Inserting television advertising spots automatically

Abstract

A downlink dish receives television signals from a remote location transmitted by satellite. Satellite receivers demodulate these received signals and normally transmit them through a switch to modulators which modulate respective carrier signals to retransmit the remote program video signals over a cable to subscribers. The switch also transmits the demodulated signals to tone monitors that detect a tone indicating the beginning of a spot message interval. A computer control responds to these detected signals to enable one or more video tape machines to deliver recorded spot messages to a time base corrector that also receives portions of the program video signal adjacent the spot message interval from the switch. The time base corrector delivers the time-base-corrected video signals through the switch to the modulators for modulating a selected carrier signal with program video signals and spot message signals without flicker. The computer control also enables tape monitors to record the spot messages when they are transmitted with information on the time and channel of transmission in support of billing. A data entry means furnishes information signals to the computer control for properly scheduling the rescheduling the transmission of spot messages.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.