The present invention relates to the field of digital communications. In particular the present invention discloses a broadband digital broadcast system for broadcasting digital information to a very large number of subscribers.
The Internet has become a major source of news and information for very large numbers of people. In particular, millions of Internet users browse the World Wide Web (WWW) to obtain HyperText Markup Language (HTML) documents using the HyperText Transport Protocol (HTTP). Many people now receive more news and information from the Internet WWW sites than from traditional information sources such as television. The WWW portion of the Internet is an excellent medium for news and information since the WWW Internet sites can provide information to users on-demand. Specifically, Internet users can immediately request the exact information they are interested in when ever they wish from WWW Internet sites.
However, the Internet WWW system news information does suffer from a number of deficiencies. One serious problem is that the limited bandwidth of most Internet connections severely limits the amount of information delivered. Most Internet users access the Internet through a dial-up modem at speeds of 56 kps per second or less. With such limited bandwidth, most Internet based WWW sites only deliver text and static images. When video information delivered through 56 K Internet connections the video information is compressed so heavily such that only small low-resolution video images are delivered at a low frame rate.
To improve upon the performance of the Internet, many telecommunication providers are now offering high-bandwidth connections for the “last mile” to an Internet user's residence. Cable television providers are now offering cable modem Internet service that use cable television wiring to deliver broadband Internet service. Similarly, telephone companies are rolling out Digital Subscriber Line (DSL) services that provide broadband Internet service. Although these broadband data connections provide additional bandwidth, such broadband connections only address the “last mile” bandwidth problem associated with sending rich multi-media information across the Internet. Many other problems will continue to exist.
One problem of delivering rich multi-media information across the Internet is that there are no standard quality-of-service guarantees for Internet Protocol data traffic. All Internet Protocol traffic is delivered on a best effort basis such that Internet Protocol packets are often dropped. Due the rapid uncontrolled growth of the Internet, many severe Internet “traffic jams” have occurred at large Internet peering point such as MAE-East and MAE-west. Thus, even if a user has a broadband connection between his residence and his Internet Service Provider (ISP), there is no guarantee that the connection between the Internet Service Provider (ISP) and a desired Internet media server will provide the bandwidth necessary for a rich multimedia stream.
Another problem with attempting to deliver rich multi-media information across the Internet is the point-to-point nature of Internet communication. Most Internet communication occurs in a unicast manner wherein a unique communication connection is established between each information server and each Internet client. Since each Internet client requires its own connection, the bandwidth requirement for serving information grows linearly with the number of Internet clients being served. Furthermore, each Internet client that requests service adds additional load to the server systems that service information. To serve rich multimedia information to a large number of a client systems, a large powerful server farm is required. It is therefore quite expensive from the server end in both communication costs and computer costs to serve large amounts of rich multi-media information.
Due to the above-described problems associated with Internet delivery of multimedia information, the Internet will largely remain a text and static image based information source. It would be desirable to provide a multi-media rich information system that is similar to the Internet in terms of on-demand access of interesting information but without the bandwidth problems associated with the Internet network system.
The present invention discloses a broadband data broadcast system that allows rich multimedia content to be delivered to the computer and information appliance systems of limitless numbers of subscribers. The broadband data broadcast system operates by multiplexing a plurality of multimedia rich digital information streams together at a centralized data broadcast center. The data broadcast center then broadcasts the multiplexed digital information stream on a broadcast medium such as satellite broadcasts, radio frequency broadcasts, or television broadcasts. A large number of receiver systems receive the broadcast signal and demodulate the broadcast signal to retrieve the multiplexed digital stream. The receiver system extracts a subset of digital information streams that the particular receiver system's owner has designated are of interest. The receiver system then output the interesting digital information streams to a display system or caches the interesting digital information stream for later access.
Other objects, features, and advantages of present invention will be apparent from the company drawings and from the following detailed description.
The objects, features, and advantages of the present invention will be apparent to one skilled in the art, in view of the following detailed description in which:
a illustrates an overview of a multiple broadcaster based terrestrial data broadcast system.
b illustrates a block diagram of a multiple broadcaster based terrestrial data broadcast system.
a illustrates a multimedia receiver/server system coupled to a personal computer system.
b illustrates a multimedia receiver/server system coupled to a television set-top box system.
c illustrates a multimedia receiver/server system coupled to a personal computer system that is also coupled to the Internet.
d illustrates a multimedia receiver/server system coupled to a television set-top box system that is also coupled to the Internet.
a illustrates an embodiment of a multimedia receiver/server system that receives a data broadcast on a digital television broadcaster signal.
b illustrates a block diagram of a multimedia receiver/server system that receives data broadcasts from multiple digital television broadcasters.
A method and apparatus for a directed data broadcast system is disclosed. In the following description, for purposes of explanation, specific nomenclature is set forth to provide a thorough understanding of the present invention. However, it will be apparent to one skilled in the art that these specific details are not required in order to practice the present invention. For example, the present invention has been described with reference to Internet multicasting. However, the same techniques can easily be applied to other types of data communication protocols.
For example, a first data origination source 110 transmits a digital information stream to a data broadcast facility 150 along a data communication channel 130. The data origination source 110 may be any entity that provides digital information for broadcast data over a data broadcast medium. One type of entity that may provide digital information for broadcast data over a data broadcast medium may be a broadcast news studio that creates audio and/or video news segments. The audio and/or video news segments may be digitized before or after transmission to the broadcast facility 150
The broadcast control center 150 processes the incoming digital information stream from data origination source 110 by adding addressing information, stream descriptor information, and error correction coding. Other stream processing operations may be performed such as encryption of the information streams. The broadcast control center 150 then multiplexes the received digital information stream from data origination source 110 with digital information streams from other sources such as data origination source 113 and data origination source 115.
After processing the individual digital information streams and multiplexing the individual digital information streams into a single broadcast stream, the broadcast facility 150 then modulates the multiplexed digital information stream onto a digital broadcast signal. The broadcast control center 150 then transmits the digital broadcast signal on a broadcast distribution medium. In the particular embodiment illustrated in
At each data broadcast receiver site is a data broadcast receiver system such as receiver 181 constructed to receive the digital broadcast signal. The receiver system 181 demodulates the digital broadcast signal to retrieve the multiplexed digital information stream. The receiver system 181 then examines the address portion of data packets and/or stream descriptor portions of each digital information stream to determine if the receiver system 181 is interested in a particular digital information stream. The receiver system 181 may be interested in a particular digital information stream if that digital information stream matches a set of preprogrammed interest parameters as defined by the receiver systems owner. The receiver system 181 may cache the matching digital information streams and/or directly output the matching digital information streams to one or more local client systems at the receiver system's site.
In one embodiment, the receiver system may distribute the output digital information streams in multicast Internet Protocol (IP) form on a local area network (LAN) if requested by any multicast subscribers on the LAN. For example, receiver system 184 receives and decodes the multiplexed broadcast signal. The receiver system 184 then rebroadcasts a subset of the received data onto an internal local area network (LAN) 130 such that the information stream is made available to client systems 131, 132, and 133. Furthermore, the receiver system 184 may cache the received digital information internally such that the information may be retrieved by the client systems at a later time.
Terrestrial Digital Television Data Broadcast Distribution
One broadcast medium that may be used to broadcast digital information is the terrestrial digital television infrastructure that is currently being built out. In a terrestrial digital television based transmission system, the processed multiplexed information stream is broadcast on a digital television transmission system using the MPEG-2 transport protocol.
The cost of building and maintaining a terrestrial digital television transmission system is very high. It would therefore be very expensive to build a terrestrial digital television transmission system just for data broadcasting. Instead, it would be desirable to share terrestrial digital television broadcast transmission capability with a terrestrial digital television broadcaster. Thus, the present invention introduces an embodiment that uses extra broadcast capacity on terrestrial digital television transmission systems to provide an inexpensive data broadcast transmission system. In a preferred embodiment, extra digital broadcast transmission capacity from more than one digital television broadcaster may be used to provide broadband data broadcasting.
a illustrates a data broadcasting embodiment wherein the data broadcast control center 150 delivers MPEG-2 transport protocol encoded information streams to one or more terrestrial digital television broadcast centers 251, 252, and 253. The terrestrial digital television broadcast centers (251, 252, and 253) merge the received MPEG-2 transport protocol encoded information streams into their ATSC (Advanced Television Standards Committee) digital television signals. The terrestrial digital television broadcast centers 251, 252, and 253 then broadcast the merged signal to all the receiver systems through their digital television transmission systems 261, 262, and 263. The receiver systems (181, 182, 183 . . . ) receive the ATSC digital television signals and extract the desired digital information streams from the MPEG-2 transport stream. In such a multi-broadcaster embodiment, each receiver system (181, 182, 183 . . . ) should have more than one receiver circuit such that multiple digital television broadcast centers (251, 252, and 253) can be monitored simultaneously.
a and 2b illustrate a block diagram of the embodiment in
The individual digital television broadcast stations 251, 252, and 253 multiplex the data broadcast information in with their local digital television signal. The individual digital television broadcast stations 251, 252, and 253 may also multiplex in additional locally generated data broadcast content. For example, digital television broadcast stations 251 may create additional data broadcast formatted content with local advertisers and local news teams. These local content digital information streams provide additional data broadcast content to the data broadcast digital information streams. All of the receiver systems (181, 182, 183 . . . ) will receive the data broadcast signals from all the participating television broadcaster stations (251, 252, and 253).
Additional detailed information on a data broadcasting infrastructure that can use the teachings of the present invention is available in the co-pending patent application entitled “Method and Apparatus for Broadcasting Data With Access Control” having Ser. No. 09/293,079, filed concurrently with this patent application and hereby incorporated by reference.
The receiver systems of the present invention receive data broadcast information and present that information to users of the receiver system. In one embodiment, the data broadcast receiver systems receive the data broadcast streams and present that information to other client systems that display the received digital information. Such an embodiment is referred to as a wireless multimedia receiver/server device since multimedia information is received over a wireless medium and served to other client systems.
a illustrates a first example usage of a wireless multimedia receiver/server device. In the embodiment of
The wireless multimedia receiver/server device is not limited to usage by personal computer systems.
The wireless multimedia receiver/server device 330 may be used alone as illustrated in
The receiver systems can be used to provide service to multiple client systems at a receiver site.
A Digital Video Broadcast Satellite Based Receiver Front-End
The multimedia receiver/server device 500 of
The Ku Band satellite signal reception system 505 includes a low-noise block converter (LNB) 507 that delivers a frequency converted signal an appropriate satellite band receiver circuitry 511. The satellite receiver circuitry 511 filters and amplifies the frequency range of the desired satellite signal. The satellite receiver circuitry 511 multiplies the filtered signal using a local oscillator to recover an in-phase (I) and quadrature (Q) version of the broadcast signal.
The satellite receiver circuitry 511 passes the in-phase (I) and quadrature (Q) signals to an analog to digital (A/D) converter 515. The analog to digital (A/D) converter 515 digitizes the in-phase (I) and quadrature (Q) signals and passes the digitized signal information to transport decoder circuitry 517.
The transport decoder circuitry 517 recovers the transmitted digital bit stream from the digitized in-phase (I) and quadrature (Q) signals. In one Ku band direct video broadcast satellite embodiment, the transport decoder circuitry 517 may includes a demodulator integrated circuit such as the OTI-8511 integrated circuit from Oak Technology of Sunnyvale, Calif. In such a DVB satellite based system, the OTI-8511 integrated circuit demodulates the in-phase (I) and quadrature (Q) signals to recover an MPEG-2 transport stream. The MPEG-2 transport stream is defined by the ISO standard defined in the document ISO/EEC 138181 titled “Information technology—Generic coding of moving pictures and associated audio information: Systems.” Control circuitry in the transport decoder circuitry 517 may copy the MPEG-2 transport stream into an I/O memory system 520.
A Terrestrial Digital Television Based Receiver Front-End
a illustrates a multimedia receiver/server device 600 that has a different receiver front-end receiver system. Specifically,
The ATSC digital television signals are then processed by an ATSC digital television receiver circuit 611. As in the satellite embodiment of
As noted in the embodiments of
A Multiple Tuner Terrestrial Digital Television Receiver Front-End
As illustrated in
Receiver System Digital Information Stream Processing
Referring back to
The processor 540 operates under the control of programs in the main memory 570. To share the computing resources of the digital receiver system 500, the processor 540 executes an operating system 571. The operating system 571 provides standard operating system features such as input/output abstraction, multitask scheduling, and memory management. The operating system allows the application software to easily access and use the resources of the computer system. In one embodiment of the present invention, the operation system 571 comprises a version of the Berkeley Standard Distribution (BSD) of the UNIX operating system. However, other operation systems can be used.
As illustrated in
Referring to
Packet Extraction and Processing
Referring the conceptual diagram of
Referring back to
Packet Routing
Referring again to
The packet routing system 730 may route other data packets to one or more client systems coupled to the multimedia receiver/server system 700 through computer interface 790. Thus, it can be seen from
Referring to
Information Caching
As seen in the preceding section, the multimedia receiver/server system 700 can be used to immediately route packets received from the data broadcast signal. However, the multimedia receiver/server system 700 can also be used to provide very useful data services by locally caching information. Referring to
In one embodiment, the caching application 745 may request to receive packets addressed to one or more designated multicast addresses that carries multimedia information and accompanying descriptors. The caching application 745 selectively captures multimedia information and stores that multimedia content information 753 in a file system 750. The caching application 745 may create multimedia information directory 755 such that the cached multimedia information may be quickly searched and accessed. The multimedia information may consist of anything that can be expressed in digital form including audio, video, text, web pages, and computer programs.
In one embodiment, each multimedia information stream is preceded by a multimedia descriptor. The multimedia descriptor describes the details of the upcoming multimedia stream. The caching application 745 can use the multimedia descriptor to determine if the upcoming multimedia stream should be cached or not. For example, in one embodiment the user defines a set of categories that the user finds interesting. These categories are stored in users preferences file 757. Then, the caching application 745 uses the multimedia descriptor information in conjunction with the set of user preferences 757 to select multimedia streams that contain news or information related to the defined set of user interests. The caching application 745 can use the multimedia descriptor to help build the multimedia directory 755.
The following list provides some of the information that may be provided in a multimedia descriptor:
As can be seen from the multimedia descriptor description, the caching application 745 is provided with a large number of fields that can be used to select interesting multimedia streams. Additional fields may be used to provide additional information about the multimedia streams.
The caching application 745 may also handle cache clean up. Specifically, old and outdated information should be removed from the file system 750 to conserve resources. The caching application 745 may use a number of different methods of selecting information to remove. One simple method of performing cache clean up is to remove cached items after their suggested expiration time has elapsed.
Information Serving
The multimedia receiver/server system 700 may present the cached multimedia information in a number of different ways. However, one of the most popular current methods of presenting information is in the form of World Wide Web (WWW) pages formatted in HyperText Markup Language (HTML) or eXtensible Markup Language (XML). One embodiment of the multimedia receiver/server system 700 uses a web page constructing application 760 to create WWW pages 759 that may be presented to client systems. (The web page constructing application is listed as web page building applications 576 in
The web page constructing application 760 may continually examine the contents of the multimedia directory 755 and the multimedia content 753 to locate information to be incorporated into web pages. In one embodiment, the caching application 745 directly informs the web page constructing application 760 about the multimedia streams that will be cached. In this manner, the web page constructing application 760 can incorporate the newly cached information into the web pages. Furthermore, the web page constructing application 760 can incorporate “live” information that is currently being received by referring to a multicast stream that contains the live stream. Similarly, the caching application 745 should inform the web page constructing application 760 about multimedia information being removed from the file system 750 such that the web page constructing application 760 can remove references to deleted information.
The web page constructing application 760 should create web pages in accordance with the user's particular preferences. Specifically, the web page constructing application 760 refers to the user preferences file 757 to create a custom multimedia enhanced web page that specifically contains information according to the user's preferences. In a multiple client environment, the web page constructing application 760 may create a different customized web page for each user that uses the multimedia receiver/server system 700.
A web server application 781 serves the created web pages 759 to client systems that request the web pages 759. (The web server application is listed as main server application 574 on
Other methods of serving information besides using the World Wide Web protocols and formats may also be provided. For example, server 787 may provide raw file information to client systems the well-known Network File System (NFS). Server 787 could also be a File Transport Protocol (FTP) server. Other server applications that implement other protocols can also be implemented.
To illustrate one type of service that may be provided by the data broadcast system of the present invention, an example of a data broadcast news application is disclosed. Referring to
Using the user interests in the user preferences file 757, the data caching application 745 begins collecting multimedia streams and multimedia descriptors broadcast over the data broadcast system. The caching application 745 creates a multimedia directory 755 using multimedia descriptor information. The caching application 745 may directly inform the web page constructing application 760 about the information streams that are being cached.
The web page constructing application 760 then uses the user preference information 757 along with multimedia descriptor information from the caching application 745 or from the multimedia directory 755 to create a customized multimedia enhanced web page for the user.
As depicted in
If the user is not interested in the video clip currently being displayed, the user can select one of the other headlines to bring up information on that story. The information may consist of a video clip, an audio clip, a web page, a text story, or any other digital information presentation.
The news web pages of the present invention can be created in typical hierarchical organization that is familiar to most computer users.
In one embodiment, the user can select one of the headlines in a story to bring up a web page with additional stories in that category and detailed information about the selected story. For example, if the user selects the “NJ Devils trade Star Wing” headline the Sports news web page illustrated in
Searching
The multimedia receiver/server system 700 can be used to provide custom web pages created in response to a user's query. For example,
Using the located information that is related to the search terms, the web page construction application 760 dynamically creates a web page that may be presented to the user.
In one embodiment wherein the multimedia receiver/server system 700 is coupled to the Internet, the web page construction application 760 may also include information retrieved from the Internet. Thus, the multimedia receiver/server system 700 can be used to merge multimedia information received over the data broadcast network with information retrieved from the Internet into a single display.
As disclosed, the present invention teaches methods and apparatus for implementing a broadband data broadcast system. The broadband data broadcast system allows rich multimedia information to be delivered to end-users that have narrowband or even no connection to the Internet. The broadband data broadcast system can be used to create a broadband data broadcast information service.
In one embodiment, the broadband data broadcast information service operates by selling multimedia receiver/server devices to consumers that desire service. The consumers connect their multimedia receiver/server devices to appropriate client systems such as personal computers, television set-top boxes, and home networks.
In one embodiment, a stand-alone multimedia receiver/display device may be sold such that users can use the service without having to have any other client system. Such an embodiment would be similar to the embodiment of
The broadband data broadcast service could be subscription based, advertiser supported, or a combination of paid subscription content and advertiser supported content. In a preferred embodiment, a significant amount of information is broadcast without a subscription requirement but is accompanied by advertising multimedia information that is displayed concurrently or intermittently. For example, an advertisement window can be added to the screen displays of
The advertisements can be accompanied by additional detailed information and programs stored locally on the file system 750. Thus, when a user is interested in a particular advertisement, the user can obtain that additional information or run programs associated with the advertisement. For example, an advertisement for a catalog based clothing merchant can be linked to a full version of the merchant's clothing catalog stored locally on the multimedia receiver/server device 700. Advertisers that desire to have large commercial documents such as product catalogs stored within the cache of the multimedia receiver/server systems could be charged a fee for such a privilege. The fee may be related to the amount of time that the commercial documents will be cached in the multimedia receiver/server device 700.
The user can browse the locally stored clothing catalog and select items for purchase. If the user has an Internet connection, the user can fill out an order form to order an item from the catalog. The broadband data broadcast capability of the present invention allows the catalog to include far more detailed information than normally presented on an Internet web page. Furthermore, the caching capability of the system allows all the catalog information to be stored locally for immediate and instantaneous access. Thus, it can be seen that the data broadcast service of the present invention provides the rich multimedia experience of radio and television along with the interactive browsing features of the Internet.
As depicted in
In addition to advertiser supported content, a number of subscription fee based premium services can be offered using the directed broadcast system of the present invention. For example, a special financial information subscription package may be offered that contains real-time stock quotes and in-depth financial news. Such subscription fee based premium data broadcast services would be protected by encrypting the digital information streams containing the premium content. To prevent piracy, the encryption system can be aided with the use of tamper-proof encryption circuitry 545 as depicted in
The foregoing has described a directed data broadcast system. It is contemplated that changes and modifications may be made by one of ordinary skill in the art, to the materials and arrangements of elements of the present invention without departing from the scope of the invention.
This application is a continuation of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09/560,674, filed Apr. 27, 2000 now abandoned, which is a divisional of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09/293,594, filed Apr. 16, 1999 now U.S. Pat. No. 6,526,580.
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Child | 11097580 | US |