KR0185851B1 - Catv terminal capable of receiving a text broadcasting in a subscriber band - Google Patents

Abstract

The present invention relates to an interactive CATV system comprising a network interface unit (NIU: 100) connected to a network for data transmission and reception, and a set-top unit (STU: 200) for converting MPEG-2 signals into NTSC signals and transmitting them to a TV. A subscriber station, comprising: a tuner (104) in which the network interface unit can select a predetermined channel from an RF signal input from the network; An analog demodulation and BTSC encoder 107 for demodulating the video signal of the analog channel selected by the tuner and outputting an audio signal and a baseband video signal; A text broadcasting receiver 108 for receiving a text broadcasting selected by the tuner; And a multiplexer 109 for receiving the output of the baseband video of the BTSC encoder or the output of the text broadcasting receiver and selecting and outputting the output of the text broadcasting receiver during a subscriber service standby, and receiving and demodulating a predetermined RF signal from a network. The video service can be provided through the analog channel and the digital channel, and information selected by the user by the man machine interface means is transmitted to the network side through the digital modem.

Description

CATV terminal capable of receiving text broadcasting in subscriber band

1 is a frequency band diagram for explaining general CATV broadcasting.

2 is an overall block diagram of a CATV subscriber station to which the present invention is applied.

3 is a block diagram of a network interface unit for receiving text broadcasting according to the present invention.

* Explanation of symbols for main parts of the drawings

10: CATV subscriber terminal (set top box) 100: network interface unit (NIU)

200: set top unit (STU) 101: RF input unit

102, 103, 105, 106: Diplexer filter 104: Tuner

107: analog demodulation and BTSC encoder 108: character broadcast receiver

109: multiplexer 110: digital channel demodulator

111: depacket section 112: digital channel control modem

113: media access control unit 114: ATM interface unit

115: analog channel control modem 116: HDLC interface unit

117: Interface Logic

The present invention relates to an interactive CATV (I-CATV) technology, and more particularly to a terminal device (Set Top Box) equipped with a function that allows a subscriber to receive various text information from the server while waiting for service in I-CATV.

In the era of advanced information, countries are building information highways to foster national competitiveness by congratulating the nation and social informatization, and fostering the information industry. In Korea, new media services such as comprehensive cable broadcasting and satellite broadcasting have begun, and the multi-media multi-channel era has arrived. Accordingly, technology development for introducing interactive multimedia services such as video-on-demand (VOD) or game-on-demand (GOD) using CATV or telephone line is underway.

Cable TV (CATV), which uses broadband cable as a medium, is widely gaining popularity because of the development of digital communication technology, which can provide interactive multimedia services with little investment in equipment. Bandwidth expansion, data acquisition and digital transmission methods, servers, video switches, set-on-box and communication protocols should be developed.

The interactive CATV system is a system that provides various video information services such as movies, games, home shopping, and home banking in real time according to user's needs by using optical and coaxial transmission network, which is a broadband interactive communication network. For this purpose, the 54 MHz to 450 MHz frequency band is assigned to the existing analog CATV channel, the 450 MHz to 750 MHz frequency band is assigned to the digital CATV channel, and the 5 MHz to 40 MHz band is analog and digital as shown in FIG. Assign to uplink channel of CATV. In this case, the conventional analog CATV uses 17.9 MHz to 29.6 MHz as the uplink frequency band and 126.15 MHz to 137.85 MHz as the downlink frequency band for communication and control.

These interactive CATV systems include head-end conditional access systems (CASs), traditional analog CATV systems, including subscriber management systems, video servers with level 2 gateways, ATM switching systems, and access networks. And a Level 1 gateway, an optical network unit (ONU), a broadband amplifier in the 750 MHz band, a subscriber station, a game machine, and the like.

On the other hand, the subscriber terminal (Set-Top-Box) is a complex type that can simultaneously receive services for interactive services and digital / analog network, as shown in Figure 2, is connected to the network to perform data transmission and reception It consists of a network interface unit (NIU: 100) and a set-top unit (STU: 200) that converts MPEG-2 signals into NTSC signals and sends them to a TV. An operating system and application programs for operating these hardware are added. .

However, since the conventional CATV subscriber terminal does not have a text broadcasting reception function, the subscriber cannot request the text broadcasting while waiting for the service after the subscriber requests the service. In other words, if it is possible to receive text broadcasting while waiting for a service, the service waiting time may be much more advantageous.

Accordingly, the present invention has been made to meet the above necessity, and provides a subscriber station apparatus (Set-Top-Box) of an interactive CATV, which is capable of watching text broadcasting while waiting for service by adding a text broadcasting reception function. The purpose is.

In order to achieve the above object, the device of the present invention,

Network interface unit (NIU) connected to the network to support data transmission and reception, and set-top unit (STU) that converts MPEG-2 signals into NTSC signals and sends them to the TV. In the subscriber terminal of the interactive CATV system can receive video service through the analog channel and the digital channel, the information selected by the user by the man machine interface means to be delivered to the network side through the digital modem,

The network interface unit

A tuner configured to select a predetermined channel from an RF signal input from the network;

An analog demodulation and BTSC encoder for demodulating the video signal of the analog channel selected by the tuner and outputting an audio signal and a baseband video signal;

A text broadcasting receiver for receiving a text broadcasting selected by the tuner; And

A multiplexer for receiving and outputting the baseband video of the BTSC encoder or the output of the text broadcasting receiver, selects and outputs the output of the text broadcasting receiver during subscriber service waiting.

Hereinafter, with reference to the accompanying drawings will be described in detail the present invention.

First, the interactive CATV will be briefly described to facilitate understanding of the present invention.

The interactive CATV service system using the CATV network of hybrid fiber coaxial network (Hybrid Fiber Coaxial Network) adopts the existing CATV network to accommodate analog CATV service and provide multimedia service in 300MHz band of 450MHz ~ 750MHz. MPEG-2 video data is compressed, but it is assumed that the frequency band division is 6 MHz in consideration of compatibility with analog transmission (the 300 MHz band can accommodate 50 channels). In this case, since it can transmit at about 38Mbps per 6MHz channel, 8 ~ 9 video data can be transmitted per existing analog channel based on 4Mbps MPEG2 signal (Usually, 7 MPEG2 bit streams are transmitted).

As shown in FIG. 2, the CATV subscriber station to which the present invention is applied has a network interface unit (NIU: 100) connected to a network and is responsible for data transmission and reception, and converts MPEG-2 signals into NTSC signals and transmits them to the TV. It consists of a set-top unit (STU: 200), and an operating system and application programs for operating these hardware are added.

In FIG. 2, the set-top unit (STU) 200 of the subscriber station 10 includes an NIU interface unit 201 for interfacing with a network interface unit (NIU); A decryption unit (decryption engine) 202 for decrypting the received bit stream; An MPEG-2 transport unit 203 for receiving an MPEG2 bit stream; An MPEG2 audio decoder 204 for decoding audio data in an MPEG-2 bit stream; An MPEG2 video decoder 206 for decoding video data in an MPEG-2 bit stream; A graphic controller 208; An NTSC encoder 209 for encoding the decoded video data into an NTSC video signal; Descrambler 210; An RF modulator 211 for modulating the descrambled baseband video signal to the channel 3 or channel 4 RF; A processor 213 for controlling the system according to predetermined software; Timer 212; DMA controller 211; Smart reader: 215; IR blaster (216); PCM-CIA 217; RS-232 218; Keyboard 219; Display 214; Memory 205,207,221,222,223,224; The power supply unit 220 and the like are provided. Here, the keyboard 219, the display 214, and various input / output ports serve as a man machine interface means for interfacing the CATV network with a subscriber.

The set-top unit 200 configured as described above includes analog CATV reception function, analog pay channel descrambling function, digital video and audio signal recovery and NTSC decoding, virtual VCR function (Play, Pause, Rewind, fast forward, etc.), on-screen Display and interface functions. Here, the descrambler ensures that only subscribers who satisfy the reception condition can receive normal reception and prevents reception of subscribers who do not satisfy the condition, and the PC / MCIA port is used to interface a device that does not use the RS-232 port. As a port, the maximum transmission speed is about 22Mbps, and it can connect with external device through this port.

Network interface unit (NIU) 100 according to the present invention, as shown in Figure 3, the RF input unit 101 for receiving an RF signal from the network; A diplexer filter 102 for separating a broadcasting frequency band and a modem frequency band; A tuner 104 for selecting a broadcast channel; A diplexer filter 105 for separating the analog broadcasting frequency band and the digital broadcasting frequency band; A diplexer filter 106 for separating the character broadcasting frequency band from the analog broadcasting frequency band; An analog demodulation and BTSC encoder 107 that receives an analog channel and outputs R channel audio, L channel audio, and baseband video; A text broadcasting receiver (108) for receiving a text broadcasting selected by the tuner (104); A multiplexer 109 which receives the base bend video of the BTSC encoder or the output of the text broadcasting receiver and selects and outputs the output of the text broadcasting receiver while waiting for subscriber service; A digital channel demodulator (110) for demodulating an image signal of the digital channel frequency band; A depacket unit 111 for depacking the demodulated image data and outputting HS_CLK, HS_SYNC, and HS_DAT; A digital channel control modem 112 for controlling the digital channel in the modem frequency band; A media access control unit (MAC: 113); An ATM interface unit 114; Analog channel control modem 115; HDLC interface unit 116; Interface logic 117 is configured to interface STU and NIU with SDA, SCL, downstream, and upstream.

In the NIU 100 configured as described above, the tuner frequency band is 54 to 750 MHz, the tuner input level is about 20 dBmV for an analog broadcast channel, -9 dBmV to +16 dBmV for a digital broadcast channel, and the channel bandwidth is 6 MHz.

Digital channels transmit with 256 QAM or 16 VSB modulation and demodulation, reed-solo coding is used for error control, and transmission rates are 38.46 Mbps (256 QAM) or 38.78 Mbps (16 VSB).

The digital channel modem should be highly reliable as a control communication channel for implementing interactive CATV service, and should be used separately from the conventional analog channel. In the digital channel modem, the modulation scheme uses QPSK and the transmission bandwidth is 1.5 MHz.

In order to transmit the data of the digital channel, the data transmission from the server to the subscriber terminal includes the full ATM method and the ATM / MPEG hybrid method. The full ATM method transmits the digital information service in the ATM form. The server transmits the access network in the form of ATM, and the access network converts the ATM form into an MPEG transport packet and transmits it to the subscriber station. The MPEG transport packet is a fixed packet of 188 bytes. The MPEG transport packet consists of a 4-byte link header, a variable length adaptive header, and a flow path. One transport packet is carried in 4 ATM cells.

In FIG. 3, the NIU 100 is an interface module for providing broadband tuning, demodulation, decoding, and interactive communication means. The tuner 104 selects a specific channel among 6 MHz channels to determine an intermediate frequency. And input to the digital channel demodulator 110 or to the input of the BTSC encoder 107 to receive the analog channel. The digital channel demodulator 110 is implemented as a QAM demodulator or a VSB demodulator and performs an equalization function, a forward error correction (FEC) function, and a deinterleave function suitable for a network to output an input signal as a high-speed data stream of a baseband.

On the other hand, the signal of the analog channel is restored to the video and audio of the baseband via the BTSC encoder 107 and output to the STU, the text broadcasting to service the text broadcasting to the subscriber during the service standby is selected by the existing tuner After being received by the broadcast receiver 108, the signal is output to the STU 200 through the multiplexer 109. At this time, the multiplexer (MUX: 109) receives the output of the text broadcasting receiver while the subscriber is waiting for the service to service the text broadcasting, and when the desired service starts normally, the baseband video signal of the corresponding analog channel is selected to select the STU ( 200). In this way, the character broadcasting receiver 108 is connected to the rear end of the tuner 104, and the multiplexer 109 selects the image of the character broadcasting while viewing the service so that the character broadcasting can be viewed.

The control channel is provided by the analog channel control modem 115 using HDLC and the high speed digital channel control modem 112 to receive the interactive VOD service to support the existing analog broadcast. Here, the analog channel control modem 115 may be implemented with a frequency shift (FSK) modem, and the digital channel control modem 112 may be implemented with a QPSK modem, and an uplink frequency band for this is 5 MHz to 40 MHz.

As described above, the CATV subscriber terminal according to the present invention receives the text broadcasting through the existing tuner and shows the text broadcasting while the subscriber is waiting for the service. It works.

Claims (1)

It is composed of network interface unit (NIU: 100) which is connected to the network and takes care of data transmission, and set-top unit (STU: 200) which converts MPEG-2 signal into NTSC signal and sends it to TV. In the subscriber terminal of the interactive CATV system in which the user can demodulate and receive the video service through the analog channel and the digital channel, and the information selected by the user interface is transmitted to the network side through the digital modem. A tuner 104 configured to allow the network interface unit 100 to select a predetermined channel from the RF signal input from the network; An analog demodulation and BTSC encoder 107 for demodulating the video signal of the analog channel selected by the tuner and outputting an audio signal and a baseband video signal; A text broadcasting receiver 108 for receiving a text broadcasting selected by the tuner; And a multiplexer 109 for receiving the baseband video of the BTSC encoder or the output of the text broadcasting receiver and selecting and outputting the output of the text broadcasting receiver during subscriber service waiting. CATV terminal capable of receiving broadcasts.