JPH06292158A - Picture receiver - Google Patents

Abstract

PURPOSE:To observe picture data sent through a communications line by picking up picture data modulated into an audio signal by a microphone section and demodulating the picked-up picture data so as to use a liquid crystal display section of a liquid crystal television receiver. CONSTITUTION:The receiver is provided with a television tuner section 4, a liquid crystal display section 5 displaying a received video image by the television tuner section 4, and a microphone section 6 picking up prescribed picture data modulated in an audio signal as audio data. Then the audio data inputted from the microphone section 6 are demodulated into original picture data by a demodulation circuit 7 and the picture data demodulated by the demodulation circuit 7 are displayed on the liquid crystal display section 5. Furthermore, a picture expansion circuit 8 expanding the picture data picked up by the microphone section 6 is provided to use compressed picture data as set video data and data are sent efficiently.

Description

Detailed Description of the Invention

[0001]

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to an image receiving device,
More specifically, the present invention relates to an image receiving device that receives image data via a communication line.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art In recent years, C which is one of general display devices
In place of RT (Cathode Ray Tube), liquid crystal televisions that use a liquid crystal display device for the display device are becoming popular due to their advantages of being lightweight and thin, and are widely used in the fields of in-vehicle use and sports watching, for example. There is.

In particular, recently, for example, a liquid crystal television which has been downsized so that it fits in a chest pocket of a shirt has been developed, and it has become possible to carry the television at any time while commuting or on a business trip. There is.

[0004]

However, in such a conventional liquid crystal television, the liquid crystal television is configured to receive television radio waves and display only the received image data on the liquid crystal display device. The only images that could be viewed by were the received images of the television broadcast.

On the other hand, although there are many opportunities to use a telephone while out of the office, naturally only a voice can be transmitted by the telephone.

As described above, it is unreasonable that only voice can be transmitted when using a telephone while carrying a liquid crystal television capable of viewing images.

The present invention has been made in view of such a background, and it is possible to view an image sent through a communication line using a liquid crystal display portion of a liquid crystal television. To aim.

[0008]

The means of the present invention are as follows.

As shown in FIG. 1, a television tuner unit 4, a liquid crystal display unit 5 for displaying a received image received by the television tuner unit 4, and an audio signal are modulated. A microphone unit 6 that takes in predetermined image data as audio data, a demodulation circuit 7 that demodulates the audio data input by the microphone unit 6 into original image data,
An image receiving device comprising: a display unit for displaying the image data demodulated by the demodulation circuit 7 on the liquid crystal display unit 5.

In this case, as in the invention described in claim 2,
It is effective to provide an image expansion circuit 8 for expanding the image data taken in by the microphone unit 6.

Further, as in the invention described in claim 3, it is preferable that the liquid crystal display section 5 and the microphone section 6 are integrally formed in a casing constituting the apparatus main body 2. As in the invention described in 4, it is effective to store the image data taken in from the microphone unit 6 in a removable memory card in the housing.

[0012]

The operation of the means of the present invention is as follows.

According to the first aspect of the present invention, the image data modulated into the audio signal is taken in by the microphone unit,
The captured image data is demodulated by the demodulation circuit, and the demodulated image data is displayed on the liquid crystal display unit so that it is transmitted through the communication line using the liquid crystal display portion of the liquid crystal television. Image data can be received.

In this case, as in the invention described in claim 2,
Since the compressed image data that is compressed can be used as the image data to be transmitted by providing the image expansion circuit that expands the image data taken in by the microphone unit, data can be efficiently transmitted.

Further, as in the third aspect of the invention, by integrally forming the liquid crystal display section and the microphone section in the housing constituting the apparatus main body, the entire apparatus can be miniaturized.

Further, as in the invention described in claim 4, by storing the image data taken in from the microphone unit in the detachable memory card in the housing, a plurality of image data can be easily stored. .

[0017]

EXAMPLES Examples will be described below with reference to FIGS.

2 to 5 are views showing an embodiment of the image receiving apparatus according to the present invention.

First, the structure will be described. FIG. 2 is an external view of the image receiving apparatus of the present invention viewed from the front side.
FIG. 3 is an external view of the image receiving device of the present invention as viewed from the back side. The same parts as those in the block diagram shown in FIG. 1 are designated by the same reference numerals, and a case where an analog telephone general subscriber line is used as a communication line will be described below.

In FIG. 2, the image receiving apparatus 1 is roughly divided into an apparatus main body 2 and a power source section 3, and the apparatus main body 2
Is composed of a case made of reinforced plastic having a size of 65 mm in length, 60 mm in width, and 24 mm in thickness, and the liquid crystal display unit 5 is provided in the case on the front surface of the apparatus main body 2 as shown in FIG. In addition to being integrally provided, a microphone section 6 is integrally provided on the back surface of the apparatus body 2 as shown in FIG.

The power source unit 3 is mounted on the lower portion of the apparatus main body 2 to supply a predetermined power source current to the apparatus main body 2. Specifically, it contains a dedicated Ni-Cd storage battery. It consists of a battery pack. In the present embodiment, as the power supply unit 3 attached to the lower portion of the apparatus main body 2, a battery pack having a dedicated NiCd storage battery is described as an example. However, the present invention is not limited to this, and for example, a AAA alkaline A dry battery pack that contains five dry batteries, an AC adapter that uses an AC (alternating current) power supply,
A car adapter that uses a DC (direct current) battery from a cigarette lighter portion of an automobile may be used.

The liquid crystal display unit 5 is a TFT type active matrix liquid crystal display device having a screen size of 1.4 inches, and has three primary colors of R (Red) and G (Green).
n), and a high resolution color liquid crystal display panel of 220 × 279 = 61380 pixels in which pixels corresponding to B (Blue) are arranged in a delta shape.

The microphone section 6 is composed of, for example, an electret condenser type microphone, and as shown in FIG. 3, a microphone hole 6b is bored inside a sound insulation wall 6a which is provided upright on the back surface of the apparatus main body 2 in an annular shape. The voice data is input from. In this embodiment, an electret condenser type microphone is described as an example of the microphone unit 6, but the microphone unit 6 is not limited to this. For example, a dynamic microphone may be used as the microphone unit 6. It doesn't matter.

As shown in FIG. 2, the device main body 2 includes a power switch 11, a power indicator 12, a tuning button 13, a volume dial 14, an earphone terminal 15, a video on / off switch 16, a video switch 17, Various operation switches such as the image capture switch 18 are provided.

The power switch 11 is a switch for selecting whether or not to energize the image receiving apparatus 1 with the power source voltage supplied from the power source section 3, and the power indicator 1
2 is composed of an LED (Light Emitting Diode),
The light is turned on when the power switch 11 is turned on.

The tuning button 13 is for instructing up or down of the tuning frequency, and the volume dial 14 is for adjusting the earphone volume.

The earphone terminal 15 is a terminal for connecting an earphone that also serves as a wire antenna, and also functions as an antenna terminal.

The video on / off switch 16 is a toggle switch for instructing the liquid crystal display unit 5 whether or not to display an LCD screen, and the video changeover switch 17 is a liquid crystal display unit 5.
The image capture switch 18 is a toggle switch for switching and displaying either the receiving screen of the television broadcast or the image data sent through the analog telephone general subscriber line as the image to be displayed on the LCD. The switch is an instruction to store the image displayed on the display unit 5 as image data in a predetermined memory.

FIG. 4 is a block diagram showing a schematic configuration of the image receiving apparatus 1 shown in FIGS. 2 and 3. In FIG.
The image receiving device 1 includes a power supply unit 3, a TV tuner unit 4, a liquid crystal display unit 5, a microphone unit 6, a demodulation circuit 7, an image expansion circuit 8, a control circuit 9, and a key operation unit 9a.
The demodulation circuit 7, the image expansion circuit 8, the control circuit 9, and the key operation unit 9a are connected to the bus B, respectively.

As described above, the power supply unit 3 is composed of a battery pack containing a NiCd (Ni-Cd) storage battery, and when the power switch 11 is turned on, a predetermined power supply voltage is applied to each unit in the apparatus main body 2. To supply.

The TV tuner section 4 includes a tuner 21 and
The tuner 21 is configured by an ADC 22 and selectively receives a predetermined television radio wave and outputs a video signal to the buffer memory 27 in the image expansion circuit 8 via the ADC 22. It converts an input video signal which is an analog signal into a digital signal.

As shown in FIG. 4, the liquid crystal display section 5 has a DD
(Display Driver) 23 and LCD (Liquid Crystal D
isplay) 24. In addition, in FIG.
IN connected to D23 is a video input terminal and OUT is a video output terminal.

The DD 23 is a display drive unit that drives the LCD 24 to display an image on the LCD 24 based on the video signal input from the image expansion circuit 8 or the video signal input from the video input terminal IN.
Specifically, the input video signal is converted into an analog video signal (analog RGB signal) of a predetermined bit by 220 × 279 pixels and output to the LCD 24.

The LCD 24 is composed of a color liquid crystal display device having a liquid crystal panel (not shown), and the LCD 24 in the present embodiment has a small flat fluorescent tube (not shown) as its backlight (backside illumination). Is used.

As shown in FIG. 5, for example, the microphone section 6 is bored inside the sound insulation wall 6a by pressing the sound insulation wall 6a standing on the apparatus body 2 against the earpiece of the receiver 101 of the telephone. The voice data sent from the earpiece is input through the microphone hole 6b (see FIG. 3). The sound insulation wall 6a is made of, for example, a flexible member such as synthetic rubber.

As shown in FIG. 4, the demodulation circuit 7 is composed of a data demodulation section 25 and a buffer memory 26.

The data demodulation section 25 converts an analog voice signal sent from the microphone section 6 through a communication line (in this case, an analog telephone general subscriber line) into a digital signal which can be decoded by the control circuit 9. Return to demodulator (demodu
The data demodulation unit 25 in the present embodiment uses the analog telephone general subscriber line to capture image data by a voice signal, and therefore the data transmission rate is 1200 bps. Is set to.

The buffer memory 26 is used for the data demodulation section 25.
The compressed image data demodulated by is temporarily stored and held.

The image expansion circuit 8 includes a buffer memory 27,
Data expansion unit 28, video memory (VRAM) 29, D
It is composed of an AC (Digital to Analog Converter: D / A converter) 30.

The buffer memory 27 temporarily stores and holds the compressed image data demodulated by the demodulation circuit 7, and the image data stored in the buffer memory 27 in a compressed state is a control command from the CPU 35. Is output to the data decompression unit 28.

The data decompression unit 28 has a buffer memory 27.
Depending on the type of image to be processed (in this case, a still image), the compressed image data stored in is stored in, for example, JPEG (Joint Photographic (Coding)
Experts Group) algorithm performs decompression (decoding) processing on the basis of DCT (Discrete Cosine Transform), quantization, and Huffman coding for each 8 × 8 pixel block, and the decompressed image data is converted into video data. It is output to and stored in the memory 29. In this case, a maximum of 40 is 110 × 160 pixels through the communication line.
Image data sent as a 96-color (12-bit) color video signal is composed of a luminance signal corresponding to 220 × 279 pixels (hereinafter referred to as Y signal) and a color signal corresponding to 4096 colors (hereinafter referred to as C signal). It has a function of processing as a YC signal that is
The 2-bit data is converted into 12-bit digital image data with 220 × 279 pixels. The data compression rate of the transmitted compressed image data is about 7/100 (about 68/10) from the relationship with the image quality after compression / expansion.
00).

The video memory 29 is a VRAM (Video R
A semiconductor image memory for storing image data (digital data) decompressed by the data decompression unit 28.

The DAC 30 converts the image signal (digital signal) of the image data stored in the video memory 29 into a signal (analog signal) that can be displayed by the liquid crystal display unit 5 and outputs it. In this embodiment, since the analog data driver is used as the data driver of the LCD 24 described above to perform the multi-gradation display, the DAC is used.
Although a (D / A converter) is required, for example, when a digital data driver is used as the data driver of the liquid crystal display unit 5, the DAC 24 becomes unnecessary.

The control circuit 9 includes a CPU (Central Processi).
ng Unit) 31, RAM (Random A-ccess Memory) 3
2, ROM (Read Only Memory) 33.

The CPU 31 outputs various control signals for controlling each unit in the image receiving apparatus 1 to each circuit via the bus B, and the CPU 31 controls the image transmitting apparatus of the other party (for example, a television set). When receiving image data transmitted from a telephone device or the like, demodulated by the demodulation circuit 7 and input, the demodulated compressed image data is output from the bus B to the data decompression unit 28 via the buffer memory 27. Is.

The RAM 32 is a semiconductor memory that stores program data used in the program processing executed by the CPU 31, compressed image data, audio data, and the like.

The ROM 33 is a semiconductor memory that stores programs and data used in the image receiving apparatus 1.

The key operation section 9a is composed of various operation key switches such as the image on / off switch 16, the image changeover switch 17 and the image capturing switch 18 described above, and corresponds to the key switch when the key switch is pressed. The processing to be performed is executed by the CPU 31.

The bus B includes a demodulation circuit 7, an image expansion circuit 8,
A common signal path for connecting the control circuit 9 and the key operation unit 9a, and an address bus for instructing an address,
It is composed of a data bus for transferring data.

The image data handled in this embodiment is color image data of 4096 colors (12 bits) with 110 × 160 pixels on one screen, and the amount of image data for one screen is 11
It becomes 0 × 279 × 12 = 211200 bits (about 25.8 kilobytes). This is about 68 / by image compression processing.
The data is collectively compressed into 1000 to obtain 14400-bit image data, and this 14400-bit is set to 1 per second.
200 bits each are transmitted, that is, 12 seconds (= 144
(00/1200), an intermittent still image is transmitted at a rate of one frame.

Therefore, the data actually transmitted in one second is image data of 17600 bits (about 2.15 kilobytes) obtained by dividing 211200 bits by 12, and the image data of 17600 bits is about 68.
The video code is compressed to / 1000 and includes 1200-bit image data.

In general, a liquid crystal display device is extremely thin as compared with an image display means such as a CRT, and it is easy to reduce the size and weight, and an active matrix type LCD.
Compared with a simple matrix type LCD, a finer control of halftones is possible, a high contrast ratio can be secured, and the response speed is fast. Therefore, high image quality and multi-gradation color display are required. It is an effective device in the field, and particularly, an active matrix type LCD using a TFT which is a three-terminal element can obtain a high image quality comparable to that of a CRT.

In the present embodiment, in order to further utilize the excellent advantages of this liquid crystal display device, a flat fluorescent tube is used as a backlight, and the size is further reduced.

Next, the operation of this embodiment will be described.

First, the operation of the control circuit 9 shown in FIG. 4 will be described. The program corresponding to the processing operation of the CPU 31 in the control circuit 9 is also stored in the ROM 33 in the control circuit 9.

The image receiving apparatus 1 in this embodiment
Receives a television broadcast by the television tuner unit 4,
Each operation mode of displaying the received broadcast on the liquid crystal display unit 5, that is, a mode of operating as a so-called television and a mode of operating as an image data receiving device by receiving predetermined image data from an analog telephone general subscriber line. Is equipped with.

When operating as a television, the power switch 11 is turned on and the tuning button 13 is operated to tune to a radio wave from a desired television broadcasting station to display a television image on the liquid crystal display portion 5 and an earphone terminal. The sound is heard from the earphone connected to 15. The earphone volume is adjusted by the volume dial 14, and the optimum volume is set.

When it is desired to hear only the sound when receiving the television broadcast, the display of the television image on the liquid crystal display unit 5 is turned off by pressing the image on / off switch 16.

When operating as an image data receiving device,
First, the operation mode is changed by depressing the image changeover switch 17, and as shown in FIG. 5, the sound insulation wall 6a formed on the back side of the device body 2 is pushed to the earpiece of the handset 101 of the telephone during communication. Then, the microphone unit 6 is set in a standby state for inputting voice data.

In this state, when the compressed image data modulated into voice data is transmitted from the communication partner via the analog telephone general subscriber line, the voice signal input from the microphone section 6 becomes a data demodulation section 25. Are demodulated by and stored in the buffer memory 26.

Then, the compressed image data stored in the buffer memory 26 is output to the bus B based on the instruction of the CPU 31, and is temporarily stored in the buffer memory 27 in the image expansion circuit 8 via the bus B.

Next, the data decompression unit 28 sequentially reads the written compressed image data from the buffer memory 27, decompresses the read compressed image data, and writes the decompressed image data in the video memory 29.

The image data (digital data) written in the video memory 29 is D / A converted by the DAC 30 and output to the DD 23, and the DD 23 displays the image data on the LCD 24.

Here, when the image changeover switch 17 is pressed, the receiving screen of the television broadcast is displayed as an image to be displayed on the LCD 24, and when it is pressed again, it is sent via the analog telephone general subscriber line. The incoming image data is displayed. The above switching display is alternately performed every time the video switch 17 is pressed.

Further, when it is desired to record the partner image (received image) displayed on the LCD 24 during a call, the operator depresses the image capture switch 18 to save the image data stored in the buffer memory 27. RA
It is stored in M32.

In this case, as described in the above transmission processing, the data amount of the compressed image data for one screen is about 2.
Since it is 5.8 kilobytes, if the image data storage area of the RAM 32 is 256 kilobytes, about 10
Up to the screen can be stored.

If the condition of the communication line deteriorates during communication and the quality of the transmitted image is significantly deteriorated, the image data is automatically determined by the CPU 31 based on the transmitted image data. The reception may be stopped.

As described above, in this embodiment, based on the data transmission rate (1200 bps) of the compressed image data transmitted via the communication line, the image data for one screen (211200 bits) displayed by the LCD 24 is displayed. ) Is transmitted at a rate of 1 screen for 12 seconds, whereby a high-quality image is transmitted on the analog general subscriber line. That is, the screen size of the LCD 24 is 1.4 inches, and one screen is 110 × 160 pixels × 12 bits (409
6 colors) = 21 1200 bits of data, so 1
Image data is transmitted at a rate of one frame every two seconds, but image data for one screen is transmitted as the number of pixels and the number of colors (number of gradations) in one screen increase and decrease as the screen size changes. The time to do is changed.

Specifically, for example, the mode for transmitting image data in 4096 colors is set to the normal mode, and the same number of pixels (1
When the mode for displaying 65536 colors (16 bits) with 10 × 160 pixels) is set to the high image quality mode, when transmitting image data in the high image quality mode, the image data amount for one screen is 110 × 160 × 16 = It becomes 281600 bits (about 34.4 kilobytes), which is 1 when the data is compressed to about 68/1000 by the image compression process.
It is image data of 9200 bits, and this 19200 bits is divided by the number of bits (1200 bits) that can be transmitted in 1 second (that is, 19200 ÷ 1200 = 16).
Intermittent still images are transmitted at a rate of 1 frame per second).

Further, in the conventional device, in order to record the sent image, another recording device (for example, an audio cassette tape recorder) was required for recording, but in the present embodiment, When the user wants to record an image during a call by installing the large capacity RAM 32, he or she can easily save a desired image by pressing the image capture switch 10. In this case, instead of the RAM 32, as shown in FIG. 6, a memory card 51 composed of a non-volatile flash memory or the like may be used, and by storing the received image in the memory card 51, the memory card 51 By exchanging 51, a plurality of images can be saved.

In this case, the memory card 51 storing a plurality of image data can be printed out by mounting the memory card 51 in a video printer 61 as shown in FIG. 7, for example.

FIG. 7 is an external view showing an example of the video printer 61. In FIG. 7, 62 is the memory card 51.
The video printer 61 outputs 8-bit 256 gradations (16.77 million colors) for each of the three primary colors R, G and B. Is a sublimation type thermal transfer color printer.

Specifically, first, after mounting the memory card 51 in the slot 62 of the video printer 61, the power switch 63 is turned on and the various operation switches 64 are turned on.
Is operated to select any image data stored in the memory card 51, and the selected image data is
It is printed out on 6-size dedicated paper.

Further, the conventional apparatus is generally made on the assumption that it is a stationary type, and once installed, it cannot be moved to another place for use. Due to the high image quality of the liquid crystal display device, by adopting a color TFT type liquid crystal display device instead of the conventional CRT as the display device, it is possible to reduce the power consumption and to reduce the size and weight of the device. ing. In this case, since a small flat fluorescent tube is used for the backlight used in the liquid crystal display device, LC
The D24 part can be made even thinner, and the size and weight can be greatly reduced.

The ADC 22 for outputting the input signal from the tuner 21 to the buffer memory 27 is provided with a composite video input / output terminal, an analog / digital RGB input / output terminal or the like as a video input terminal so that a video cassette recorder (VCR) or It is also possible to connect to a video device including a laser disc player (LDP), a computer, or the like. For example, by connecting a video cassette recorder or the like having a video output terminal, a video image is displayed on the liquid crystal display unit 5. Is also possible.

The image data compression method is not limited to the JPEG algorithm in this embodiment, but may be, for example, a block coding method, a predictive coding method, an orthogonal transform coding method, or the like.

[0077]

According to the present invention, in the invention described in claim 1, the image data modulated into the audio signal is taken in by the microphone part, and the image data thus taken in is demodulated by the demodulation circuit, and the demodulated image data is obtained. Is displayed on the liquid crystal display unit, the image data transmitted via the communication line can be received and viewed using the liquid crystal display portion of the liquid crystal television.

In this case, as in the invention described in claim 2,
By including the image expansion circuit for expanding the image data taken in by the microphone unit, the compressed image data compressed can be used as the image data to be transmitted, and the data can be efficiently transmitted.

Further, as in the third aspect of the invention, by integrally forming the liquid crystal display section and the microphone section in the housing constituting the apparatus main body, the entire apparatus can be miniaturized.

Further, as in the invention described in claim 4, by storing the image data taken in from the microphone unit in the detachable memory card in the housing, a plurality of image data can be easily stored. .

[Brief description of drawings]

FIG. 1 is a block diagram showing a schematic configuration of an image receiving apparatus of the present invention.

FIG. 2 is an external perspective view of the image receiving apparatus according to the present embodiment as seen from the front direction.

FIG. 3 is an external perspective view of the image receiving apparatus according to the present embodiment as viewed from the back side.

FIG. 4 is a block diagram showing a main configuration of an image receiving apparatus in this embodiment.

FIG. 5 is a perspective view for explaining an operation example of the image receiving apparatus according to the present embodiment.

FIG. 6 is an external perspective view of an image receiving apparatus according to another embodiment.

FIG. 7 is an external view showing an example of a video printer.

[Explanation of symbols]

 1 image receiving device 2 device body 3 power supply unit 4 TV tuner unit 5 liquid crystal display unit 6 microphone unit 6a sound insulation wall 6b microphone hole 7 demodulation unit 8 image expansion circuit 9 control circuit 9a key operation unit 11 power switch 12 power indicator 13 tuning button 14 Volume dial 15 Earphone terminal 16 Video on / off switch 17 Video switch 18 Image capture switch 21 Tuner 22 ADC 23 DD 24 LCD 25 Data demodulator 26 Buffer memory 27 Buffer memory 28 Data decompression unit 29 Video memory 30 DAC 31 CPU 32 RAM 33 ROM 51 Memory card 61 Video printer 62 Slot 63 Power switch 64 Various operation switches B bus

Claims (4)

[Claims] 1. A television tuner section, a liquid crystal display section for displaying a received image received by the television tuner section, a microphone section for taking in predetermined image data modulated into an audio signal as audio data, and the microphone section. An image receiving apparatus comprising: a demodulation circuit for demodulating audio data input by the above into original image data; and display means for displaying the image data demodulated by the demodulation circuit on the liquid crystal display section. . 2. The image receiving apparatus according to claim 1, further comprising an image expansion circuit for expanding the image data demodulated by the demodulation circuit. 3. The image receiving apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the liquid crystal display section and the microphone section are integrally formed in a casing that constitutes the apparatus main body. 4. The image receiving apparatus according to claim 3, wherein the image data taken in by the microphone unit is stored in a memory card which can be attached and detached in the housing.