Radio receiver for information dissemenation using subcarrier
AssigneeMacrovision Corporation
InventorJohn O. Ryan
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
A radio receiver receives FM subcarrier transmissions, and stores the transmitted textual information in a random access memory. The information is typically news, weather, sports, entertainment or other information of interest. A user interface allows selection from the memory of the stored information via a set of menus controlling a hierarchical database, so as to access particular items of information. A speech synthesizer accepts the accessed textual information items and transforms them into spoken speech. The user interface is either by voice or a single or multi-position switch allowing scanning through and selection from the menu items.
Claims21
A receiver system comprising:
- a radio tuner for demodulating data from a radio signal;
- a memory for storing the demodulated data as a database;
- a user interface for providing a set of hierarchical menus describing the database, and for accepting selections from the set of menus;
- a controller for selecting data from the database in response to the accepted selections and outputting the selected data in an alphanumeric form;
- and
- a speech synthesizer for converting the selected data from alphanumeric form to an analog audio signal representing spoken words.
A method for transmitting alphanumeric data via a radio signal to a receiver, comprising:
- broadcasting the radio signal;
- demodulating the alphanumeric data from the radio signal;
- determining if the data is encrypted and if encrypted, decrypting the alphanumeric data;
- storing the demodulated data in a memory as a database;
- generating a set of menus describing the database;
- selecting items of the alphanumeric data the set of menus;
- selecting from the memory portions of the stored data in response to the selected items, the portions being in alphanumeric form;
- and
- converting the selected portions from the alphanumeric form to an analog audio signal representing spoken words.
A receiver system comprising:
- a radio tuner for receiving a radio signal;
- a demodulator within said radio tuner to detect data in the received signal;
- conditional access circuitry for determining whether the data is encrypted;
- a decryptor for decrypting any of the data that is encrypted;
- a memory for storing the data;
- a user interface for generating a set of menus describing the data, and for accepting selections from the set of menus;
- a controller for selecting data in response to the accepted selections and outputting the selected data in alphanumeric form;
- and
- a speech synthesizer for converting the selected data from an alphanumeric form to an analog audio signal representing spoken words.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.