Remote Control Offloads Rendering to Audio Playback Device
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Solution Overview
Problem
Remote control devices for audio playback systems face challenges in displaying complex information over low-bandwidth connections, such as Bluetooth LE, due to limitations in rendering true type fonts, font scaling, and multiple languages, which affects user experience and functionality.
Innovation Solution
The remote control device offloads heavy lifting tasks like rendering to a separate console (audio playback device), receiving pre-rendered images, and storing them for display, allowing it to appear as having advanced display capabilities without the actual processing power, thus optimizing image management and synchronization with the audio playback device.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Adaptability or versatility
If the remote control device performs heavy lifting tasks like rendering locally, then it can display complex information with advanced display capabilities, but it increases device complexity and power consumption
Solution Approach 1:
The patent extracts the heavy lifting tasks (rendering of true type fonts, font scaling, multi-language support) from the remote control device and relocates them to the audio playback device. The remote control only receives and displays pre-rendered images, while the audio playback device performs all complex rendering operations and manages image file storage and synchronization.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent introduces an intermediary role where the audio playback device acts as a rendering server. It receives text content, renders it with advanced capabilities, compresses the images, and transfers them to the remote control device. This intermediary approach allows the remote control to display complex information without having the processing power locally.
2Device complexity
If the remote control device stores and displays pre-rendered images, then it reduces device complexity, but it requires efficient image management and synchronization over low-bandwidth connections
Solution Approach 1:
The audio playback device performs preliminary actions by pre-rendering all images and compressing them before transfer. It maintains a database of rendered images and only transfers images when changes occur, rather than continuously syncing. This preliminary preparation significantly reduces the data transfer burden over low-bandwidth connections.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent changes the parameter of image representation from raw text data to compressed image files. By rendering text as images and applying compression, the data size is dramatically reduced, making it feasible to transfer over Bluetooth LE and store in the remote control's limited memory.
3Device complexity
If the remote control device has limited memory, then it reduces device complexity and cost, but it limits the ability to store multiple image files
Solution Approach 1:
The patent transforms image files into a compressed format suitable for limited memory storage. By rendering images at appropriate resolutions and applying compression algorithms, multiple images can be stored in the remote control's constrained memory space, maintaining both quantity and quality within the memory limitations.
Data Source
AI summary
A remote control device is provided for controlling an audio playback device. The remote control device includes an input region that is operable to select from a plurality of entities for providing audio content to the audio playback device, and a display for displaying information associated with the entities for providing audio content. The remote control device is configured to request image files from the audio playback device for display on the display. The image files correspond to the entities for providing audio content.