JPH0686280A - Home terminal system for catv - Google Patents

Abstract

PURPOSE:To obtain a home terminal for a CATV with a remote control transmitter in which a channel tuning can be operated to a multichannel CATV in a short time by a simple operation. CONSTITUTION:A remote control transmitter 41 is equipped with a program selection key 42 for selecting a program content, and a channel shift key 43 for successively forwarding the channel of a program except a ten key group for tuning a channel. Also, in a home terminal 44, a means which memories the channel and the program content by contrasting them one to one when data for discriminating the program content for each channel transmitted from a center are received by the home terminal 44, is provided at an outside memory 34a. Then, a display means which displays the program content at a television receiver at the time of receiving the program data from the remote control transmitter 41. At the time of receiving the data from the channel shift key 43, the channel of the program content is successively forwarded by the outside memory, and the program content is displayed at the television receiver.

Description

Detailed Description of the Invention

[0001]

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to a CATV home terminal, and more particularly to a channel selection system using a remote control transmitter.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art FIG. 6 is an external view of a conventional remote control transmitter. With this remote control transmitter 11, the channel (hereinafter C
The channel selection method (referred to as H) is to directly select CH with the numeric keypad group 12 of "0" to "9", and to sequentially or reverse CH with the CH forward key 13 or the CH reverse key 14. There is a way to select a channel.

15 is turned on and off each time the power key is pressed.
Are operated alternately. 16 is a volume key, the volume becomes louder when the volume up key 16a is pressed, and the volume down key 16b
Pressing decreases the sound in order. Reference numeral 17 is a mute key, and when the mute key 17 is pressed, the sound is completely muted.

FIG. 7 is a block diagram of the CATV home terminal 21. The signal a input from the CATV input terminal 22 is branched into 1a and 2a by the distributor 23.

The branch signal 1a is converted into an iF signal if of the channel selected by the tuner 24, and then amplified and detected by the iF amplification detection circuit 25 to obtain a video signal p and an audio signal s.
Becomes

The video signal p passes through the OSD circuit 26 and is combined with alphabets, numbers, characters, etc. to become pa, and is added to the RF modulator 27 together with the audio signal s to form a specific frequency signal r corresponding to a vacant channel of the television. It is converted and output through the output terminal 28. By connecting a television receiver 29 to this output terminal 28, CA
You can watch TV.

On the other hand, the branch signal 2a is sent to the data receiver 30.
And is demodulated to a data signal b and input to the control circuit unit 31. The control circuit section 31 is mainly composed of a microcomputer, and controls the entire home terminal 21 based on the control content of the data signal b.

The remote control transmitter 11 includes a numeric keypad group 12 (0
~ 9) or CH forward key 13 or CH reverse key 14
By pressing, those data are output as an optical signal g,
The light receiving unit 32 converts the electric signal c into an electric signal c, and the control circuit unit 31
Entered in.

The control circuit section 31 outputs CH tuning data d to the tuner 24 based on the data of the electric signal c, and displays the selected CH on the CH display section 33.

Regarding the CH tuning, the external memory 34 stores the last CH and the like and is used for tuning the CH that was viewed before the power was turned on.

[0011]

At present, the opening of urban type CATV is remarkable, but urban type CATV tends to have multiple channels, and there are several types of specialized channels such as music, news, movies, weather forecast, and education. Are mixed.

Generally, the maximum number of CATV channels is 60, but if the conventional CH tuning system described above is used, for example, if one wishes to listen to a music CH, a number of music CHs are selected from the program table. However, it is necessary to directly select the music CH selected from the program table by the numeric keypad for each CH, or to select the music channel to be watched with the CH forward key or the CH reverse key. Since it takes time and effort to see each time, the latter has a problem that it takes time because it feeds forward and backward.

Obviously, the problem of the operability described above becomes more serious as the tendency of multichannels of urban CATV increases in the future.

An object of the present invention is to provide a CATV home terminal with a remote control transmitter capable of selecting a channel in a short time with a simple operation for a multi-channel CATV.

[0015]

In order to achieve the above object, the CATV home terminal system of the present invention comprises:
In addition to the numeric keypad for channel selection, the remote control transmitter is provided with a program selection key for selecting program content and a channel shift key for sequentially advancing the channels of the selected program, and for the home terminal, the channel transmitted from the center at the home terminal. When data for discriminating the program content for each is received, a memory means is provided for comparing the channel with the program content and storing the memory, and when the data is received from the program selection key of the remote control transmitter, the program content is received. In addition, when the data from the channel shift key is received, only the channel corresponding to the program content is selected.

[0016]

The home terminal receives the data sent from the center, reads the program content of each CH from the data, and stores it in the memory in a one-to-one correspondence with the CH.

When the user presses the "program key" on the remote control transmitter, the home terminal receives the data, sequentially switches the program contents, and displays the set program contents.

When the user presses the channel forward key, when the home terminal receives the data, the program contents are checked in order from the smaller CH than the memory, and the CH that matches the set program contents is found. If that channel is selected.

[0019]

Embodiments of the present invention will be described with reference to the drawings. FIG. 1 is an external view of a remote control transmitter 41 of the present invention, which is C compared to the conventional remote control transmitter 11 of FIG.
The H up key 13 and the CH down key 14 are replaced with a program selection key 42 for selecting a program and a CH shift key 43 for sequentially sending CHs.

FIG. 2 shows the home terminal 4 of the present invention.
4 is a block diagram of FIG. 4, which is common as the block diagram of the home terminal 21 of FIG. 7 of the related art, but the microcomputer software of the control circuit unit 31a is different and the memory content of the external memory 34a is different. It is a thing.

Therefore, a detailed description of the block diagram of FIG. 2 will be omitted, and the same parts as those in the prior art will be designated by the same reference numerals.

FIG. 3 shows the memory contents added to the external memory 34a according to the present invention. In the present embodiment, the number of channels is 60 in total, and the program content is 6 channels of specialized CH, which are movie, music, sports, news, education, and shopping. As for the contents of the memory, the channel numbers of the channels are stored as they are. That is, the memory value is 1 for CH1 and 60 for CH60.

The contents of the program are replaced with numerical values 1 to 6 and stored. That is, movie = 1, music = 2, sports = 3, news = 4, education = 5, shopping = 6
Is.

The above-mentioned number of CHs and their program contents are
The data is input from the CATV input terminal 22 through the cable from the center, demodulated by the data receiver 30 and input to the microcomputer of the control circuit unit 31a, and the microcomputer stores the data in the external memory 34a as a decode.

Next, the microcomputer operation of the control circuit section 31a of the present invention will be described with reference to the flowchart of FIG. Here, although the register m and the register n are used, the register m indicates the program content and the register n indicates the CH. That is, the values of the registers m = 1 to 6 and the values of the registers n = 1 to 60 are obtained.

First, starting from START, the external memory 34
The last CH memory of a is initialized to 1CH, and the register m is also initialized to 1.

In STEP 1, it is checked whether or not the data from the remote control transmitter 41 is received, and if it is received, the program tuning key 42 or the CH shift key 43 is checked. If the program selection key 42 is selected, the process proceeds to STEP 3, if the CH shift key 43 is selected, the process proceeds to STEP 4, and if neither is selected, the process proceeds to STEP 2 to perform processing based on other remote control key functions, and then returns to STEP 1.

At STEP 3, it is checked whether the program content with the value of the register m is being displayed on-screen. If not displayed, the process proceeds to STEP 8, the program content with the value of the register m is displayed on the television receiver 29 on-screen, and at STEP 1. Return. If it is displayed, increase the value of register m by 1 (m>
When it becomes 6, m = 1 is set) The process moves to STEP8, the program content of the value of the register m is displayed on the television receiver 29 on the screen, and the process returns to STEP1 (FIG. 5).

At STEP 4, the value of the last CH memory is put into the register n and the process proceeds to STEP 5.

In STEP 5, the nCH program content is read from Mn of the external memory 34a, and the nCH program content M is read.
It is checked whether or not the value of the register m indicating the set program content is matched with n, and if they are matched, the process proceeds to STEP 7 to nCH
And memorize n in the last CH. If they do not match, the value of register n is incremented by 1 and the process proceeds to STEP6, where n>
When it becomes 60, n = 1 is set and the operation moves to STEP 5 to perform the same operation.

In the above structure, for example, from 1CH to 60
Assuming that there are 6 movie-dedicated CHs among the CHs, when the user wants to watch the movie-dedicated CH from the 60 CHs, he or she selects the movie program by pressing the program tuning key 42 (FIG. 5), and the CH shift key. Movie only C by pressing 43 6 times
Only H can be sequentially selected.

[0032]

Since the present invention is constructed as described above, it has the following effects. In CATV with many channels, instead of selecting the channel you want to watch from among many channels, you can select the program content with the program selection key, and only select the channel corresponding to that program content with the CH shift key. Therefore, it is possible to easily and quickly select a program to be watched, and the operability can be greatly improved.

Also, the number of keys of the remote control transmitter can be realized with the same number of keys as the conventional one.

[Brief description of drawings]

FIG. 1 is an external view of a remote control transmitter of the present invention.

FIG. 2 is a block diagram of the same home terminal.

FIG. 3 is a diagram showing the memory contents of an external memory built in the home terminal.

FIG. 4 is a flow chart of a microcomputer operation of a control circuit unit with a built-in home terminal.

FIG. 5 is a diagram showing an example of displaying program contents on a television receiver.

FIG. 6 is an external view of a conventional remote control transmitter.

FIG. 7 is a block diagram of a conventional home terminal.

[Explanation of Codes] 29 Television Receiver 31a Control Circuit Section 33 CH Display Section 34a External Memory 41 Remote Control Transmitter 42 Program Tuning Key 43 CH Shift Key 44 Home Terminal

Claims (1)

[Claims] 1. A CATV home terminal system for remotely controlling a home terminal of a CATV system, wherein a remote control transmitter sequentially feeds a program selection key for selecting program contents in addition to a numeric keypad for channel selection and a selected program channel. A channel shift key is provided, and the home terminal is provided with a memory means for storing the data by comparing the channel and the program content when receiving the data for distinguishing the program content for each channel transmitted from the center at the home terminal, When the program selection key of the remote control transmitter receives data, the program content is displayed on the television receiver, and when the data is received from the channel shift key, only the channel corresponding to the program content is selected. CATV e characterized by Room terminal system.