KR100317631B1 - Menu display method of television receiver - Google Patents

Abstract

end. The technical field to which the invention described in the claims belongs

A method for displaying a menu on a screen in a television receiver.

I. The technical problem to be solved by the invention

The present invention provides a menu display method that allows a user to easily display and select a menu using a pointing device.

All. Summary of Solution of the Invention

At least one menu area is allocated on the screen, and a unique menu is assigned to each menu area, and when a cursor of the pointing device is positioned in one menu area, a menu designated in the menu area is displayed on the screen.

la. Important uses of the invention

Used to display a menu on a television receiver.

Description

Menu display method of TV receiver {MENU DISPLAY METHOD OF TELEVISION RECEIVER}

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to television receivers, and more particularly to a method of displaying a menu on a screen.

In general, a TV receiver includes a remote controller (REMOCON) that allows a user to remotely select and perform various functions at a position remote from the TV receiver. The remote controller, which has been used in the past, has been provided with a large number of buttons to select and operate various functions of the TV receiver. In particular, as the functions of the TV receiver are gradually diversified, the buttons of the remote controller are also diversified accordingly and the number of buttons is increasing.

On the other hand, the TV receiver allows users to understand and use various functions more easily by displaying various menus on the screen by using the OSD (On Screen Display) function. However, if the user wanted to check the menu displayed and perform a function, he still had to press the buttons on the remote control. At this time, the user had to find and press a button for performing a desired function among a large number of buttons on the remote controller, which was inconvenient to use.

As described above, in the prior art, it was inconvenient to use a remote control having a large number of buttons in a television receiver.

Accordingly, an object of the present invention is to provide a menu display method that allows a user to easily display and select a menu by using a pointing device.

1 is a block diagram of an HDTV receiver to which the present invention is applied;

2 is a diagram illustrating menu area allocation according to an embodiment of the present invention;

3 is a process flow diagram according to an embodiment of the present invention,

4A to 4D are diagrams illustrating menu display according to an embodiment of the present invention.

5A and 5B illustrate screen examples for explaining the present invention.

According to the present invention for achieving the above object, at least one menu area is allocated on a screen, a unique menu is designated for each menu area, and a corresponding menu when a cursor of a pointing device is located in any one menu area. A menu designated to the area is displayed on the screen.

Hereinafter, exemplary embodiments of the present invention will be described in detail with reference to the accompanying drawings. In the following description and the annexed drawings, specific details are set forth in order to provide a more thorough understanding of the present invention, such as many specific processing flows and menu screen examples. It will be apparent to those skilled in the art that the present invention may be practiced without these specific details. In addition, detailed descriptions of well-known functions and configurations that may unnecessarily obscure the subject matter of the present invention will be omitted.

1 is a block diagram of a high definition television (HDTV) receiver employing a moving picture expert group (MPEG) standard as an example of a TV receiver to which the present invention is applied. In FIG. 1, a tuner 102 tunes a radio frequency (RF) channel under control of a microprocessor 124 in a broadcast reception signal through an antenna 100. Accordingly, the tuner 102 outputs a channel tuned intermediate frequency (IF) signal, and is converted into a baseband signal by the IF module 104 and output to the channel decoder 106. The channel decoder 106 performs channel decoding on the baseband signal input from the IF module 104 to reproduce the data bit stream. The data bit stream reproduced in this manner is separated into audio data, video data, and additional data by the TS (Transport Stream) decoder 108, respectively.

The audio data is applied to the audio decoder 110, decoded according to the MPEG standard or the Dolby AC-3 standard, processed by the audio processing and output unit 112, and then output as voice through the speaker 114. The video data is applied to the video decoder 116, decoded according to the MPEG standard, and applied to the OSG (On Screen Graphic) mixer 118 and merged with the OSG data under the control of the microprocessor 124 to process the video and After processing at the output unit 120 is output on the screen through the water pipe (122). The OSG data is data for the microprocessor 124 to display various types of information on a screen in graphic or text. The additional data is also applied to the microprocessor 124.

The keypad 130 and the IR receiver 134 are connected to the microprocessor 124, which is a control unit of the HDTV receiver, through a user interface 128. The microprocessor 124 performs an operation according to a command input from the joystick remote controller 132 through the keypad 130 or the IR receiver 134 according to a program stored in the memory unit 126. The joystick remote controller 132 is one of the general pointing devices, each having only a joystick type direction key and a return key, and transmits an IR signal according to a direction key operation or a return key input by a user. The return key is used as an input key for selecting an icon of a menu or performing a function as described later in the present invention. The IR signal transmitted from the joystick remote controller 132 is received by the IR receiver 134 and applied to the microprocessor 124 through the user interface 128.

In addition, the memory unit 126 may include a read only memory (ROM) for storing a program of the microprocessor 124 and a random access memory (RAM) for temporarily storing data according to program execution of the microprocessor 124. Memory) and EEPROM (Electrically Erasable and Programmable ROM) for storing various reference data.

Tuner 102, IF module 104, channel decoder 106, TS decoder 108, audio decoder 110, audio processing and output 112, video decoder 116, OSG mixer as described above 118, video processing and output 120, and memory 126 are connected via a bus 136 connected to the microprocessor 124.

The present invention allows a user to easily display and select a menu by using a pointing device such as the joystick remote controller 132 as described above instead of a remote controller having many buttons.

To this end, the present invention allocates a predetermined area to a menu area on the screen of the TV receiver of FIG. 1, and assigns a unique menu to the assigned menu area. In this case, the menu may be configured one by one or a combination of functions previously selected by the remote controller, and include icons corresponding to the respective functions for selecting the required functions. Examples of these functions include those used in TV receivers such as volume control, channel up / down, numeric input, mute, timer, date and time adjustment, screen adjustment, reservation, etc. Functions.

FIG. 2 shows an exemplary view of menu area allocation according to an embodiment of the present invention, in which reference numeral 200 denotes a screen of the TV receiver of FIG. 1, and four menu areas 202 on an outer portion of the screen 200. An example of allocating 208) is shown. That is, different menu areas are allocated to the top, bottom, left, and right sides of the screen 200. In the menu areas 202 to 208 allocated in this way, different menus are designated individually or in common.

In this state, when the user moves the direction key of the joystick remote control 132 and inputs, the microprocessor 124 of FIG. 1 controls the OSG mixer 118 to input the position of the cursor of the joystick remote control 132 on the screen to the direction key input. Move correspondingly. At this time, when the cursor of the joystick remote controller 132 is located in any one of the menu areas 202 to 208 of FIG. 2, a menu designated to the menu area is displayed.

In this way, the displayed user can check the menu and select the icon corresponding to the desired function from the icons included in the menu to execute the corresponding function. At this time, the user moves the direction key of the joystick remote controller 132 to position the cursor on the desired icon and then presses the return key of the joystick remote controller 132 to execute the corresponding function.

3 is a flowchart illustrating a process according to an embodiment of the present invention, which is performed by the microprocessor 124 when applied to FIG. 1. Therefore, the functions according to the flowchart of FIG. 3 are programmed into the ROM of the memory unit 126 to be performed by the microprocessor 124. Referring now to FIG. 3, the microprocessor 124 first checks whether the cursor of the joystick remote controller 132 moves to one of the menu areas 202 to 208 of FIG. 2 in step 300. .

When the cursor of the joystick remote controller 132 moves to one of the menu areas 202 to 208 in step 300, the microprocessor 124 is assigned to the menu area where the cursor is located in step 302. The menu is controlled and displayed on the screen by controlling the OSG mixer 118. An example of such a menu display is shown as Figs. 4A to 4D. 4A illustrates an example in which the menu of the menu area 204 is displayed when the cursor 400 of the joystick remote controller 132 is moved to the menu area 204 allocated to the right side of the screen 200. 4A illustrates an example in which a menu for channel selection and volume adjustment is designated in the menu area 204. Among the icons 402 to 408, the icons 402 and 404 in the form of up and down arrows respectively represent channels for up and down. Icons and the left and right arrow shaped icons 406 and 408 are icons for volume up and down, respectively. 4B illustrates a menu display example when a menu for channel selection is specified in the menu area 204 allocated to the right side of the screen 200, unlike FIG. 4A. In addition, the icons 410 and 412 denoted by "△" and "▽" in FIG. 4B are standard up and down icons for up and down channels one by one, and two icons of "▲" "▼" in series. 414 and 416 are high-speed up and down icons for up and down channels in a predetermined unit, for example, 10 units. FIG. 4C shows an example of menu display when a menu for volume adjustment is specified in a menu area 208 allocated on the left side of the screen 200. In addition, icons 418 and 420 in the form of up and down arrows in FIG. 4C are icons for volume up and down, respectively. 4D illustrates an example of menu display when a menu for adjusting sleep, information, mute, date, and time is commonly specified in the upper and lower menu areas 202 and 206 on the screen 200. In addition, the icon 422 written as "SLEEP" in FIG. 4D is an icon for automatic power-off when going to bed, and the icon 424 written as "INFORM" is an icon for confirming various types of information, and written as "MUTE". Icon 426 is an icon for audio mute, and an icon 428 written as "TIME" is an icon for date and time adjustment.

As described above, when the menu is being displayed, the microprocessor 124 determines whether a click of a return key is input from the joystick remote controller 132 in steps 304 to 308, whether the cursor 400 is moved, Check for time elapsed. At this time, if a predetermined time elapses from when the menu starts being displayed on the screen 200 without a click input of the return key or movement of the cursor 400 from the joystick remote controller 132, the microprocessor 124 proceeds to step 310. To clear the menu from the screen. On the other hand, if the cursor 400 moves on the screen 200 before a predetermined time has elapsed since the menu starts being displayed on the screen 200, the microprocessor 124 stops the movement of the cursor 400. When a predetermined time elapses from the step 310, the menu is deleted on the screen 200.

After the step 310, the microprocessor 124 determines whether the cursor 400 is out of the menu area where the cursor 400 is located in steps 312 to 314 and whether a click of a return key is input from the joystick remote controller 132. Check it. At this time, if there is a click input of the return key from the joystick remote controller 132 while the cursor 400 is still positioned in the menu area since the menu is erased on the screen 200, the microprocessor 124 starts from step 302. Do it again. Accordingly, the menu is displayed again and the above process is repeated. Unlike this, when the cursor 400 is out of the currently located menu area without a click input of the return key from the joystick remote controller 132, the operation ends.

On the other hand, if there is a click input of the return key from the joystick remote controller 132 in step 304, the microprocessor 124 checks whether the cursor 400 is located on the icon of the menu in step 316. In this case, if there is a key input while the cursor 400 is located at one icon 410 among the icons 402 to 408 of the menu while the menu is being displayed as shown in FIG. The processor 124 performs a function corresponding to the icon 410 in step 318, and then proceeds to step 304. In this case, the channel up is performed in the case of the example of FIG. 5A. In contrast, as shown in FIG. 5B, if there is a key input while the cursor 400 is located outside the menu area while the menu is being displayed, the microprocessor 124 displays the menu at step 322. After erasing, the process ends.

Therefore, the user can check the menu by simply moving the cursor 400 by using the direction key of the joystick remote controller 132 and simply execute the desired function by clicking input.

Meanwhile, in the above description of the present invention, specific embodiments have been described, but various modifications can be made without departing from the scope of the present invention. In particular, although the embodiment of the present invention shows an example of applying the present invention to an HDTV receiver, it can be equally applied to other types of TV receivers as well as to devices using a monitor. In addition, in the present invention, the joystick remote controller is used as an example of the pointing device. However, a pointing device having only an input key without a direction key as well as a wired or wireless mouse can be used. In general, in a pointing device having only an input key, the movement of the cursor is performed by detecting a change in the IR signal transmission position at the IR receiver by moving the pointing device itself. Therefore, the present invention is equally applicable to the use of a pointing device having only an input key. Therefore, the scope of the invention should not be defined by the described embodiments, but should be defined by the equivalent of claims and claims.

As described above, the present invention has an advantage that the user can conveniently use the pointing device because the user can display and select a menu.

Claims (9)

A menu display method of a television receiver having a pointing device, Allocating at least one region of a certain portion of the screen as a menu region and assigning a unique menu to each of the menu regions; And displaying a menu designated in the menu area on the screen when the cursor of the pointing device is positioned in any one of the menu areas. The method of claim 1, further comprising: erasing on the screen when a predetermined time elapses from when the menu starts to be displayed on the screen. The method of claim 2, wherein when the cursor is moved on the screen before the predetermined time has elapsed after the menu starts to be displayed on the screen, the predetermined time elapses from when the movement of the cursor is stopped. And a process of erasing on the screen. 4. The method of claim 2 or 3, further comprising displaying the key again from the pointing device when the menu is erased on the screen while the cursor remains in the menu area. How to display the menu. The menu display method of claim 1, further comprising: erasing on the screen when a key input is input from the pointing device while the cursor is located outside the menu area while the menu is being displayed. The method of claim 1, wherein the menu area is allocated to an outer portion of the screen. 2. The method of claim 1, further comprising: performing a function corresponding to the icon when a key is input from the pointing device while the cursor is positioned on an icon of the menu while the menu is being displayed. How to display the menu. The method of claim 1, wherein the menu includes an icon corresponding to a function of the television receiver. The method of claim 8, wherein the menu comprises a channel selection menu having a standard up and down icon for up and down channels one by one and a fast up and down icon for up and down the channel by a predetermined unit. Menu display method.

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