Television tuner
AssigneeFunai Electric Co., Ltd.
InventorTakehiro Onomatsu
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
Disclosed is a television tuner which receives television signals using a smart antenna. It includes an auto-scan unit which makes a channel storing section store receiving channel numbers and receiving directions for a plurality of receiving channels automatically. It also has a channel change unit whereby a receiving direction in which the state of a signal from a tuner section becomes a predetermined one is not stored. When a command to change channels is given, the smart antenna directivity is changed while the signal state is detected, and when the signal state becomes a predetermined one, the smart antenna directivity is retained. This increases the auto-scan processing speed.
Claims6
A television tuner which receives television signals using a smart antenna whose directivity can be statically selected by an electrical signal, comprising:
- a directivity control section which outputs an electrical signal to select the directivity of the smart antenna;
- a tuner section which receives television signals in a given frequency band using the smart antenna;
- a signal condition detector section which detects the state of a signal from the tuner section by detecting AGC voltage which determines the gain of a signal from the tuner section and/or a bit error rate of a digital signal from the tuner section;
- a channel storing section which stores both the number of a receiving channel on which the state of the signal detected by the signal condition detector section becomes a predetermined one, and the corresponding receiving direction of the smart antenna in a way to correlate them to each other;
- and
- an auto-scan unit which makes the channel storing section store receiving channel numbers and receiving directions for a plurality of channels automatically, wherein
- the auto-scan unit makes the directivity control section change the directivity of the smart antenna to different directions, makes the signal condition detector section detect a signal state in each direction, and changes receiving channels of the tuner section upon storage of a receiving channel in the channel storing section;
- wherein
- the auto-scan unit does not make the channel storing section store the receiving direction of the smart antenna in which the state of the signal detected by the signal condition detector section becomes a predetermined one;
- and wherein
- the tuner further comprises:
- a channel change unit whereby, when a command to change receiving channels is given during reception of television signals, the frequency band of a television signal received by the tuner section is set to a frequency band appropriate to the updated channel number and also the antenna control section changes the smart antenna directivity to different directions, the signal condition detector section detects the signal state in each direction, and when the signal state detected by the signal condition detector section becomes a predetermined one, the directivity of the smart antenna is retained.
A television tuner which receives television signals using a smart antenna whose directivity can be statically selected by an electrical signal, comprising:
- a directivity control section which outputs an electrical signal to select the directivity of the smart antenna;
- a tuner section which receives television signals in a given frequency band using the smart antenna;
- a signal condition detector section which detects the state of a signal from the tuner section;
- a channel storing section which stores both the number of a channel on which the state of the signal detected by the signal condition detector section becomes a predetermined one, and the corresponding receiving direction of the smart antenna in a way to correlate them to each other;
- and
- an auto-scan unit which makes the channel storing section store channel numbers and receiving directions for a plurality of channels automatically, wherein
- the auto-scan unit does not make the channel storing section store the receiving direction of the smart antenna in which the state of the signal detected by the signal condition detector section becomes a predetermined one;
- and wherein
- the tuner further comprises:
- a channel change unit whereby, when a command to change receiving channels is given during reception of television signals, the frequency band of a television signal received by the tuner section is set to a frequency band appropriate to the updated channel number and also the antenna control section changes the smart antenna directivity to different directions, the signal condition detector section detects the signal state in each direction, and when the signal state detected by the signal condition detector section becomes a predetermined one, the directivity of the smart antenna is retained.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.