Abstract:
In a television system in which at least program title information for programs which are to be transmitted in the future is transmitted in advance to form a channel guide listing, apparatus is provided for acquiring one of the title information and the current date, and generating display signal comprising data representing a text screen containing one of the title information and the current date for recording a user-viewable screen display on a video tape ahead of the television program signal. The title or date information acting as a leader to the following television program. In a second embodiment of the invention, in those instances where descriptive text accompanies the program listing, apparatus of the invention records the descriptive text relating to the title, the star, the director, or the context of the program.

Description:
FIELD OF THE INVENTION 
     The subject invention concerns the field of VCRs and television program schedulers. 
     BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 
     Many viewers record television programs for playback at a more convenient time. This practice is commonly-known as “time-shifting”. Unfortunately, many people nowadays have little free time in their hectic schedules to spend watching these tapes. Consequently, a sizable stack of tapes containing such time-shifted recordings can accrue before the viewer plays them. In the best of all possible worlds, the viewer would have labelled the outside of each tape with the title and date of the recorded television program. In actual practice, however, there is little chance that one is so organized. Consequently, a viewer may have accumulated three or four tapes, each containing an episode of a favorite show and, in the absence of neatly labeled tapes, the viewer must then play a portion of each tape to see if it is the desired episode. 
     Many camcorders include electronic titling circuitry including a keyboard for adding a text screen overlay to the image being recorded, so that the user can record a title along with the video. However, given the fact that many viewers do not even label their tapes, it is highly unlikely that a viewer would use such a time-consuming and tedious feature to title each tape electronically. Moreover, electronic titling by use of a keyboard is contrary to the current trend in the industry of making the recording of a television program a quick and easy procedure 
     SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION 
     In a television system in which at least program title information for programs which are to be transmitted in the future is transmitted in advance to form a channel guide listing, apparatus is provided for acquiring at least one of the title information and the current date, and generating display signal comprising data representing a text screen containing at least one of the title information and the current date for recording a user-viewable screen display on a video tape ahead of the television program signal. The user-viewable title or date information then acts as a leader to the following television program. In a second embodiment of the invention, in those instances where descriptive text accompanies the program listing, apparatus of the invention records the descriptive text relating to the title, the star, the director, or the context of the program. 
    
    
     BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWING 
     FIG. 1 is an illustration of a screen display of a portion of a typical channel guide, as known from the prior art. 
     FIG. 2 is an illustration of a screen display showing an auxiliary text description associated with a particular program guide entry as known from the prior art. 
     FIG. 3 is an illustration of a titling screen display in accordance with the subject invention. 
     FIG. 4 is an illustration in block diagram form of apparatus suitable for practicing the invention. 
     FIG. 5 is a flow chart illustrating an automatic titling process suitable for use in the subject invention. 
    
    
     DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION 
     Television systems such as the RCA® DSS® direct broadcast satellite system and Starsight® transmit channel guides for display on the television receivers of subscribers. 
     FIG. 1 shows a Program Guide screen display produced, for example, by an RCA® DSS® direct broadcast satellite receiver system, manufactured by Thomson Consumer Electronics, Inc. Indianapolis, Ind. A user selects a television program from a Program Guide  100  for viewing, by moving a cursor (via operation of remote control up, down, right, and left, direction control keys, not shown) to a block of the program guide screen display which contains the name of the desired program. When a RECORD key of the remote control is pressed, the current x and y position of the cursor is evaluated to derive virtual channel and program time information. In this example, a particular television show, STAR TREK: VOYAGER has been highlighted for selection by use of the cursor keys on a remote control unit (e.g.,  450 R of FIG.  4 ). The highlighting is illustrated by the dark box outlining the title in FIG.  1 . Upon pressing the RECORD key, the relevant programming data is transferred to a programming unit such as VCR  402  of FIG.  4 . This procedure is commonly known as one-touch recording. 
     In FIG. 2, a text box  210  is displayed on top of Program Guide  200 . Text box  210  contains a title, time, channel, and date information and may also contain a description of the highlighted program. This information is derived from auxiliary information signals transmitted with the program signals. In terrestrial systems, such as Starsight®, it is transmitted during the vertical blanking interval. In the DSS® satellite system, it is transmitted in data packets along with the program guide information, description information packets, and program data. 
     The subject invention recognizes that this auxiliary information can be used to form a “tape leader” for the program to be recorded. In this way, the program title and date are recorded onto the tape as a user-readable OSD display ahead of the desired television program. FIG. 3 shows such a screen display  310  being displayed on the screen of a television receiver  300  during playback, just before the start of the recorded program. The display comprises program information such as, title, date, start time, channel, rating, and may also include a description of the program. While it is not necessary to record all of this information, it is preferable that at least title information or at least date information be used to form the program information screen. For example, it may be easy to identify an episode from a given television series (e.g. Star Trek), and all that is necessary for further identification is to display the date on which the episode was recorded. On the other hand, it is also herein recognized that in some instances additional content-descriptive text may be helpful to the viewer in identifying the television program recorded on the videotape. 
     As noted above, the channel guide data used by the controller of the subject apparatus may be received from a satellite television communication system, or from standard terrestrial broadcasts. FIG. 4 shows such a satellite television communication system in which, a satellite  400 S receives a signal representing audio, video, or data information from an earth-based transmitter  400 T. The satellite amplifies and rebroadcasts this signal to a plurality of receivers  400 R, located at the residences of consumers, via transponders operating at specified frequencies and having given bandwidths. Such a system includes an uplink transmitting portion (earth to satellite), an earth-orbiting satellite receiving and transmitting unit, and a down-link portion (satellite to earth) including a receiver located at the user&#39;s residence. 
     In a such a satellite system, the information necessary to select a given television program is not fixedly-programmed into each receiver but is rather is down-loaded from the satellite continually on each transponder. The television program selection information comprises a set of data known as a Master Program Guide (MPG), which relates television program titles, their start and end times, a virtual channel number to be displayed to the user, and information allocating virtual channels to transponder frequencies and to a position in the time-multiplexed data stream transmitted by a particular transponder. In such a system, it is not possible to tune any channel until the first master program guide is received from the satellite, because until receiving the guide, the receiver (IRD, or Integrated Receiver Decoder) literally does not know the location of any channel, in terms of frequency and position (i.e. data time slot) within the data stream of any transponder. 
     A master program guide is preferably transmitted on all transponders with the television program video and audio data, and is repeated periodically, for example, every 2 seconds. The master program guide, once received, is maintained in a memory unit in the receiver, and updated periodically, for example every 30 minutes. Retention of the master program guide allows instantaneous television program selection because the necessary selection data are always available. If the master program guide were to be discarded after using it to select a television program, then a delay of at least two seconds would be incurred while a new program guide was acquired, before any further television program selections could be performed. 
     Once the channel transponder carrying a desired television program is tuned, the data packets containing the audio and video information for that program can be selected from the data stream received from the transponder by examining the data packets for the proper SCID (Service Component Identifier) 12 bit code. If the SCID of the currently received data packet matches the SCID of the desired television program as listed in the program guide, then the data packet is routed to the proper data processing sections of the receiver. If the SCID of a particular packet does not match the SCID of the desired television program as listed in the program guide, then that data packet is discarded. 
     A brief description of system hardware, suitable for implementing the above-described invention, now follows. In FIG. 4, a transmitter  400 T processes a data signal from a source  401  (e.g., a television signal source) and transmits it to a satellite  400 S which receives and rebroadcasts the signal to a receiving antenna  400 A which applies the signal to a receiver  400 R. Transmitter  400 T includes an encoder  410 T, a modulator (i.e., modulator/forward error corrector (FEC))  420 T, and an uplink unit  430 T. Encoder  410 T compresses and encodes signals from source  401  according to a predetermined standard such as MPEG. MPEG is an international standard developed by the Moving Picture Expert Group of the International Standards Organization for coded representation of moving pictures and associated audio stored on digital storage medium. An encoded signal from unit  410 T is supplied to modulator/Forward Error Corrector (FEC)  420 T, which encodes the signal with error correction data, and Quaternary Phase Shift Key (QPSK) modulates the encoded signal onto a carrier. 
     Uplink unit  430 T transmits the compressed and encoded signal to satellite  400 S, which broadcasts the signal to a selected geographic reception area. The signal from satellite  400 S is received by an antenna dish  400 A coupled to an input of a so-called set-top receiver  400 R (i.e., an interface device situated atop a television receiver). Receiver  400 R includes a demodulator (demodulator/Forward Error Correction (FEC) decoder)  410 R to demodulate the signal and to decode the error correction data, an IR receiver  412  for receiving IR remote control commands, a microprocessor  415 R, which operates interactively with demodulator/FEC unit  410 R, and a transport unit  420 R to transport the signal to an appropriate decoder  430 R within unit  400 R depending on the content of the signal, i.e., audio or video information. An NTSC Encoder  440 R encodes the decoded signal to a format suitable for use by signal processing circuits in a standard NTSC consumer VCR  402  and standard NTSC consumer television receiver  403 . Microprocessor (or microcontroller, or microcomputer)  415 R receives infrared (IR) control signals from remote control unit  450 R, and sends control information to VCR  402  via an IR link  418 R. Microprocessor  415 R also generates the on-screen display (OSD) signals needed for presenting the interactive sentence, or confirmation sentence, to the user. Microprocessor  415 R also receives and interprets cursor key X and Y information in order to control the highlighting of user choices in the on-screen displays. 
     FIG. 5 is a flowchart showing the operation of the controller (for example microcontroller  415 R of DSS receiver  400 R) a few moments before the designated recording time of a desired television program. The routine is entered at step  500 . At step  515  a command is sent to VCR  402  (by IR signal or over a control bus) to turn-on the VCR. At step  520 , the DSS circuitry is controlled to selects the proper television program (i.e., select the proper signal from the correct satellite, from the correct transponder, and from the correct time slot in the data stream). At step  525 , a title and description screen display is prepared and output to VCR  402  and television receiver  403 . The title and description screen will be displayed on the screen of television receiver  403  if television receiver  403  happens to be turned-on. At step  528  the DSS unit is turned-on (i.e., powered-up from a standby state, if necessary). At step  530 , VCR  402  is controlled to start recording. What will be recorded at this time is the title and description screen generated by DSS receiver  400 R. At steps  535  and  540 , a delay is executed for an appropriate time period to allow the user to read the title and description screen when the tape is played back. At step  545 , the title and description screen is removed to allow for the recording of the desired television program. The recording will continue through steps  550  and  555  until the program is over. At step  560  the VCR is controlled to stop recording and turn off. At step  570 , DSS receiver  400 R is turned off, and the routine is exited at step  575 . 
     Thus, there has been described an apparatus for automatically titling a recording on a video tape, which requires no action on the part of the viewer, other than selecting the program to be recorded. It is important to note that the recorded title information is user-readable when the tape is played back. While the system has been described with respect to one touch recording, it is equally applicable to timer recording, because the DSS® system or Starsight® system can access the necessary data from a knowledge of time and channel. While the invention has been described with respect to a VCR, any recording device, such as recordable videodisc or storage in electronic memory or on a computer-type disc drive, is envisioned and deemed to lie within the scope of the following claims.