JP2002353915A - Personal digital assistant - Google Patents

Abstract

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To provide a personal digital assistant(PDA), with which services in one part of ground wave digital broadcasting can be enjoyed and a program desired to view can be received by a ground wave digital broadcasting receiver which is other than own PDA. SOLUTION: A PDA 50 can execute various functions as PDF, such as schedule managing function, calendar function, simple document preparing function and electronic main function and further can acquire the data stream or PSI/SI of data broadcasting by a ground wave digital broadcasting receiving function. Based on this SI information, an EPG picture is generated on a liquid crystal display 48, information specifying a program designated on such an EPG screen is transmitted to a ground wave digital broadcasting receiver 30 placed at home by using a communication function and program recording is conducted.

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION

[0001]

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to a portable information terminal having a schedule management function, a calendar function, a simple document creation function, an electronic mail function, and the like.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art Conventionally, portable information terminals (devices called PDAs, cellular phones, and the like) having a schedule management function, a calendar function, a simple document creation function,
Notebook computers) are known. Such a portable information terminal can transmit and receive audio information, video information such as characters, and the like even when going outside via a communication function provided by itself or an external communication device. By the way, terrestrial digital broadcasting has already started overseas, and in Japan, 20
It is scheduled to start broadcasting in 2003. And
Terrestrial digital broadcasting is based on OFDM (O
rthogonal Frequency Divis
Since a transmission system called “ion multiplex” is adopted, a portable (portable) terrestrial digital broadcast receiver may be used. Therefore, it is not difficult to mount a terrestrial digital broadcast receiving function in a conventional portable information terminal. In digital terrestrial broadcasting, video and audio signals are compressed using digital signal compression technology, and a time-division multiplexed stream (transport stream) of video and audio digital signals of a plurality of programs is assigned to a channel. Will be transmitted. On the other hand, a broadcast receiving apparatus for receiving such terrestrial digital broadcasts selects one of a plurality of frequencies of digital broadcast received through an antenna by a tuner, and selects a plurality of channels included in the one frequency. One is selected by demultiplex processing, and a video / audio signal is output by decoding the digital signal of the selected channel.

[0003]

However, the display provided in the portable information terminal is generally composed of a liquid crystal display panel, the screen size is small, and the resolution and operating speed are not so high. Therefore, it is not realistic to display a received moving image of terrestrial digital broadcasting on such a display.

According to the present invention, in view of the above-mentioned circumstances, it is possible to enjoy some services of digital terrestrial broadcasting and to allow a terrestrial digital broadcast receiving apparatus other than the own apparatus to receive a program to be viewed. It is intended to provide a portable information terminal.

[0005]

In order to solve the above-mentioned problems, a portable information terminal according to the present invention comprises: a tuner for receiving a terrestrial digital broadcast to generate a transport stream; Separating means for extracting additional information from a port stream; means for generating an electronic program guide image based on the additional information; means for specifying a program to be displayed on the electronic program guide image; and information for specifying the specified program Means for transmitting to the line by itself or via an externally connected communication device,
It is characterized by having.

With the above configuration, although the program video by terrestrial digital broadcasting cannot be viewed, the program desired to be viewed is specified by the electronic program guide, and the program is received by, for example, a terrestrial digital broadcast receiver at home. Then, recording or the like can be performed.

[0007] Preferably, there is provided means for generating a data broadcast image based on the additional information. According to this, data broadcasting (including interactive programs such as quiz programs) can be enjoyed by the portable information terminal.

[0008]

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENTS A portable information terminal according to an embodiment of the present invention will be described below with reference to FIGS. 1 and 2, and a terrestrial digital broadcast receiving apparatus placed at home will be described with reference to FIG.

In the portable information terminal 50 shown in FIG. 1, a terrestrial antenna 41 receives a terrestrial broadcast wave and supplies a received signal to a terrestrial digital tuner 42. The terrestrial digital tuner 42 includes a channel selection processing circuit, a mixer (mixer), and the like. The mixer mixes the signal of the desired channel and the local oscillation signal to generate an intermediate frequency signal. The circuit that generates the local oscillation signal includes, for example, a variable capacitance diode whose capacitance changes according to the applied voltage, and outputs a signal of a constant intermediate frequency from the mixer.
A local oscillation signal changed corresponding to a signal of a desired channel is generated. The tuning processing circuit receives data of an applied voltage (tuning voltage) corresponding to each channel from a non-volatile memory (for example, an EEPROM) (not shown), and converts the data into an analog signal (voltage conversion) by a D / A converter (not shown). ) To give the variable capacitance diode.

The terrestrial digital tuner 42 extracts a signal of a specific frequency from high-frequency digital modulation signals including video and audio data by the above-described channel selection processing. In addition, the terrestrial digital tuner 42
Providing a deinterleave circuit, an error correction circuit, a demodulation circuit, and the like, demodulates the selected digital modulation signal and outputs a transport stream.

The transport stream includes MPE
G2 (Moving Picture Experts
Group 2) video transport packets, audio transport packets, data broadcast data streams, and PSI / SI (Program Sp.
effective Information / Service
e Information), but the demultiplexer (DEMUX) 43 separates the data stream of the data broadcast and the PSI / SI and supplies them to the TV reception control unit. In addition, it is possible to multiplex a plurality of channels in the transport stream,
The process for selecting an arbitrary channel from these is performed by NIT (Network Information) in PSI.
ationTable), PAT (Program A)
Sociation Table), CAT (Con
This can be achieved by extracting data such as which packet ID is multiplexed in the transport stream with an arbitrary channel from the “Digital Access Table”. Also, SI (service information)
Contains program information (program content, program start time, program continuation time, genre information, etc.), and an EPG screen is configured based on such information.

The operation unit 44 can be configured as a pointing device, a touch panel using a liquid crystal display 48, or the like, in addition to the keyboard.

The nonvolatile memory 46 stores program information separated from the transport stream.

The TV reception control unit performs a channel selection command to the tuner 42 and controls the demultiplexer 43, and also transmits EPG information and data broadcast information in response to an EPG information request and data broadcast information request from the portable terminal function block 47. It performs processing such as providing.

The portable terminal function block 47 provides a schedule management function, a calendar function, a simple document creation function,
Various functions as a portable information terminal such as an e-mail function are executed. Then, as a function according to the present invention, a process of generating display data to be given to the liquid crystal display 48 based on the EPG information and the data broadcast information received from the TV reception control unit, and designated by an operation of the operation unit 44 in the EPG screen display state A process for managing information (for example, a channel number and a program start / end time) for specifying a specified program, and transmitting the program specifying information to a partner of a telephone number specified in advance by using a communication function (a terrestrial digital broadcast at home). The processing for transmitting to the receiving device 30) is performed. In this embodiment, an externally connected mobile phone 49 is used for sending and receiving e-mails and transmitting the program specifying information.

FIG. 2A is an explanatory view showing an example of an EPG screen displayed on the liquid crystal display 48 of the portable information terminal 50, and FIG. 2B is an explanatory view showing an example of a reserved program list screen. It is. On the EPG screen of FIG.
For example, by operating the direction keys to change the color of the part where the program desired to be viewed is displayed and operating the enter key with the cursor A, the program is designated as a reserved program. It is to be noted that the program with the mark of “pre” in the figure has already been subjected to the reservation processing and has already been notified of the reservation to the terrestrial display broadcast receiving apparatus 30 at home by the communication function. When the list display key on this screen is operated with the cursor A, a reserved program list screen shown in FIG. When the transmission key on this screen is operated, the terrestrial display broadcast receiver 3 at home is operated by the communication function.
0 will be notified of the reservation.

FIG. 1 is a block diagram showing a terrestrial digital broadcast receiving apparatus 30 placed at home. The terrestrial antenna 1 receives a terrestrial broadcast wave and supplies a received signal to a terrestrial digital tuner 2. Since the function of this terrestrial digital tuner 2 is the same as that of the above-described tuner 42,
Description is omitted.

A demultiplexer (DEMUX) 3 converts the transport stream received from the terrestrial digital tuner 2 into an MPEG2 (Moving Pic).
video Experts Group 2) video transport packets, audio transport packets, and PSI / SI (Program Speci).
fic Information / Service I
nformation). The demultiplexer 3 supplies the video transport packet and the audio transport packet to the AV decoder 4 and
/ SI to the CPU 13.

The AV decoder 4 includes a video decoder for decoding video transport packets and an audio decoder for decoding audio transport packets. The video decoder is
The input variable length code is decoded to obtain a quantization coefficient and a motion vector, and inverse DCT transform and motion compensation control based on the motion vector are performed. The audio decoder generates audio data by decoding the input coded signal. The video data generated by the decoding is output to the video processing circuit 5, and the audio data is output to the audio processing circuit 6.

The video processing circuit 5 receives video data from the AV decoder 4 and performs D / A conversion to generate a video signal. The audio processing circuit 6 receives the audio data output from the AV decoder 4 and performs D / A conversion to generate an analog audio signal.

Each of the video output circuit 7 and the audio output circuit 8 includes an output resistor, an amplifier, and the like. The AV output terminal 9 is provided with an output section (a set of left and right audio output terminals and the like and a set of video output terminals). One output unit has a video / audio code 1
A VCR (Video Cassette Recorder) 16 is connected by 7, and a monitor 18 having an image receiving unit 18 a and a speaker 18 b is connected to another output unit by a video / audio code 19.
Is connected. Note that a digital signal recording system may be used as the VCR 16 to record digital data.

An OSD (on-screen display) circuit 12 outputs bitmap data based on character information or the like instructed by the CPU 13 to the adder 20. The adder 20 performs a process of incorporating the bitmap data into an image. The OSD circuit 12 realizes an EPG screen display based on the service information included in the PSI received by the CPU 13.

The memory 14 stores program information and recording reservation information.

The modem 21 operates under the control of the CPU 13 in a dial-up connection when charging information is periodically transmitted. Normally, the modem 21 does not perform an incoming call operation. However, in order to respond to the transmission of a reserved program from the portable information terminal 50, the modem 21 performs an incoming call operation and performs
Information transmission is carried out between 0.

The remote control transmitter 10 is a transmitter for sending a command to the broadcast receiving device 30. When a key (not shown) provided on the remote control transmitter 10 is operated, a signal light (remote control signal) indicating a command corresponding to the key is transmitted from a light emitting unit (not shown). The remote control light receiver 11 receives the signal light, converts the signal light into an electric signal, and supplies the electric signal to the CPU 13.

The CPU 13 performs processing such as recording reservation by the remote control transmitter 10, and also performs processing such as recording reservation based on command information from the portable information terminal 50. The difference between these two recording reservation processes is that the CPU 13 performs the processing based on the command information from the remote control light receiver 11 or the command information from the portable information terminal 50. Are, for example, a channel number and a program start / end time, and there is no particular difference in the basic processing of recording reservation based on this command information.

The external device remote control transmitter 15 is a VCR 1
The transmitter transmits a signal light (remote control signal) from a light emitting unit (not shown) based on a control signal output from the CPU 13. The CPU 13
Command processing based on a remote control code in the VCR of each company can be performed. When a command is issued to the VCR 16, the external device remote control transmitter 15 is driven based on the remote control code used in the VCR 16.

In digital terrestrial broadcasting, MF
If N is adopted, for example, 10 in a certain area of Kanto
There is a case where a program broadcast from 05:00 on September 20 on channel 0 is different from a program broadcast on the same channel at the same date and time in a certain area of Kansai, so the user is out of Kanto and his home is Kansai. Then, it is possible that a program different from the desired program has been reserved. Therefore, a program having the same program name as the above-mentioned program name is extracted from the program information stored in the memory of the terrestrial digital broadcast receiving apparatus 30 at home, including the program name in the program specifying information. The receiving process may be performed based on the channel number and the program start / end time.

[0029]

As described above, according to the present invention, it is not possible to watch a program video by terrestrial digital broadcasting, but a program desired to be viewed is specified on an EPG screen and transmitted to a terrestrial digital broadcasting receiver at home. It is possible to receive the program and perform recording or the like. In addition, data broadcasting (including interactive programs such as quiz programs) can be enjoyed on the portable information terminal.

[Brief description of the drawings]

FIG. 1 is a block diagram showing a portable information terminal according to an embodiment of the present invention.

FIGS. 2A and 2B are explanatory diagrams showing display images of the portable information terminal. FIG. 2A is an EPG screen, and FIG. 2B is a reservation list screen.

FIG. 3 is a block diagram showing a terrestrial digital broadcast receiver installed at home.

[Explanation of symbols]

 Reference Signs List 30 terrestrial digital broadcast receiver 41 antenna 42 terrestrial digital tuner 43 demultiplexer 45 TV reception control unit 47 portable terminal function block 50 portable information terminal

Continuation of the front page (51) Int.Cl. ⁷ Identification symbol FI Theme coat II (reference) H04N 7/173 630 H04N 7/173 630 H04Q 9/00 321 H04Q 9/00 321E

Claims (2)

[Claims] 1. A portable information terminal for receiving a terrestrial digital broadcast to generate a transport stream, a separating means for extracting additional information from the transport stream, and an electronic program guide based on the additional information. Means for generating an image, means for specifying a program to be displayed on the electronic program guide image, and means for transmitting information for specifying the specified program to a line via the communication apparatus itself or via an externally connected communication device. A portable information terminal characterized by the following. 2. The portable information terminal according to claim 1, further comprising: means for generating a data broadcast image based on said additional information.