Dynamic Ambient Lighting Synchronization via Media Gateway
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Solution Overview
Problem
Current methods for enhancing the viewing experience during media consumption, such as watching TV or streaming videos, do not effectively dynamically adjust ambient lighting to synchronize with the content, leading to a lack of immersion and engagement for viewers.
Innovation Solution
A system and method that utilize a media gateway or set-top box to receive and process media program data, including video and lighting data, to control ambient lighting in a synchronized manner using multiple light channels with LED technology, allowing for dynamic adjustments in color, intensity, and effects based on the content being displayed.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Adaptability or versatility
If ambient lighting is dynamically adjusted to synchronize with video content, then viewer immersion and engagement are enhanced, but system complexity and energy consumption increase
Solution Approach 1:
The lighting system is divided into multiple independent light channels (e.g., front left, front right, rear left, rear right, center, and burst channels), each controlled separately to correspond to different spatial zones in the viewing environment. This segmentation allows selective adjustment of lighting in different areas without requiring complete system reconfiguration, thereby enhancing adaptability while managing complexity through modular control.
Solution Approach 2:
The ambient lighting system is designed to work with multiple types of media content (television programs, movies, streaming video, video games) and can be controlled through various interfaces (set-top box, media player, remote control). The system universally applies lighting synchronization across different content types and control methods, achieving high adaptability without proportionally increasing system complexity.
2Illumination intensity
If multiple light channels with LED technology are used for dynamic lighting effects, then viewing experience is enhanced, but energy consumption and device complexity increase
Solution Approach 1:
The lighting system employs periodic action through burst channels that provide intermittent, high-intensity lighting effects synchronized with specific video events (e.g., explosions, action scenes). Rather than maintaining continuous high intensity across all channels, the system uses periodic bursts of light to achieve dramatic effects while consuming less overall energy, thus improving illumination quality without proportionally increasing energy consumption.
Solution Approach 2:
Different light channels are assigned different functions and intensity levels based on their spatial location and role in the viewing environment. For example, front channels may provide softer ambient lighting while rear channels provide accent lighting. This local differentiation allows the system to achieve high overall lighting quality by optimizing each channel's contribution rather than uniformly maximizing all channels, thereby reducing total energy consumption.
3Loss of information
If lighting data is extracted and processed from media program data, then synchronized ambient lighting is achieved, but processing time and system complexity increase
Solution Approach 1:
Lighting data is extracted from the media program data stream in advance during the video encoding or broadcasting process, and this lighting information is pre-synchronized with the corresponding video content timestamps. By performing the lighting data extraction and synchronization preparation beforehand, the system achieves accurate lighting synchronization during playback without requiring complex real-time processing, thus maintaining information accuracy while minimizing processing time delays.
Applied Scientific Principles
This section explains which scientific principles are used to turn an abstract innovation direction into a practical engineering solution.
Function Achieved in This Case
Enhances the viewer's sensory experience by creating immersive lighting effects that align with the content, such as simulating sunrise, sunset, or police car lights, thereby improving the overall viewing experience.
Implementation Method 1
Each light source may include multiple colored strands of light emitting diode (LED) lights. For example, a light source includes a red LED strand, a blue LED strand, and a green LED strand.
Data Source
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AI summary
Systems, methods, software, and data structures that provide dynamic ambient lighting synchronized to a video program being watched in a premise are described herein. A video program may be associated with a predefined lighting scheme that specifies or identifies a time sequenced set of lighting effects (e.g., flashing police lights, sunrise, explosion, etc.) that are to be performed by the dynamic ambient lighting system time-synchronously with the video program. Components of the dynamic ambient lighting system may extract the lighting scheme from video data, parse the lighting scheme into individual lighting effects, and then control a single-color or multicolor light source associated with each of a plurality of light channels (e.g., front right, rear right, front left, rear left, center, and burst channel, among others) based on time sequenced lighting primitives defined by each lighting effect. Light sources may be wirelessly controlled, e.g., using an IEEE 802.15.4 or ZigBee-compliant wireless system.