Patent ID: 7683930

Claim:
A method comprising: accessing a persistent storage medium from a computing device, the persistent storage medium storing a portable vertical blanking interval signal stream derived from at least a portion of a television signal, the portable vertical blanking interval signal stream including vertical blanking interval signal header and a digitized vertical blanking interval signal payload, the digitized vertical blanking interval signal payload including a plurality of waveforms; reading the vertical blanking interval signal header from the persistent storage medium; validating the vertical blanking interval signal header relative to a vertical blanking interval signal standard; allocating memory based on size of the stored portable digitized vertical blanking interval signal stream defined by the vertical blanking interval signal header; reading the digitized vertical blanking interval signal payload from the persistent storage medium into the allocated memory according to information read from the vertical blanking interval signal header; computing at least one threshold level for the digitized vertical blanking interval signal payload; determining at least one threshold point for each waveform of the digitized vertical blanking interval signal payload relative to the at least one threshold level; detecting at least one deviation of the digitized vertical blanking interval signal payload from the vertical blanking interval signal standard by: determining a length of the payload, determining a total number of waveforms in the payload based on the threshold points for the plurality of waveforms, determining a maximum length for the payload based in part on the total number of waveforms in the payload, and comparing the length of the payload to the maximum length for the payload; presenting diagnostics indicating signal aberrations in the payload when the length of the payload is greater than the maximum length for the payload; calculating local thresholds for segments of the digitized vertical blanking interval signal payload; and correcting the signal aberrations of the vertical blanking interval signal payload based on the local thresholds for each segment.