Patents by Inventor Marcus P Apitz

Marcus P Apitz has filed for patents to protect the following inventions. This listing includes patent applications that are pending as well as patents that have already been granted by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO).

  • Patent number: 9131269
    Abstract: A viewer of a digital television trying to freeze the video at a particular frame. Generally the human delay and the delay introduced by the remote control device and the control software executing on the television results in the frame that is displayed by the freeze event is some number of frames or seconds after the frame that the viewer wanted frozen. A small amount of memory that constantly buffers several seconds of digital video such that once the viewer initiates the freeze event the frame that is displayed is effectively some seconds in the past. The viewer then has the ability to single frame step to the frame that he actually was interested in viewing. The viewer's actions are refined by a rules based algorithm that allows it to more closely target and display what it believes will be the final frame the viewer wanted to be displayed.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: August 19, 2008
    Date of Patent: September 8, 2015
    Assignee: Vizio Inc.
    Inventors: William Pat Price, Peter J Schwartz, Marcus P Apitz
  • Patent number: 8201100
    Abstract: Scroll wheels have simplified the movement of cursors and changes in focus as a users navigate their way through menus, lists, tables, and other objects typically found in graphical user interfaces. Also typical of navigation schemes driven by scroll wheels is the ability of the user to accelerate the rate of movement of the cursor or focus by spinning the scroll wheel faster. One issue with this behavior is that a user who over accelerates the scroll wheel will often wind up overshooting his intended target and reversing the direction of the scroll wheel several times. The embodiment addresses this problem by giving control of the speed of the cursor or focus movement to the object being navigated. If the granularity of the list, table, menu, or other objects become smaller, the object has the ability to filter the speed input of the scroll wheel.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: September 4, 2008
    Date of Patent: June 12, 2012
    Assignee: Vizio Inc.
    Inventors: William Pat Price, Timothy Elliott, Marcus P Apitz, Peter Schwartz, Jeffrey Briller