This invention relates to digital television devices, and in particular, it relates to control of a boot-up process of digital television devices.
While traditional (analogue) television devices can turn on almost instantaneously, existing digital television devices typically take much longer to turn on, as long as 10 seconds or more. For viewers' convenience, it is desirable to reduce the turn-on time of digital television devices.
The present invention is directed to a circuit and or firmware for controlling the turn on of a digitally controlled standard definition or high definition television device and related method that substantially obviate one or more of the problems due to limitations and disadvantages of the related art.
An object of the present invention is to provide a control circuit and or firmware and method that reduces the turn on time of digital television devices.
Additional features and advantages of the invention will be set forth in the descriptions that follow and in part will be apparent from the description, or may be learned by practice of the invention. The objectives and other advantages of the invention will be realized and attained by the structure particularly pointed out in the written description and claims thereof as well as the appended drawings.
To achieve these and other advantages and in accordance with the purpose of the present invention, as embodied and broadly described, the present invention provides a method for booting up a digital television device, the digital television devices comprising a processor having a plurality of registers, and a memory connected to the processor and storing values for the plurality of registers, the method including: (a) loading values into a first subset of the plurality of registers from the memory, (b) performing a first function of the television device using values of the first subset of registers, and (c) loading values into a second subset of the plurality of registers from the memory while performing the first function. In one implementation, the method further includes, before step (a), (d) retrieving saved state information regarding the last state of the television device, and (e) identifying the first set of registers to be loaded based on the retrieved information using a lookup table.
It is to be understood that both the foregoing general description and the following detailed description are exemplary and explanatory and are intended to provide further explanation of the invention as claimed.
As shown in
Not all registers, however, are needed to perform a particular function of the TV. The registers fall into different categories and are involved in the control of different functions of the TV. For example, a digital TV may have the following categories of registers: control registers related to processing of Standard Definition TV Signals, control registers related to processing of ATSC Tuner signals, control registers related to processing of VGA Computer signals, control registers related to scaling processing of video signals, control registers related to de-interlacing processing of video signals, control registers related to driving a specific display device such as LCD Panel, Plasma Panel, LCoS Panel, etc. While all parameters are needed for the control processor 31 to fully perform all possible control functions, only a subset of the parameters are needed to perform any particular function. For example, the VGA control registers need not be set up to process HDMI (High-Definition Multimedia Interface) signals, the Standard Definition control registers need not be set up to process High Definition (ATSC) signals, etc.
According to embodiments of the present invention, turn-on time of a digital TV can be significantly reduced by initially loading only a subset of the registers 31a. When the TV is powered on, only a subset of the registers are loaded so that the TV can perform a desired function, such as receiving and displaying a desired broadcast channel. While the viewer is viewing the initial display, the remaining registers are loaded and the control process completes its boot up process. Preferably, the initial display is determined by what the viewer was viewing last before the TV was turned off. To this end, the processor saves information about the state of the TV before the TV is turned off, including the source that the TV is currently receiving input from, such as tuner, cable, set-top box, DVD player, etc. This is already performed by most existing digital TVs. A lookup table pre-stored in a memory may be employed to provide a list of registers necessary for performing each of a plurality of functions.
Alternatively, although less preferred, the processor may be programmed to always perform a particular initial function when powered on, e.g., always tuning to a particular broadcast channel initially. The initial function may be chosen by the user using the setup functions of the TV. In this alternative design, the processor will load a predetermined subset of registers and no lookup table is necessary. As shown in
It will be apparent to those skilled in the art that various modification and variations can be made in the multiple-stage boot-up method of the present invention without departing from the spirit or scope of the invention. Thus, it is intended that the present invention cover modifications and variations that come within the scope of the appended claims and their equivalents.