Patents Examined by Carmine Malangone
  • Patent number: 7814521
    Abstract: A method is disclosed for distributing advertising data in an internet protocol television (IPTV) system, the method including dividing a plurality of end user devices in the IPTV system into K advertising groups; multicasting J advertising data multicast groups to end user devices in J advertising groups having a percentile ranking above or equal to a predetermined percentile ranking; and unicasting advertising data channels for actively viewed IPTV channels being viewed by other end users.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: April 25, 2007
    Date of Patent: October 12, 2010
    Assignee: ATT Knowledge Venturers, L.P.
    Inventors: Canhui Ou, Zhi Li, Yali Liu
  • Patent number: 7784076
    Abstract: A method of adaptively encoding video in response to an estimation of bandwidth over a transmission channel, where bandwidth estimation uses feedback packets from a receiver acknowledging receipt of video packets transmitted during an interval when the transmitted packets are not stored in a buffer of a lower network layer.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: April 21, 2005
    Date of Patent: August 24, 2010
    Assignee: Sharp Laboratories of America, Inc.
    Inventors: Mehmet U. Demircin, Petrus J. L. van Beek
  • Patent number: 7657906
    Abstract: A program recommendation apparatus that recommends a program to a user that is in accordance with the user's preference, by taking into account the importance of keywords used in classifying programs' contents into correct categories. The program recommendation apparatus has a category dictionary containing words as keywords, where each of the keywords is stored in association with contribution factors assigned with respect to categories respectively, searches program information of each program in an EPG for the keywords contained in the category dictionary, for any found keywords, obtains category summations of contribution factors of the found keywords for each of the categories, calculates category evaluation values of the program according to the category summations of the contribution factors, and recommends one or more programs to the user according to a degree of similarity between the category evaluation values of the programs and user preference factors.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: November 11, 2004
    Date of Patent: February 2, 2010
    Assignee: Panasonic Corporation
    Inventors: Keiji Icho, Hirokazu Tokuda, Yuko Tsusaka
  • Patent number: 7617517
    Abstract: In a Hybrid Fiber Coaxial (HFC) network using a Set Top Box (STB) or a cable modem, the cable STB or the cable modem includes respective High-Pass Filters (HPFs) having different passband frequencies to transmit an upstream signal from the cable STB or the cable modem to the HFC network through paths having different passband frequencies depending on states of the HFC network so that the upstream frequency band of 5 to 42 MHz is available.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: December 7, 2004
    Date of Patent: November 10, 2009
    Assignee: Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd.
    Inventor: Shin-Woong Kay
  • Patent number: 7536707
    Abstract: A visual communications system and a method of controlling the same for pausing the screens of two terminals at quite the same image. Video communications terminals receive the same channel in their respective broadcast program receiving units. A first video communications terminal temporarily stores the video of the received channel in the temporary storage memory. When a user pauses operation of the first terminal, it temporarily stores a screen pause time obtained by adding a predetermined time to the current time, and transmits a screen pause command and the screen pause time to a second video communications terminal. The second terminal pauses the video at the screen pause time if possible in time. Otherwise, it pauses the video immediately, and transmits a response with its own image pause time to the first terminal. The first terminal displays an image corresponding to the image pause time of the second terminal memory.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: December 7, 2004
    Date of Patent: May 19, 2009
    Assignee: Canon Kabushiki Kaisha
    Inventors: Yuichi Matsumoto, Takashi Yamamoto, Masaki Kutsuna, Shigeki Mori