the numeric keypad 310, selects a channel, and selects a program in the channel. Using the second method described with reference to FIG. 7, the viewer selects a channel using the numeric keypad 310 or the scrolling buttons 316 and 318, and uses the program selection button 314 to select a channel. Proceed to the program. The third method uses scrolling buttons 316 and 318 to move to the channels and the programs within each channel. These methods are not mutually exclusive. And with minor modifications, all three methods are performed in a single program selection device.

The flowcharts described below illustrate the processing performed by the microprocessor 114 in response to program selection received from the program selection device 300 via the optical receiver 130. Button inputs that initiate these processes are interpreted by the microprocessor 114 as a pause operation. When a signal is received from the optical receiver 130, the signal causes a pause operation in the microprocessor 114 and begins the process of collecting and parsing a sequence of signals. When the microprocessor parses a sequence that matches an instruction such as "1, 2, input," it causes the appropriate procedure shown in Figures 6, 7, or 9 to be performed. In an example, the processes shown in FIG. 6 are performed and convey the number 12.

6 is a flowchart describing a first program selection method. Using this method, the viewer selects the channel number using the keypad 310 and presses the input key 312. The keypad 310 is used to select a program number in the channel and press an input key. As described above, if the viewer does not select a particular program, but only one channel, the selection circuit according to the present invention automatically selects the program in the chamal having the lowest program number. To distinguish between channel selection, program selection pairs and two sequential channel selections, a representative system includes a timer.

In FIG. 6, one number is received at step 610. Next, at step 612, the microprocessor 114 checks the timer to determine if the timer has timed out. If so, the number is considered a channel number, and a step 614 is performed in which the microprocessor 114 tunes the tuner to a particular channel number and resets the timer at step 615. In step 616, the microprocessor 114 creates a program match table from the PAT and PMT data in the bit stream, optionally received over the channel. And instructs the channel data processor 210 to decode and separate the packets corresponding to the lowest numbered program number in the program match table.

If at step 612 the timer has not timed out, the particular number is considered to be a program number in the channel, and at step 618 the microprocessor 114 retrieves the PID associated with the particular program number from the program match table. Restore In addition, the channel data processor 210, the transfer processor 220, and the memory controller 222 are instructed to provide bit streams having these PIDs to the audio processor 224 and the video processor 226. In the program matching table, if there is no program corresponding to the specific program number, the microprocessor 114 controls the display on the screen to display the blank screen having the channel number and "Invalid program Number ##". At this time, "##" corresponds to the program number received in step 610. After step 616 or 615, step 620 is performed to return control to the active processing step when the microprocessor 114 is stopped.

7 shows that the process used as another method of selecting a program via the numeric keypad 310 is performed by the microprocessor 114. Using this fixation, the viewer selects a channel in the manner described with reference to FIG. When a channel is selected, the microprocessor 114 causes the tuner to tune to the selected channel and recovers the PATs and optionally the PMTs for the transport bit stream, to create a program match table. The microprocessor 114 instructs the digital audio / video processor 112 to decode the lowest numbered program in the transport bit stream. To view other programs in the transport bit stream of the selected channel, the viewer presses the PROG SEL button 314. When the microprocessor 114 detects that this button is pressed, it will perform the procedure shown in FIG. In this process the first step receives an indication that the PROG SEL button 314 has been pressed. In step 712, the process determines whether the currently selected program is the same as the last program in the program match table for the channel. If not, then at step 716, the microprocessor instructs the digital audio / video processor 112 to decode and display using the PID for the next program in the program match table. If the program currently selected in step 712 is the last program in the program matching table, then in step 714, the microprocessor 114 uses the transport packets whose processor 112 has a PID associated with the first program in the table. To decode and display. Therefore, by repeatedly pressing the PROG SEL button, the viewer can browse all the programs in a given transport bit stream. If there is only one program in the bart stream, pressing the PROG SEL button has no effect. After step 714 or step 716, step 718 returns control to the process that was being performed when the microprocessor 114 was stopped.

The final selection method described utilizes scroll up key 316 and scroll down key 318. Because of the similarity in the operation of these keys, only the processing performed on one of the keys, scroll up key 316, is described. When the process is called, the process begins at step 810. This is because the scroll up key 316 is already pressed. In step 812, the process determines whether the currently displayed program for the current channel is the last program in the program matching table. If not, then at step 814, the microprocessor 14 causes the digital audio / video processor 112 to decode and display using the data in the packets having the PID associated with the next program in the program match table. Instruct. If at step 812 the process determines that the program currently displayed is the last program in the table, control passes to step 816. In step 816, the microprocessor 114 instructs the tuner 110 to tune to the next channel in the scan list, and once the channel is tuned, the microprocessor causes the digital audio / video processor 112 to program match table. Extract packets for the first program in the file and instruct them to decode. After step 814 or step 816, step 818 is performed to return control to the process that was being performed when the microprocessor 114 was stopped.

Therefore, when scanning up using the scan-up button 316, each program in each channel is viewed in order. The scan down key performs a similar function. The difference is that programs and channels are scanned in the opposite direction. In other words, the current channel and the current program are scanned from the next lower numbered program in the program match table and the next lower channel in the receiver's scan list.

As described above, the processes described in Figures 6-8 are more efficient by the digital audio / video processor 112 extracting all programs in the transport bit stream and storing each program in a set of FIFO structures. Is performed. This allows the microprocessor 114 to switch programs faster than if the program data were not already queued in the FIGO array.

As mentioned above, all such tuning methods can be used together. In addition to the process described with reference to FIG. 6 or 7, it is desirable to describe at least the process described with reference to FIG. If the program number and channel number are already known, the combined processes allow the viewer to tune directly to one program or to the channel and scroll to the appropriate program.

Claims (10)

In the program selection device for a digital television receiver, Means for controlling tuning the receiver to a frequency corresponding to a channel signal comprising multiple program bit streams; Means for recovering multiple program bit streams from the channel signal; Means for generating a program match table identifying each program in the multiple program bit stream from the recovered multiple program bit stream; And means for selecting each program decoded from the multiple program bit stream and displayed on the digital television receiver in response to the program matching table. 2. The apparatus of claim 1, wherein the means for tuning the receiver to a frequency corresponding to the channel comprises means for specifying a channel number, And means for selecting each program from said multiple program bit stream comprises means for specifying a program number. 3. The apparatus according to claim 2, further comprising: a timer means for resetting when the channel number is specified, and after resetting, for being active for a predetermined period; It is equipped with a means of receiving a numerical input value by adding, The means for specifying the channel number receives the numerical input value when the timer is inactive, and the means for receiving the program number receives the numerical input value when the timer is in an active state. Program selection device. 4. A program according to claim 3, wherein said program selection means further comprises means for selecting a next program from said program matching table in response to said program matching table and a program selection key, wherein said next program is already in the program selection table. A program selection device for a digital television receiver adjacent to a selected program. 5. The digital television receiver of claim 4, wherein the digital television receiver comprises a scan list comprising a sequence of channels tuned by the receiver, The program selecting device selects a next program from the program matching table when the previously selected program is not the last program in the program matching table in response to the program matching table and the scanning list, and the previously selected program is selected. When the program is the last program in the program matching table, program scrolling means for selecting the next channel from the scan list is further provided. And the next channel is adjacent to the previously selected program in the scan list. 2. The apparatus of claim 1, wherein the means for tuning the receiver to a frequency corresponding to the channel comprises means for specifying a channel number, Means for selecting each program from the multiple program bit stream includes means for selecting a next program from the program matching table in response to the program matching table and a program selection key, And wherein the next program is in the vicinity of a program already selected in the program selection table. The digital television receiver of claim 6, comprising a scan list comprising a sequence of channels tuned by the receiver, The program selecting device selects a next program from the program matching table when the previously selected program is not the last program in the program matching table, in response to the program matching table and the scanning list, and selects the previously selected program. When the program is the last program in the program matching table, program scrolling means for selecting the next channel from the scanning list is further provided. And the next channel is adjacent to the previously selected program in the scan list. A method of selecting each program from a set of multiple program bit streams received by a digital television receiver, the method comprising: Selecting a channel corresponding to one of the multiple program bit streams; Receiving one multiple program bit stream corresponding to the selected channel; Generating, from the selected multiple program bit stream, a program match table identifying each program within the received multiple program bit stream; Means for selecting a next program from the program matching table in response to the program matching table and the program selection key, And the next program is adjacent to the previously selected program in the program selection table. A method for selecting each program from a set of multiple program bit streams received by said digital television receiver having a scan list comprising a sequence of channels tuned by a digital television receiver, the method comprising: Selecting a channel corresponding to one of the multiple program bit streams; Receiving one multiple program bit stream corresponding to the selected channel; Generating, from the selected multiple program bit stream, a program match table identifying each program within the received multiple program bit stream; When there is a higher numbered program in the program match table, scroll to the next program in the program match table, and when the currently selected program is the highest numbered program in the program match table, from the scan list Has a scrolling step to scroll to the next channel, And a next channel is adjacent to a previously selected channel in the scan list. A method of selecting each program from a set of multiple program bit streams received by a digital television receiver, the method comprising: Receiving a channel number to select a channel corresponding to one of the multiple program bit streams; Receiving the one multiple program bit stream corresponding to the selected channel; Generating, from the selected multiple program bit stream, a program match table identifying each program within the received multiple program bit stream; Receiving a program number, comparing the received program number with the program matching table, and selecting one program from the program matching table.