Television signal bandwidth reduction using variable rate transmission

A television signal transmission system incorporating means for processing encoding a repetition reduce signal, said system comprising:

• a. a component separator for generating sampled digital values of the color and intensity components of a television signal,
• b. buffer storage means for storing the separated components of the video signal,
• c. data processing means for comparing successive samples of the component video data and for generating variable-length blocks of data to represent either slowly varying signals or rapidly varying signals,
• d. means for encoding and multiplexing audio and synchronization data into the signal stream,
• e. means for encoding signal and control data for transmission to a receiver,
• f. means for processing the received signal to establish synchronization,
• g. means for demultiplexing the received signal to extract the audio information, and
• h. means for demultiplexing the component video information and reconstructing the composite video signal from the repetition-reduced representation,
• wherein the signal data is divided into blocks containing a fixed number of input samples and whose output block sizes depend on signal content, and wherein a slowly varying input signal is represented by a reduced number of output samples, and a rapidly varying input signal is represented on a one-to-one basis at corresponding sampling points except where control information is introduced, and further
• wherein a block of n samples representing a slowly varying input signal succeeded by a block representing another slowly varying input signal is represented by the first and middle samples of the former block;
• or in the case of a block of n samples representing a segment of input data which is succeeded by a block representing rapidly varying data, the former block is represented by the first n-2 input samples while the last two input samples are replaced by rate-tags;
• the rate-tags are control signals which have a magnitude of 0 units when the output segment contains no more than two clock intervals or a full-magnitude when the output segment length is greater than two clock intervals.