A videophone having an automatic answering capability

A videophone comprising:

• means for providing input video signals;
• communicating means, connected to a communication line, for transmitting and receiving difference encoded sound signals and video signals onto or from said line;
• storage start commanding means for generating a storage start command, an occurrence of said storage start command temporally defining when storage of the video signals is to start;
• video signal processing means connected to said communication means and having a decoded and an encoded;
• wherein the decoder continuously decodes, until the storage start command occurs, the video signals and sound signals received by the communicating means in order to form decoded video and sound signals, respectively;
• and wherein the encoder encodes the input video signals prior to an occurrence of the storage start command, and, in response to the occurrence of said command, encodes the decoded video signals to provide one frame of coded video signals;
• and
• storing means, operative in response to the occurrence of said storage start command, for storing the one frame of video signals encoded by the video signal processing means and thereafter storing difference encoded video signals received through the communicating means.

A videophone comprising:

• communicating means, connected to a communication line, for transmitting and receiving difference encoded sound signals and video signals onto or from said line;
• video signal processing means, connected to said communication means, for continuously decoding the video signals and sound signals received through the communicating means in order to form decoded video and sound signals, respectively;
• and
• storage start detecting means, connected to said communicating means, for detecting, from control signals received through the communication means, a control signal, representing a storage start request, in response to which storage of the video and audio signals is to start.