JP4321498B2 - Transmitter - Google Patents

Description

  The present invention relates to a transmission apparatus suitable for application to an ISDB broadcast system or the like. Specifically, in addition to the broadcast signal identification code for the broadcast program, in addition to transmitting the hierarchical identification level for hierarchizing the content of the same program as additional information at the same time, the receiving side specifies the program. The program content of the same identification code can be saved by specifying the identification code of the program, and only the contents of the same hierarchical identification level among the program contents saved by specifying the hierarchical identification level together with the identification code can be stored. It is possible to selectively monitor.

  With the development of digital technology, an interactive integrated digital broadcasting system (referred to as an ISDB (Integrated Services Digital Broadcasting) system) in which various kinds of information including broadcast signals are digitized is being researched and developed in the broadcasting industry.

  More specifically, the ISDB system is used for not only current broadcast signals (standard television signals, high-definition signals), but also software and facsimile data, as well as multimedia information such as voice, text, graphics, and images. It is a broadcasting system in which each is digitized (encoded), integrated and multiplexed, and then subjected to modulation processing matching the transmission form to be transmitted and received.

  When various types of information including broadcast signals are integrated and multiplexed, in addition to these pieces of information, additional information used as control information on the receiving side can also be integrated and multiplexed at the same time. The integrated ISDB broadcast signal (digital signal) is transmitted using ground waves, satellite waves, optical cables, or the like.

  On the receiving terminal side, it is possible to receive the integrated ISDB broadcast signal, discriminate the target signal, display it on the monitor and enjoy it as a normal television broadcast. (Save) or transfer to another terminal. Further, if the received additional information is used, the received information can be used according to the user's preference, such as monitor control, recording control, and processing control on the monitored image. That is, an interactive broadcasting system can be constructed.

  Therefore, if this ISDB system is used, the service content for the user is improved and the more interactive broadcasting system can be constructed as the variety of additional information to be transmitted increases.

  Now, some of the current broadcast programs are edited such that the program content is hierarchized on the broadcast station side. For example, in the case of a news program, in addition to broadcasting the titles of a plurality of news topics to be broadcast within the broadcast time, as shown in FIG. In many cases, news programs are structured so as to move to specific details.

  Commercial broadcasts are often inserted into commercial programs. Furthermore, continuous broadcast programs are often composed of an intro part such as a title and a performer list, a coarse part up to the previous time, a commercial part and a program broadcast part.

  As described above, the number of programs currently being broadcast is more or less, and the program contents are hierarchized to some extent. On the other hand, viewers do not want to see all of the broadcast programs that are hierarchized. In the case of news programs, some viewers want to watch only the topic part, while others want to see the overview and details. . Furthermore, since the broadcast hours are not at home, it is often impossible to watch live programs.

  In order to fulfill such a viewer's desire, the desired broadcast program may be recorded and saved, and the recorded program may be viewed at a different time. In this case, since the viewer has to perform an operation such as skipping the program content that is not necessary among the recorded programs, the operation is troublesome, and the program content that the user wants to watch cannot be searched immediately. Inconvenient. It would be very convenient if it was possible to automatically select and monitor specific hierarchized program contents from recorded broadcast programs.

  Therefore, the present invention is designed to achieve such a problem, and allows a broadcast program designated by the viewer to be selectively stored, and among the stored broadcast programs, the viewer can The present invention proposes a transmission apparatus that transmits a broadcast program so that only broadcast contents of a specified hierarchical identification level can be selectively reproduced (monitored).

To solve the problems described above, the transmitting apparatus according to the invention described in claim 1, certain encoding means for encoding the program information is a program itself includes video information and audio information, the upper SL program information And when the plurality of broadcast contents in the program information are hierarchized into a plurality of levels, it is determined which level of the plurality of levels for each of the plurality of broadcast contents. The additional information generating means for generating additional information having an identification level to be identified, the encoded information encoded by at least the encoding means, and the additional information generated by the additional information generating means are multiplexed and transmitted. And a transmission means.

  In the transmission device according to the present invention, by adding additional information indicating an identification code or a hierarchical identification level to the ISDB broadcast signal, the receiving side stores a specific broadcast program by designating the identification code, Further, by designating the hierarchical identification level, only broadcast programs that match the designated hierarchical identification level can be selectively extracted and monitored from the recorded broadcast programs.

  According to this, in addition to being able to automatically save a specific broadcast program only with the identification code, by further specifying the hierarchical identification level, only the broadcast programs that match the specified hierarchical identification level can be recorded. Can be selectively monitored. As a result, it is possible to view only the program contents of the hierarchy desired by the viewer, even in the same broadcast program, so that it is possible to save the trouble of searching for useless information and efficiently reproduce the recorded contents.

  Therefore, the present invention is very suitable when applied to an ISDB transmission device capable of simultaneously transmitting additional information.

  Next, embodiments of the present invention will be described in detail with reference to the drawings.

  FIG. 1 is a system diagram of a main part showing an embodiment of a transmitting apparatus 10 according to the present invention. In this example, as main information transmitted in an integrated manner for convenience of explanation, a standard television signal, a high-definition signal, and It is assumed that it is various data information. Then, additional information such as control information is added to each of them and multiplexed. Various kinds of additional information can be considered.

  Referring to FIG. 1, the video signal SVN of the standard television signal is supplied to the terminal 12a, and the audio signal SAN associated therewith is supplied to the terminal 12b. The encoding unit 14 performs appropriate encoding processing including compression and the like. Is given. In synchronization with this encoding process, the additional information generating means 16 operates to generate additional information such as control information.

  A general example of the additional information is a time code. In the present invention, in addition to such general additional information, an identification code for identifying a specific broadcast program and the content of the broadcast program are included. When hierarchized, the hierarchized identification level for indicating the level is used as additional information.

  For example, as shown in FIG. 2, when a broadcast program is news and the news is edited as a topics program, the topics section (broadcast section) and the outline thereof are broadcast even if the news program is shown in the figure. The broadcast contents are hierarchized into a plurality of layers, like a department that broadcasts the department and its contents in more detail. In addition to news, for example, sports programs are divided into sections that relay sports and other sections (such as commercial sections), so this is also a kind of stratification.

  Therefore, according to the present invention, for these hierarchized broadcast programs, the identification level Li (i = 1 to 4) for identifying hierarchies is used in addition to the identification code ID for identifying the broadcast programs. Used as additional information for a program. For example, in the case of news topics as shown in FIG. 2, since the broadcast program identification code is IDa, codes IDaL1, IDaL2, IDaL3 and IDaL4 representing the hierarchical identification level corresponding to the contents of the broadcast program are used as additional information. The A G code or the like can be used as the identification code. The encoded standard television signal and the additional information as described above are supplied to the multiplexing unit 20 and multiplexed together with other information.

  The video signal SVH of the high-definition signal is supplied to the terminal 22a, and the audio signal SAH associated therewith is supplied to the terminal 22b, and an appropriate encoding process including compression is performed by the encoding unit 24. The additional information generating means 26 is activated in synchronization with the encoding process, and an identification code with the hierarchical identification level as described above is generated as additional information as necessary.

  Various data SD such as computer data and facsimile data is supplied to the terminal 28 a and is encoded by the encoding unit 30. At the same time, the additional information generating means 32 is activated to generate corresponding additional information. As additional information, information such as area designation for enlargement / reduction, telephone number for inquiry, and fax number can be considered.

  The encoded information and additional information obtained from each are multiplexed in the multiplexing unit 20, respectively. For example, the multiplexing unit 20 performs a process of packetizing each piece of encoded information and multiplexing the encoded information for error correction in units of transmission frames to form a bit stream. These additional information can be inserted into a part of the header (packet header) of the packetized packet data.

  The multiplexed data is modulated by the transmission unit 34 into an ISDB broadcast signal having a transmission form suitable for transmission means (for example, a broadcasting satellite), and in this example, the data is multiplexed by an up-converter 36 and a transmission antenna (parabolic antenna) 38. Sent to the broadcasting satellite.

The additional information as described above is transmitted together with the encoded program broadcast. FIG. 3 shows an example of a receiving apparatus 40 that receives such an ISDB broadcast signal.

  The satellite wave received by the receiving antenna (parabolic antenna) 42 is down-converted to the 1 GHz band by the down converter 44, and then supplied to the tuner 46 for channel selection processing. Therefore, the ISDB broadcast signal of a specific channel is selected by the channel selection signal SC from the terminal 48.

  The selected ISDB broadcast signal is supplied to the signal separation means 50 and separated into original main information and additional information. For example, when a specific channel of a standard television signal is selected, the standard television signal and additional information (time code or the like) associated with the specific channel are separated. The video signal SV (SVN) and the audio signal SA (SAN) are respectively decoded by the decoding unit 52 from the separated standard television signal, and these are supplied to a monitor (CRT or the like) 54 to display the video and will be described later. Is supplied to the recording / reproducing unit 68.

  The additional information separated by the signal separation means 50 is supplied to the decoding unit 56, and all the additional information is decoded. The decoded additional information is supplied to the gate means 64, and an identification code for identifying the broadcast program among the additional information is supplied to the identification code matching determination unit 62. A control unit 60 equipped with a microcomputer is a command from the commander 80, and a control signal corresponding to the content of the command is generated.

  When the viewer designates a specific broadcast program as one of the control signals using the identification code, the designated identification code ID is supplied to the coincidence determination unit 62 to match the decoded identification code. A determination is made. The coincidence discrimination output is supplied to the gate means 64, and only the additional information whose identification code is coincident is gated. After being synthesized by the adder 66 with the main information (standard television signal etc.) decoded by the decoding unit 52, it is recorded. The program content is supplied to the playback unit 68 and stored (recorded). As the recording / reproducing unit 68, a fast access device such as a semiconductor memory (RAM or the like) or a magneto-optical disk can be used.

  Of the operation modes of the recording / reproducing unit 68, the recording mode is the match determination output obtained by the match determination unit 62, which is also used as the recording start signal R · CTL. As a result, when the identification code ID designated by the control unit 60 matches the decoded identification code, the decoded additional information is gated by the coincidence discrimination output, and the recording / reproducing unit 68 is controlled to the recording mode. As a result, the decoded main information is recorded together with the corresponding additional information. Therefore, only a specific broadcast program designated by the user is selectively recorded together with the additional information in the recording / reproducing unit 68. When the additional information is recorded, it can be recorded independently in a special area separately from the program broadcast. This is to facilitate the search for additional information.

  After recording the main information, it waits for a user instruction. As shown in FIG. 2, when the user designates the layered identification level Li as the IDaL2 or IDaL3 using the commander 80 together with the identification code IDj for the broadcast program, the control unit 60 uses the designated code IDjLi as the reproduction control signal PB. -It is supplied to the recording / reproducing unit 68 as CTL.

In the recording / reproducing unit 68, the recorded identification code ID and the hierarchical identification level are searched from the designated code IDjLi, and when the corresponding code exists, only the corresponding recorded information is selectively reproduced. For example, when a code as shown in FIG. 2 is designated, only the broadcast content indicated by “PB” (symbol indicating the reproduction mode) is selectively reproduced. The selectively reproduced program broadcast is supplied to the monitor 54 via the switch 70 and displayed. As a result, the broadcast content designated by the viewer can be viewed without bothering the viewer.
The switch 70 is controlled by the control unit 60, and any one of the outputs of the decoding units 52 and 56 and the reproduction output, and in some cases, a plurality can be arbitrarily selected.

It is a systematic diagram of the principal part which shows one Embodiment of the transmitter concerning this invention. It is a figure which shows an example of hierarchization of a broadcast program. It is a system diagram of the principal part which shows one Embodiment of a receiver.

Explanation of symbols

DESCRIPTION OF SYMBOLS 10 ... Transmitting device, 16, 26, 32 ... Additional information generating means, 14, 24, 30 ... Encoding unit, 20 ... Multiplexing unit, 34 ... Transmitting unit, 36 ... Upconverter 40 ... receiving device 46 ... tuner 52,56 ... decoding unit 54 ... monitor 60 ... control unit 62 ... coincidence determining unit 64 ... .Gate means, 68... Recording / reproducing unit

Claims (4)

Encoding means for encoding program information which is a program itself including video information and audio information;
When the identification code identifying the upper SL program information, and a plurality of broadcast contents in the program information are hierarchized into a plurality of levels, any of the plurality of levels for each of the plurality of broadcast content Additional information generating means for generating additional information having an identification level for identifying whether the level is
Ru and transmission means for transmitting by multiplexing at least encoded encoding information by the coding means, and the additional information generated by said additional information generating means
Send apparatus. The transmission means is
Packetize the encoded information,
The additional information is inserted into a packet header in the packetized packet data,
It bit stream by multiplexing the transmission frame
Transmitting apparatus according to 請 Motomeko 1. When the above program information is a news program,
The additional information generating means generates an identification level indicating the first hierarchy when the broadcast content indicates an outline of news, and generates an identification level indicating the second hierarchy when the broadcast content indicates details of the news. you generate
Transmitting apparatus according to 請 Motomeko 1. The broadcast contents in the above program information include commercials,
The additional information generating means that generates an additional information having identification level corresponding to the commercial
Transmitting apparatus according to 請 Motomeko 1.

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