Patent ID: 8179980

Claim:
A receiver comprising: a processor and memory, wherein the receiver receives, under control of the processor, an electromagnetic signal for transmitting television and other information, an amplitude of which said electromagnetic signal is modulated in accordance with a digital signal generated by convolutional byte interleaving and trellis coding of segments of successive data fields, said segments of said successive data fields each containing a prescribed number of bytes, and wherein respective coded portions of a Reed-Solomon forward-error-correction (RS FEC) codeword are transmitted in respective ones of a plurality of said segments of said successive data fields, said respective ones of said plurality of said segments being separated from each other within said successive data fields; a demodulator which demodulates said electromagnetic signal so as to generate an equalized digital signal that comprises trellis-coded data; a trellis decoder connected for receiving said trellis-coded data and supplying a trellis decoder response responsive to said trellis-coded data; a de-interleaving circuitry which de-interleaves said trellis decoder response to generate successive segments of a field of de-interleaved data; an RS FEC decoder which decodes each said coded RS FEC codeword to regenerate a respective regenerated RS FEC codeword; and a decoder which decodes each said regenerated RS FEC codeword to obtain a respective packet of data therefrom, wherein said RS FEC codeword encodes information concerning block coding being used in ones of said segments of at least one of said successive data fields.