Abstract: It is common that communications such as telephone calls between calling and called lines be made by sharing a single communications path on a time division basis. Each call is assigned to a shared path for a short time interval, also called a time slot. It is known to interchange an input time slot to a different output time slot. Unfortunately, known time slot interchange arrangements insert an input sample in a single output time slot. The instant time slot interchanger extends an input sample onto a plurality of output time slots for broadcasting a sample through a plurality of locations. Also, the instant time slot interchanger may selectively insert an alternate message, e.g., an error message, in an output time slot.

Abstract: In a digital transmission system that encodes each sample of a video signal into a variable bit length data word to form a consecutive stream of variable bit length data words, synchronization between the received data words and their properly associated spatial addresses is maintained by periodically interposing synchronization words into the transmitted data stream. After initialization at the beginning of a video field, each picture element along each active scan line is consecutively sampled and encoded into a variable bit length data word. Each scan line is divided into segments having a predetermined number of sample positions included therein. A word counter cyclically counts each sample as it is encoded to provide a representation of the horizontal position of each code word within a segment along a scan line. The relative horizontal position of each code word is thus represented by the count of the word counter.