Wegener receives U.S. patent for preserving embedded data

Wegener has been granted a U.S. patent for a proprietary technique designed to improve the operation of SD satellite media receivers. The new patent (No. 7,312,831) is entitled: “Re-inserting VBI Data using OSD Apparatus and Method.”

During the digital video encoding process, data is stripped out of the vertical blanking interval (VBI) of SD video including: closed captioning; Automated Measurement of Lineups (AMOL), used for rating measurements); XDS data for V-Chip; and Teletext in Europe.

The process is embedded within its satellite media receivers — such as the company’s Unity 4600 — and reinserts those data services back into the VBI prior to sending the signals to viewers’ television sets.

The patent was developed to address the lack of capability among most chipsets on the market to support reinserting this data into the VBI. Most will reinsert the closed captioning but not the AMOL or other valuable information. Wegener’s solution uses the decoding chip’s on-screen display circuitry to render the data waveforms directly onto the VBI signals of the video. In this way, all VBI services are still supported, without adding any additional cost to the receiver.

For more information, visit www.wegener.com.