KR20080017958A - A controlling method and a receiver for data broadcasting application - Google Patents

Abstract

A method for controlling a data broadcast application and a broadcast receiver for receiving the same are provided to solve a problem that current standards of a data broadcast platform present only content that a stored application can be upgraded asymmetrically. A receiving unit(601) receives an application information table including application upgrade information and a data broadcast signal including a data broadcast application. A carousel decoder(610) decodes the application and the application information table. A storage unit(612) stores an upgraded application which has been decoded by the carousel decoder(610). When the storing of the upgraded application in the storage unit(612) is completed, an application controller(606) replaceably executes the upgraded application. The carousel decoder(610) extracts data of a version field by parsing the application information table, and the application controller(606) determines whether or not the application has been upgraded based on the version field data.

Description

A controlling method and a receiver for data broadcasting application

1 is a hierarchical diagram of a concept of processing a data broadcast application and additional information according to the present invention;

2 is a first embodiment of a method for controlling a data broadcast application according to the present invention;

3 is a second embodiment of a method for controlling a data broadcast application according to the present invention;

4 illustrates an example in which a data broadcast signal is divided and received.

5A and 5B are exemplary diagrams of specific fields of an application information table of an execution management application and an unbound application.

6 is a diagram illustrating the configuration of a data broadcast receiving apparatus according to the present invention.

* Description of the symbols for the main parts of the drawings

601: receiver 602: demodulator

603: demultiplexer 604: A / V decoder

605: display unit 606: application control unit

607: channel manager 608: SI decoder

609: SI database 610: carousel decoder

611: application database 612: storage unit

613: control unit 614: security module

The present invention relates to a method for controlling a data broadcast application and a broadcast receiver for receiving the same, and more particularly, to a method for upgrading a data broadcast application and a broadcast receiver for upgrading a data broadcast application.

Recently, with the rapid development of digital broadcasting, not only video and audio broadcasting signals are transmitted from broadcasting stations, but also various data broadcasting signals are transmitted together or independently.

The data broadcasting platform may include an open cable application platform (OCA) data broadcast, a multimedia home platform (MHP) data broadcast, and an advanced common application platform (ACAP) data broadcast.

In addition, a cable system operator (SO), a multiple system operator (MSO), or the like broadcasts a bound application or an unbound application in transmitting data broadcast. To the receiver.

The bound application is an application related to the A / V stream, and refers to an application that a user cannot utilize when tuning to another channel while watching a specific channel. The bound application is an application related to the A / V stream of the channel tuned by the current receiver and is continuously received and displayed by a signal from a broadcasting station, and is not stored permanently or semi-permanently in the broadcast receiver. It is stored in, so it is deleted when tuning to another channel.

On the other hand, the unbound application is an application that is not associated with a specific A / V channel, and may be utilized by a user even when the channel is tuned to another channel or even when the power is turned on / off while watching a specific channel. It means an application that can. The unbound application is stored permanently or semi-permanently in the broadcast receiver. Because stored applications are used, the stored applications need to be updated periodically over time.

The unbound application refers to an unbound application supported by the data broadcasting platform, which will be referred to simply as an unbound application.

In the current standard of the data broadcasting platform, only the content of asynchronous upgrade is available when upgrading the stored application. Therefore, a more detailed upgrade process needs to be presented.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION The present invention has been made to solve the above problems, and an object of the present invention is to provide a method and apparatus for processing a conventional application and an upgraded application when upgrading a stored application.

According to another embodiment of the present invention, the present invention provides a method and apparatus for processing a running management application and a general application when the execution management application is to be upgraded.

In order to achieve the above object, the present invention provides a method for controlling a data broadcast application, comprising: (a) receiving an application information table, (b) extracting upgrade information based on the application information table, (c) Receiving the upgraded application corresponding to the upgrade information, (d) provides a method comprising the step of executing the upgraded application.

The step (b) includes parsing the received application information table and analyzing a version field of the application information table to determine whether to upgrade a predetermined application.

If the version field is higher version data than the conventional version data, it is determined that an upgrade is required.

In the step (c), the upgraded application file is received on the path indicated by the data in the locator field of the application information table.

After receiving the upgraded application further comprises the step of deleting the existing application to be the target of the upgrade.

The application that is the target of the upgrade is characterized in that the execution management application, in the deleting step of the execution management application is characterized in that the self-destroy (self-destroy).

If another application is running in addition to the execution management application that is the target of the upgrade, further comprising the step of stopping the execution of the other application running the execution management application before the self-deletion of the execution management application; do.

The method may further include restarting the system after the deleting of the application.

The data broadcasting platform is characterized in that the OCAP (Open Cable Application Platform) data broadcasting, wherein the application information table is characterized in that the XAIT.

According to another embodiment of the present invention, an apparatus for receiving a data broadcast signal, comprising: an application information table including upgrade information of an application and a receiver for receiving a data broadcast signal including a data broadcast application, the application and the application information table When the storage of the data decoder which decodes the upgraded application decoded by the data decoder is stored and the storage of the upgraded application is completed, the conventional application is deleted and the upgraded application stored in the storage unit is deleted. It provides an apparatus comprising an application control unit to replace and execute.

The data decoder parses the application information table to extract data of a version field, and the application controller determines whether to upgrade an application based on the version field data.

The data decoder parses the application information table to extract data of a locator field, and the application controller determines a path for receiving an upgraded application file based on the locator field data.

The application to be upgraded is characterized in that the execution management application, the application control unit is characterized in that the self-deleting the conventional execution management application.

When another application is running together with the execution management application that is the target of the upgrade, the application controller stops executing the other application with the conventional execution management application and then deletes the conventional execution management application by itself. It is characterized by.

The application control unit is characterized in that the middleware of the system.

The application control unit may delete the application using the destroyXlet command of the Java program.

Therefore, according to the present invention, when upgrading the execution management application, the upgrade can be executed without error of the system even while replacing the system management application.

Hereinafter, with reference to the accompanying drawings, preferred embodiments of the present invention that can specifically realize the above object will be described.

1 is a hierarchical diagram illustrating a concept of processing a data broadcast application and additional information according to the present invention. An embodiment of a broadcast signal transmission and reception method will be described with reference to FIG. 1.

When the broadcast receiving device receives the broadcast content including the application, the broadcast receiving device processes the broadcast content received through the internal functional blocks. The receiver of the broadcast reception device may receive broadcast content through the selected channel, and the broadcast decoder may decode the received broadcast content (layer c).

The user may send a control command for the processing direction of the decoded broadcast content through an application interface (a and b layers). The decoded broadcast content may be displayed to the user through an application interface (layer a).

At this time, an application platform including an application manager or a Java platform is responsible for overall control of the application, receives a user control command from the user through the application interface, and broadcasts content according to the control command. Run the application sent with

Hereinafter, the hardware and software platform that is in charge of the overall control of the application and monitors the state of the application are referred to as middleware.

2 shows a first embodiment of a method for controlling a data broadcast application according to the present invention. 4 is a diagram illustrating a state in which a data broadcast signal is divided and received, and FIGS. 5A and 5B are diagrams illustrating specific fields of an application information table of an execution management application and an unbound application. This may be an embodiment of an upgrade information related field of the present invention. Hereinafter, a description will be given with reference to FIGS. 2, 4, 5A, and 5B.

Referring to FIG. 2, the method for controlling a data broadcast application according to the present invention may include: (a) receiving an application information table; and (b) upgrading based on the application information table. Extracting information, (c) receiving an upgraded application corresponding to the upgrade information, and (d) executing the upgraded application. In this case, the method further includes deleting the existing application that is the target of the upgrade after receiving the upgraded application.

In FIG. 2, it is indicated as an execution management application which is an embodiment of an application to be upgraded. The present invention is not limited to this. In this case, the execution management application may also be referred to as a monitor application, and may be referred to as an administrator application that implements the headend policy and manages the entire application. Hereinafter, the execution management application will be described as a representative embodiment of the application to be upgraded.

(A) Receiving the application information table, (b) Extracting the upgrade information based on the application information table is the step of receiving the application information table in the state (s21) running the execution management application (s22) ) And whether the application is upgraded based on the extracted information data by parsing the application information table (S23).

The execution management application is an application that manages the entire application. When the data broadcasting system is in an on state, the execution management application is always in a running state. That is, since the execution management application controls another application, the other application is controlled according to the control signal of the execution management application, but the control of the execution management application itself is by the application program interface of the middleware of the system.

In operation S22, the application information table may be received in the form of a packet. When receiving an application information table or receiving an application, as shown in FIG. 4, the application information table is generally divided into a plurality of pieces of data. This is because a broadcast station or the like cannot often transmit data as one complete file at a time. However, the case of transmitting in this manner does not exist alone, and may be transmitted as one complete data.

After receiving the application information table, the receiving side parses the table. Parse this to extract the application information data in the information table. FIG. 5A illustrates a previously received application information table, and FIG. 5B illustrates a currently received application information table in real time.

Upgrade information means all information related to the upgrade of the data broadcast application. That is, application-related information included in the application information table, such as version information for determining whether to upgrade or path information for informing a path for receiving an upgraded application. 5A and 5B illustrate an embodiment of an application information field.

The step of determining whether to upgrade is determined based on the version field data of the application information table. The version field of FIG. 5A has a value of 10, and the version field of FIG. 5B has a value of 11. That is, the version field of the application information table currently received in real time corresponds to a higher version than the version field of the previously received application information table. Therefore, an upgrade is required for the A application, but an upgrade is not required for the B application having no change in the version value.

At this time, you can use the Java program to determine whether the new version. In other words, the Java platform of the middleware determines whether a new version is upgraded using the hasnewVersion () == true command to determine whether to upgrade.

Receiving the upgraded application according to the upgrade information (c) (s24) may receive the upgraded application in the form of a file. In this case, the path from which the upgraded application comes from may be extracted from the locator field of the application information table.

The locator field consists of a value representing a path and a description thereof. For example: Table 1 below is an example of a Uniform Resource Locator (URL) indicating a path in OCAP.

As shown in the example of Table 1, a path for receiving an upgraded application is extracted by URL and a description thereof, and the upgraded application is received in the path accordingly. That is, when the locator field data is ocap: // 0x1234, this means a path having a source_id of 0x1234. The URL format can be OCAP URL, DAB URL, DMB URL, Internet URL, ATSC URL, and so on.

By using the URL, the data path of the upgrade application is merely an example, and may be any path that can represent the path. That is, TCP / IP (Transmission Control Protocol / Internet Protocol) is also possible.

The deleting of the existing application to be upgraded (s25) is a step of deleting the conventional application after receiving the new version of the upgraded application as the corresponding application corresponds to the upgrade.

In a typical unbound application, the execution management application may delete the unbound application by sending a delete control signal. However, if the execution management application itself is the target of the upgrade, it will self destroy because there is no target to send a control command signal.

To this end, the Java platform of the middleware includes an application program interface (API). An application program interface is an interface for an application program to use functions of another program such as a computer operating system (OS) or a database management system (DBMS). Also called an application programming interface, commonly referred to as an API. Actually, it is a set of functions that define functions such as OS and how to use them.

For the self-deletion operation as in this step, the present invention includes the following program.

if (hasnewVersion ()

== true)

destroyXlet

In other words, it determines whether a new version is available, and if this value is true, it deletes the application.

In this case, the method may further include deleting a conventional execution management application and rerunning, ie, rebooting the entire system. This step is an optional step. If you reboot the system and proceed to the next step, you can upgrade the execution management application without system error.

The step (d) of executing the upgraded application includes replacing the conventional execution management application with an upgraded execution management application (s26) and re-running the upgraded execution management application (s27).

3 shows a second embodiment of a method for controlling a data broadcast application according to the present invention. The present embodiment corresponds to a difference from the first embodiment in that an application which is not an upgrade target is executed together with the execution management application.

Since the description of the first embodiment may be applied to the present embodiment, only portions having a difference from the first embodiment will be described.

The method for controlling a data broadcast application according to the second embodiment of the present invention receives an application information table (s32) in a state in which an execution management application and a general application are executed (s31). The information table is analyzed to determine whether to upgrade the execution management application (s33), and when the upgrade target is received, the upgraded execution management application is received (s34). At this time, the execution is stopped for the application that is not the target of the upgrade (s35). Thereafter, the conventional execution management application is self-deleted (s36), and the execution management application is re-executed (s37).

In the figure, the general application being executed is represented as an unbound application, but this is only an example and the present invention is not limited thereto.

When upgrading a run management application, the entire management system must be restarted, so it is necessary to disable or delete the running application. Since this is before upgrading the execution management application, the execution of the application running in the conventional execution management application is stopped or deleted.

In the second embodiment, the content described in the first embodiment is applied.

6 illustrates an embodiment of a configuration of a data broadcast receiving apparatus according to the present invention.

Referring to FIG. 6, the apparatus for receiving data broadcasting according to the present invention includes a receiver 601, a demodulator 602, a demultiplexer 603, an A (Audio) / V (Video) decoder ( 604, a display part 605, an application controller 606, a channel manager 607, an SI decoder 608, an SI database 609, A carousel decoder 610, an application database 611, an NVRAM 612, a controller 613, and the like. 614 may be connected.

The digital broadcast receiver may be, for example, a digital television receiver. In this case, the digital television receiver may receive and process a descriptor defining the return path information transmitted according to the present invention.

The receiver 601 may receive an air wave or cable digital television signal (DTV signal) through an antenna and transmit the received signal to the demodulator 602. In this case, the receiver 601 may be controlled by the channel manager 607, and may report the result and strength of the signal received by the control to the channel manager 607.

The demodulator 602 may demodulate the broadcast signal tuned by the receiver 601 and transmit the demodulated signal to the demultiplexer 603. In this case, when the demodulator 602 performs demodulation, when the signal received from the receiver 601 is an over-the-air broadcast signal, the demodulator 602 may perform VSB (vestigial side band) demodulation. Quadrature Amplitude Modulation (QAM) demodulation or vestigial side band (VSB) demodulation can be performed. In this case, demodulation of the over-the-air broadcast signal may perform 8VSB demodulation, and demodulation of the cable broadcast signal may perform 64 or 256 QAM demodulation and 16VSB demodulation. This corresponds to the embodiment.

The demultiplexer 603 may demultiplex the broadcast signal demodulated by the demodulator 602. That is, the demultiplexer 603 may filter data related to audio, video, and data broadcasting from input transport stream packets.

That is, the demultiplexer 603 may demultiplex the received broadcast signal under the control of the SI decoder 608 and / or the carousel decoder 610. For example, the demultiplexer 603 may demultiplex tables including audio, video and data broadcast related data from transport stream packets as described above. In this case, the demultiplexing unit 603 may perform the demultiplexing by inspecting a header part common to each received table.

That is, the demultiplexer 603 may create a section of a table for A / V broadcasting service and transmit it to the SI decoder 608, and transmits carousel data for data broadcasting service according to the present invention. The table section may be filtered and then transmitted to the carousel decoder 610.

The demultiplexer 603 may demultiplex the A / V transport stream packet under the control of the channel manager 607. Accordingly, when the A / V PID (Packet IDentifier) of the corresponding virtual channel is set, the demultiplexer 603 demultiplexes the elementary stream of the A / V to A / V. Each may be transmitted to the decoder 604.

The A / V decoder 604 may receive the A / V elementary stream packets from the demultiplexer 603 and decode them in a manner such as MPEG-2 or AC3. The A / V decoder 604 may transmit and decode the decoded A / V data to the display unit 605 by synchronizing synch with a video display processor (VDP).

The display unit 605 may output A / V data decoded and received from the A / V decoder 604 through a screen in the case of an audio signal through a screen in the case of a video signal. . In this case, when the data decoded and received from the decoder 604 is a video signal and is output through a screen, the display unit 605 may be controlled by OSD (On Screen Display) graphic data.

The channel manager 607 may manage a channel map and control the receiver 601 and the SI decoder 608 to respond to a viewer's channel request. The channel manager 607 receives a parsing request and a result of a channel related table of a channel to be tuned to the SI decoder 608, and updates the channel map based on the received result. The A / V PID may be set in the demultiplexer 603 to perform a decoding request.

The SI decoder 608 is an SI control module that parses a table section included in a broadcast signal, and may perform a slave operation under the control of the channel manager 607.

That is, the SI decoder 608 may control the demultiplexer 603 to parse a table section included in the broadcast signal. That is, the SI decoder 608 may set the PID for the table in the demultiplexer 603 to create the table section.

The SI decoder 608 may receive and parse the PSI section made by the demultiplexer 603 for the MPEG-2 system or the PSIP section made by the demultiplexer 603 for the ATSC. The SI decoder 608 may store the parsed information in the SI database 609.

In this case, the SI decoder 608 may parse the data of the actual section data that is not filtered or not by the demultiplexer 603, that is, read all of them, and record the data in the SI database 609. have.

The carousel decoder 610 may receive and parse data broadcast related data transmitted from the demultiplexer 603, for example, the transmitted application information table according to the present invention. The application information table is parsed to extract application related information.

The carousel decoder 610 may store the parsed data in the application database 611 and monitor whether the data is updated. Therefore, when an update situation occurs, the carousel decoder 610 may play a role of always keeping the information stored in the application database 611 up to date through reinterpretation of the corresponding part.

At this time, you can use the Java program to determine whether the new version. That is, in the Java platform of the middleware, it is possible to determine whether to upgrade by determining whether a new version is used by using hasnewVersion () == true command.

The carousel decoder 610 may perform a slave operation like the SI decoder 608 under the control of the channel manager 607.

The application controller 606 deletes the conventional application and replaces the upgraded application with the upgraded application due to the data according to the parsing of the carousel decoder 610.

In a typical unbound application, the execution management application may delete the unbound application by sending a delete control signal. However, if the execution management application itself is the target of the upgrade, it will self destroy because there is no target to send a control command signal. To this end, the Java platform of the middleware includes an application program interface (API).

For the self-deletion operation as in this step, the present invention includes the following program. if (hasnewVersion () == true) destroyXlet

In other words, it determines whether a new version is available, and if this value is true, it deletes the application.

In this case, the conventional execution management application may be deleted, and the entire system may be controlled to be re-executed, that is, rebooted. This step is an optional step. If you reboot the system and proceed to the next step, you can upgrade the execution management application without system error.

In addition, the application controller 606 may receive a decoding state from the A / V decoder 604 and control the display unit 605 with the OSD. In this case, the application controller 606 may manage an application status and a database, and manage and control an OSD related to data broadcasting.

In addition, the application controller 606 may control the channel manager 607 to perform channel related operations (channel map management and SI decoder operation). In addition, the GUI control, user request, and television system state of the entire television may be stored and restored in the storage unit 612.

In addition, the digital television receiver may be involved in demodulation of the digital broadcast signal received through the receiver 601 through a security module 614 connected to the outside. That is, when the security module 614 transmits data related to the demodulation to the digital television receiver, the control unit 613 in the digital television receiver generates the signal for controlling the digital broadcast signal received by receiving the data. To be transmitted to the demodulator 602. The demodulator 602 may demodulate the signal according to the control signal and decode the same through the above-described process.

The above description is merely illustrative of the technical idea of the present invention, and those skilled in the art to which the present invention pertains may make various modifications and changes without departing from the essential characteristics of the present invention. Therefore, the embodiments disclosed in the present invention are not intended to limit the technical idea of the present invention but to describe the present invention, and the scope of the technical idea of the present invention is not limited by these embodiments. The scope of protection of the present invention should be interpreted by the following claims, and all technical ideas within the scope equivalent thereto should be construed as being included in the scope of the present invention.

The effects of the method and apparatus for controlling the data broadcasting application according to the present invention described above are as follows.

According to the present invention, when upgrading the execution management application, the upgrade can be executed without error of the system even while replacing the system management application.

Claims (17)

In the method for controlling a data broadcast application, (a) receiving an application information table; (b) extracting upgrade information based on the application information table; (c) receiving an upgraded application corresponding to the upgrade information; and (d) executing the upgraded application. According to claim 1, wherein step (b), Parsing the received application information table; And analyzing a version field of the application information table to determine whether to upgrade a predetermined application. The method of claim 2, And if the version field is higher version data than conventional version data, determining that an upgrade is required. The method of claim 1, wherein step (c) comprises: And receiving an upgraded application file on a path indicated by data of a locator field of the application information table. The method of claim 1, After the step (c), further comprising the step of deleting the existing application that is the target of the upgrade. The method of claim 5, The application targeted for the upgrade is characterized in that the execution management application, The execution management application is self-destroyed. The method of claim 6, In addition to the execution management application that is the target of the upgrade is running other applications together, And before the self-deletion of the execution management application, suspends execution of the other application in which the execution management application is running. The method of claim 5, Restarting the system after deleting the existing application. The method of claim 1, The data broadcasting platform is characterized in that the OCAP (Open Cable Application Platform) data broadcasting, In this case, the application information table is characterized in that the XAIT. An apparatus for receiving a data broadcast signal, A receiver configured to receive an application information table including upgrade information of an application and a data broadcast signal including a data broadcast application; A data decoder for decoding the application and application information table; A storage unit for storing the upgraded application decoded by the data decoder; And When the storage of the upgraded application is completed in the storage unit, characterized in that it comprises an application control unit for replacing and executing the upgraded application stored in the storage unit. The method of claim 10, The data decoder parses the application information table to extract data of a version field, And the application controller determines whether to upgrade an application based on the version field data. The method of claim 10, The data decoder parses the application information table to extract data of a locator field, And the application controller determines a path for receiving an upgraded application file based on the locator field data. The method of claim 10, The application control unit, characterized in that to delete the conventional application when the storage of the upgraded application is completed. The method of claim 13, The application targeted for the upgrade is characterized in that the execution management application, And the application control unit deletes the conventional execution management application by itself. The method of claim 14, If another application is running together with the execution management application that is the target of the upgrade, And the application control unit deletes the conventional execution management application by itself after stopping execution of the other application by the conventional execution management application. The method of claim 10, The application control unit is characterized in that made in the middleware of the system. The method of claim 10, And the application control unit deletes the application using the destroyXlet command of the Java program.

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