Patent ID: 7950042

Claim:
A method of reducing a channel switching delay in time division multiplexing (TDM) mobile television systems, said method comprising: transmitting a sequence of data bursts associated with channels for reception on a radio frequency (RF) channel bandwidth received on a mobile television receiver, wherein said data bursts associated with channels comprise user-preferred channels and non-preferred channels; switching between an active state of transmission and a non-active state of transmission during reception of channels on said RF channel bandwidth, wherein said active state of transmission comprises transmission of data bursts associated only with user-preferred channels and said active state comprises enabling said mobile television receiver to receive said user-preferred channels, and wherein said non-active state of transmission comprises transmission of data bursts associated with user non-preferred channels and said non-active state comprises disabling said mobile television receiver; anticipating a particular user-preferred channel that a user will likely switch to during reception of channels on said RF channel bandwidth; decoding said sequence of data bursts only during said active state of transmission; buffering one decoded data burst for each of said user-preferred channels; neglecting parity data bursts in said sequence of data bursts during the buffering process; neglecting a first portion of each said data bursts during the buffering process; replacing a previously buffered data burst with a newly buffered data burst; sharing existing memory storage in said mobile television receiver between a currently viewed channel and an immediately subsequent sequenced channel; using a Reed Solomon (RS) decoder and an input/output (I/O) circuit to empty said memory storage to enable memory sharing between said currently viewed channel and said immediately subsequent sequenced channel; using a multiprotocol encapsulation forward error correction (MPE-FEC) process on data associated with said currently viewed channel to utilize memory resources of said mobile television receiver; transferring said data to a video decoder buffer external to said mobile television receiver; and allocating equally spaced time slots from said currently viewed channel to a combination of: said currently viewed channel; an immediately subsequent sequenced user-preferred channel; and an immediately preceding sequenced user-preferred channel to make channel switching delay uniform.