Interactive television system with partial character set generator

Abstract

An interactive television system includes a partial font generator (38) which generates a character font file of only those fonts used by a given application program for text display. The partial font file contains the language character fonts utilized by the application program, but less than the complete character set of the language. Thus, the partial font file thus requires less time or bandwidth to transmit in the allotted transmit intervals. The partial font file may be generated by a manual process, or by an automated analysis of the fonts used by an application program.

Description

technical field

[0001] This invention relates to interactive television systems, and more particularly to interactive television systems that generate and use partial character sets for language display. Background technique

[0002] In interactive television, video and audio streams and applications are multiplexed together to form one stream called a transport stream. The transport stream is broadcast to the viewer and received by the viewer's television receiver. Transport streams are typically handled by set-top boxes, which are specially designed to process and execute applications interleaved with video and audio data in the transport stream. Applications may provide viewers with unique or auxiliary information about the broadcast, such as program listings and real-time text annotations, or interactive applications may provide, for example, the ability to purchase goods or services via the television.

[0003] Digital TV set-top boxes are based on many different hard...

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