Televisions sold in retail locations are generally, manually placed into what is known in the art as “Retail Mode”. Retail locations generally are environments where the ambient light levels and ambient audio levels are quite high. Home environments on the other hand generally have ambient light and sound levels that are substantially lower than retail environments. A television with brightness levels and color saturation suitable for the home environment will appear washed out and dim in a retail environment. To counter the issues with retail environments, televisions are currently set up in retail environments such that picture quality and audio quality are manually set to prevent the display from being washed out and the audio equalization setup such that it is easier to hear over loud background sounds.
The inventor recognized a need for a television to automatically determine if it is in a retail environment or a home environment and to set up the display variables such that the first time power is applied, the screen variables are automatically set to be appropriate for the environment.
Embodiments describe systems and methods for a television to automatically determine, on initial power up, its geographical location.
If the television is determined to be residing in a retail store location, the television operates to automatically default to retail mode where picture and audio quality are set to pre-specified settings conducive to a retail environment where the ambient light and sound levels are not what would typically be found in a residential environment.
A software module and a database is resident in the television that determines, from interrogating a location detector, e.g., a GPS chip set, or obtaining identifying data from an attached wired or wireless network and matching the data to identifying data for retail store locations to determine if the television is located in a retail store. If the location of the television is determined to be in a retail store, the television will initialize the video and audio quality for a retail store environment. If the location of the television is determined to not be in a retail store, the television will initialize the video and audio quality for a residential environment.
in the drawings:
In a preferred embodiment operates as discussed herein. After power is applied for the first time to the television, the network electronics of the television are activated. If one or more Wifi networks are discovered, the SSID and MAC addresses are saved in a list. If there are no discoverable Wifi networks but the television is connected to a wired network, the MAC address is saved in a list. If the television is not connected to a wired or wired network and a GPS chip set is embedded in the television, the GPS electronics are activated, and attempt to discover the minimum number of GPS satellites to determine the geographical coordinates of the television's location. If the geographical coordinates of the television can be determined from the GPS device, the coordinates will be saved in a list.
If the television lacks a GPS chip set, a dialog box is displayed to the user asking if the television is in a retail store. If the user indicates that the television is in a retail store the processor sets up pre-selected picture and audio quality registers and features to make the television more appealing in a retail environment. If the user indicates that the television is not in a retail store, the processor sets up pre-selected picture and audio quality registers and features suitable to a residential environment.
If the invention detects that a Wifi network is discoverable by virtue of a Wifi Access Point (AP) broadcasting its Service Set Identifier (SSID), each discoverable SSID and MAC address is set and saved to a list. The SSID/MAC entries in the list are then matched against a database of SSID/MAC data associated with known retail stores. If a match is made, the television will be detected to be in a retail store location and the initial setup will be defaulted to “Retail Mode”.
If the invention determines that no Wifi APs are present, but a wired network is attached to the television, the invention will obtain the physical MAC address and which will then be matched against a database of SSID/MAC data and if a match is made, the television will be assumed to be in a retail store location and the initial setup will be defaulted to “Retail Mode”.
If the result of the detection is that television is not connected to a wired network, and that there are no discoverable Wifi networks, the system then determines if a GPS or other kind of location detecting device is embedded within the television. If the television does contain a GPS device, the GPS device is activated, and the system waits a predetermined period of time for the GPS device to discover the minimum number of satellites to compute the geographical location of the television. If the minimum number of satellites is discovered, the coordinates will be saved in a list and matched against a database of GPS coordinates of retail stores that sell the television. If a match is made, the initial setup will be defaulted to “Retail Mode”. Note that other systems of determining location can also be used, such as cell tower triangulation or others.
If the location cannot be determined: either through network data or GPS data or because the television is not connected to a wired or wireless network and GPS data cannot be obtained, it will display to the user a dialog message on the display screen requesting the user to indicate if the television is in a retail or residential location. If the user indicates that the television is in a retail store location, the invention will default the initial setup mode to “Retail Mode” otherwise it will default the initial setup mode to “Residential Mode”.
The present invention is intended to determine if a television that has just had power applied for the first time is physically located in a retail store location and if it is, the invention will write a set of retail mode data to the control registers that control screen brightness and other display screen variables and audio mode.
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As another example, the IP address in the wireless can be looked up, to attempt to match the source of the IP address with its location. If that source shows a retail location, the retail mode is set.
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Note also that the above has described operation with a television controlled by a processor. However, more generally, this can be used on any kind of device that displays videos, such as television sets, Set top boxes, Game consoles, Tuner dongles, Personal computers, and any other device having the ability to display AV content.
Those of skill would further appreciate that the various illustrative logical blocks, modules, circuits, and algorithm steps described in connection with the embodiments disclosed herein may be implemented as electronic hardware, computer software running on a specific purpose machine that is programmed to carry out the operations described in this application, or combinations of both. To clearly illustrate this interchangeability of hardware and software, various illustrative components, blocks, modules, circuits, and steps have been described above generally in terms of their functionality. Whether such functionality is implemented as hardware or software depends upon the particular application and design constraints imposed on the overall system. Skilled artisans may implement the described functionality in varying ways for each particular application, but such implementation decisions should not be interpreted as causing a departure from the scope of the exemplary embodiments.
The various illustrative logical blocks, modules, and circuits described in connection with the embodiments disclosed herein, may be controlled by a general or specific purpose processor, or with hardware that carries out these functions, e.g., a Digital Signal Processor (DSP), an Application Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC), a Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) or other programmable logic device, discrete gate or transistor logic, discrete hardware components, or any combination thereof designed to perform the functions described herein. A general purpose processor may be a microprocessor, but in the alternative, the processor may be any conventional processor, controller, microcontroller, or state machine. The processor can be part of a computer system that also has an internal bus connecting to cards or other hardware, running based on a system BIOS or equivalent that contains startup and boot software, system memory which provides temporary storage for an operating system, drivers for the hardware and for application programs, disk interface which provides an interface between internal storage device(s) and the other hardware, an external peripheral controller which interfaces to external devices such as a backup storage device, and a network that connects to a hard wired network cable such as Ethernet or may be a wireless connection such as a RF link running under a wireless protocol such as 802.11. Likewise, external bus 18 may be any of but not limited to hard wired external busses such as IEEE-1394 or USB. The computer system can also have a user interface port that communicates with a user interface, and which receives commands entered by a user, and a video output that produces its output via any kind of video output format, e.g., VGA, DVI, HDMI, displayport, or any other form. This may include laptop or desktop computers, and may also include portable computers, including cell phones, tablets such as the IPAD™ and Android platform tablet, and all other kinds of computers and computing platforms.
A processor may also be implemented as a combination of computing devices, e.g., a combination of a DSP and a microprocessor, a plurality of microprocessors, one or more microprocessors in conjunction with a DSP core, or any other such configuration. These devices may also be used to select values for devices as described herein.
The steps of a method or algorithm described in connection with the embodiments disclosed herein may be embodied directly in hardware, in a software module executed by a processor, using cloud computing, or in combinations. A software module may reside in Random Access Memory (RAM), flash memory, Read Only Memory (ROM), Electrically Programmable ROM (EPROM), Electrically Erasable Programmable ROM (EEPROM), registers, hard disk, a removable disk, a CD-ROM, or any other form of tangible storage medium that stores tangible, non transitory computer based instructions. An exemplary storage medium is coupled to the processor such that the processor can read information from, and write information to, the storage medium. In the alternative, the storage medium may be integral to the processor. The processor and the storage medium may reside in reconfigurable logic of any type.
In one or more exemplary embodiments, the functions described may be implemented in hardware, software, firmware, or any combination thereof. If implemented in software, the functions may be stored on or transmitted over as one or more instructions or code on a computer-readable medium. Computer-readable media includes both computer storage media and communication media including any medium that facilitates transfer of a computer program from one place to another. A storage media may be any available media that can be accessed by a computer. By way of example, and not limitation, such computer-readable media can comprise RAM, ROM, EEPROM, CD-ROM or other optical disk storage, magnetic disk storage or other magnetic storage devices, or any other medium that can be used to carry or store desired program code in the form of instructions or data structures and that can be accessed by a computer.
The memory storage can also be rotating magnetic hard disk drives, optical disk drives, or flash memory based storage drives or other such solid state, magnetic, or optical storage devices. Also, any connection is properly termed a computer-readable medium. For example, if the software is transmitted from a website, server, or other remote source using a coaxial cable, fiber optic cable, twisted pair, digital subscriber line (DSL), or wireless technologies such as infrared, radio, and microwave, then the coaxial cable, fiber optic cable, twisted pair, DSL, or wireless technologies such as infrared, radio, and microwave are included in the definition of medium. Disk and disc, as used herein, includes compact disc (CD), laser disc, optical disc, digital versatile disc (DVD), floppy disk and blu-ray disc where disks usually reproduce data magnetically, while discs reproduce data optically with lasers. Combinations of the above should also be included within the scope of computer-readable media. The computer readable media can be an article comprising a machine-readable non-transitory tangible medium embodying information indicative of instructions that when performed by one or more machines result in computer implemented operations comprising the actions described throughout this specification.
Operations as described herein can be carried out on or over a website. The website can be operated on a server computer, or operated locally, e.g., by being downloaded to the client computer, or operated via a server farm. The website can be accessed over a mobile phone or a PDA, or on any other client. The website can use HTML code in any form, e.g., MHTML, or XML, and via any form such as cascading style sheets (“CSS”) or other.
The computers described herein may be any kind of computer, either general purpose, or some specific purpose computer such as a workstation. The programs may be written in C, or Java, Brew or any other programming language. The programs may be resident on a storage medium, e.g., magnetic or optical, e.g. the computer hard drive, a removable disk or media such as a memory stick or SD media, or other removable medium. The programs may also be run over a network, for example, with a server or other machine sending signals to the local machine, which allows the local machine to carry out the operations described herein.
Also, the inventor(s) intend that only those claims which use the words “means for” are intended to be interpreted under 35 USC 112, sixth paragraph. Moreover, no limitations from the specification are intended to be read into any claims, unless those limitations are expressly included in the claims.
Where a specific numerical value is mentioned herein, it should be considered that the value may be increased or decreased by 20%, while still staying within the teachings of the present application, unless some different range is specifically mentioned. Where a specified logical sense is used, the opposite logical sense is also intended to be encompassed.
The previous description of the disclosed exemplary embodiments is provided to enable any person skilled in the art to make or use the present invention. Various modifications to these exemplary embodiments will be readily apparent to those skilled in the art, and the generic principles defined herein may be applied to other embodiments without departing from the spirit or scope of the invention. Thus, the present invention is not intended to be limited to the embodiments shown herein but is to be accorded the widest scope consistent with the principles and novel features disclosed herein.