...that Robert Adler has the dubious distinction of being the Father of the Couch Potato? Back in 1955 Adler was employed by what was then Zenith Radio Corp., where he was charged to invent something that would allow viewers to turn down the TV volume without leaving their chairs. After a series of flops (such as a wired contraption that people tripped over), Adler hit on the idea of using sound waves. Thus the Remote Control was born...
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| Number | Title | Issue Date |
| 7055080 | High code rate block coding/decoding method and apparatus A block coding algorithm uses an original block group having n+1 original blocks of m-bit message, which a first original block of m-bit message is encoded as a reference block of n-bit codeword and n original blocks of m-bit message placed after the first original ... | 05/30/2006 |
| 6894816 | Method and apparatus for recording/reproducing optical information In a holographic digital data storage system, holographic page data has at least two concentric patterns with the optical information arranged within an outermost pattern of at least two concentric patterns. Since at least two concentric patterns in the holographic ... | 05/17/2005 |
| 6895114 | Method and apparatus for modifying page data A method and apparatus for modifying rectangular page data to be recorded in a holographic digital storage system may be used to reduce information loss due to image distortion. After each rectangular page data is divided into a central region and a peripheral regio... | 05/17/2005 |
| 6773082 | Refrigerator using EPS insulating material A refrigerator cabinet assembly is disclosed. The refrigerator cabinet assembly has an outer case including two laterally spaced side walls and a top wall interconnecting the two side walls. Each of the side walls and the top wall is provided with front face portion... | 08/10/2004 |
| 6427484 | Air conditioner having oxygen enriching device An air conditioner includes an oxygen-enriched air separator for separating exterior air into oxygen-enriched air and nitrogen-enriched air and an oxygen-enriched air supplier for supplying the separated oxygen-enriched air to an indoor unit. The oxygen-e... | 08/06/2002 |
| 6385990 | Food preparation table with open top food containers A food preparation table for preparing food and refrigerating foodstuffs includes at least one open top food container for holding foodstuffs, a cooling device for absorbing heat from air, an accelerating device for forcing the air to flow and an air supp... | 05/14/2002 |
| 6377532 | Run-length limited encoding method and apparatus for use in a high density optical storage system In a run-length limited encoding method used in an optical data storage system for encoding input data of two bits into corresponding output data of five bits, a minimum run-length of zeroes (0's) in a stream of the output data is 3; a maximum run-length ... | 04/23/2002 |
| 6307900 | Method and apparatus for recovering digital data by employing asynchronous data sampling techniques A digital data detection system, equipped with an interpolation apparatus, for generating decoded data by detecting information stored on a magnetic storage medium by interpolating sampled data using a phase difference signal and an interpolation coeffici... | 10/23/2001 |
| 6269121 | Adaptive motion estimation method and apparatus In an apparatus for performing a motion estimation (ME) on a block (BL) within a current frame based on a predetermined reference frame (PRF), a difference block (DB) forming channel provides a DB representing a difference between the block and a correspo... | 07/31/2001 |
| 6163627 | Method and apparatus for encoding a contour of an object A method for encoding a video signal of a contour of an object, which is capable of reducing the amount of transmission data through selectively transforming the approximation errors, is disclosed. The method divides the contour into a multiplicity of con... | 12/19/2000 |
| 6144409 | Method for producing a restored binary shape signal based on an interpolation technique A method restores a binary shape signal which has been downsized through the use of a sub-sampling or a down-sampling technique. The downsized binary shape signal contains a plurality of reference lines, wherein each reference line includes one or more se... | 11/07/2000 |
| 6133955 | Method for encoding a binary shape signal In a method for encoding a binary alpha block (BAB) within a current frame based on the current frame and a previous frame, even-numbered horizontal lines of the BAB are sampled to generate a first block and even-numbered vertical lines of the first block... | 10/17/2000 |
| 6128041 | Method and apparatus for binary shape encoding A binary shape encoding apparatus encodes a binary alpha block (BAB) consisting of M×N binary pixels, M and N each being a positive even integer. The apparatus samples every other horizontal lines of the BAB to generate a first block starting from either... | 10/03/2000 |
| 6112542 | Refrigerator having a cooled-air passageway formed with an external surface of a liner A refrigerator has a storage compartment defined with two lateral walls and a rear wall. The walls has a liner at its innermost surface and a urethane foam outside the liner. The refrigerator is provided with a passageway defined with a sunken portion of ... | 09/05/2000 |
| 6097756 | Scalable inter-contour coding method and apparatus A method for scalably inter-contour coding a video signal including a previous and a current frames, wherein each of the previous and the current frames contains a contor, first generates a predicted contour by motion estimating and compensating a previou... | 08/01/2000 |
| 6097689 | Optical pickup system incorporated therein a polarizing film and a pair of 1/4 wavelength plates An optical pickup system reproduces an information signal stored on an optical disk including a recording surface. The optical pickup system comprises an objective lens for focusing a light beam, having a P and an S polarizing components, on the recording... | 08/01/2000 |
| 6072892 | Eye position detecting apparatus and method therefor An eye position detecting apparatus for detecting an eye position in a facial image utilizes a histogram thereof, wherein the facial image contains a plurality of pixels each of which is represented by a grey level value. The eye position detecting appara... | 06/06/2000 |
| 6069976 | Apparatus and method for adaptively coding an image signal In an apparatus for adaptively coding an image signal including a contour signal and a texture signal having object pixels and background pixels thereof, wherein the contour signal discriminates between the object pixels and the background pixels and each... | 05/30/2000 |
| 6067378 | Lip contour signal reconstruction method In a method for reconstructing a lip contour signal (LCS) having edge points (EP's) representing the position and shape of a lip image being symmetrical, a reconstructed LCS is obtained based on the LCS by using a standard lip contour signal (SLCS) having... | 05/23/2000 |
| 6065680 | Card and disk receptor carrier with a pivotable door for use in an internet set-top box A card receptor for use in an internet set-top box is provided with a pivotable door, a card carrier with card/disk insertion slots to receive and to keep a card/disk therein through the card/disk insertion slots and a driving mechanism. The card carrier ... | 05/23/2000 |
| 6059416 | Actuated mirror array and method for the fabricating thereof Fabrication and mounting of an array of M×N mirrors on an array of M×N electrodisplacive actuators is carried out by one of the two inventive methods, comprising the steps of: patterning a substrate into an array of M×N protrusions; forming subsequentl... | 05/09/2000 |
| 6058720 | Automatic ice making apparatus for use in a refrigerator A reverse condition sensing mechanism incorporating in an ice making apparatus for use in a refrigerator includes a movable lever mounted on an output shaft to be rotated therewith and a fixing plate vertically mounted on a periphery surface of the output... | 05/09/2000 |
| 6061401 | Method and apparatus for selectively encoding/decoding a video signal A method and apparatus processes a video signal by selectively encoding and decoding a plurality of blocks included in the video signal. The encoding apparatus selects a plurality of processing blocks from a motion compensated error signal and decides pos... | 05/09/2000 |
| 6058734 | Refrigerator provided with cooled air bypass passages A refrigerator has a freezer compartment, a refrigerating compartment, and an evaporator. The refrigerator further has a first bypass passage, a second bypass passage and a cooled air inducing pipe. The first bypass passage allows the cooled air from the refri... | 05/09/2000 |
| 6058213 | Method and apparatus for encoding a binary shape signal An apparatus, for use in a context-based arithmetic encoding of a binary shape signal, generates a bordered block having a border of width D around a target block based on the binary shape signal which includes a plurality of blocks of P×Q pixels having ... | 05/02/2000 |
| 6058232 | Volume holographic data storage system using a beam pattern from a tapered optical fiber A volume holographic data storage(VHDS) system incorporates therein a tapered optical fiber for generating a speckle beam pattern from the tapered optical fiber for increasing the amount of holograms to be stored into a photorefractive crystal. The VHDS s... | 05/02/2000 |
| 6055109 | Head-mounted display apparatus with a single image display device A head-mounted display apparatus includes an image display device for displaying images, a first flat reflection mirror for reflecting light from the image display device, a first and a second lenses for controlling a size of the image from the first flat... | 04/25/2000 |
| 6055337 | Method and apparatus for encoding a contour of an object expressed in a video signal A method encodes a contour image of an object expressed in a video signal. First, a centroid for the contour of the object is detected by averaging pixel positions on the contour. A set of primary vertices on the contour are determined based on the centro... | 04/25/2000 |
| 6052389 | Per-session pre-synchronized framing method for real-time services in ATM networks A method for transmitting jitter information in a network, wherein a connection for a call is established from a source node to a destination node through a plurality of nodes and a frame counter is located at each of the nodes, detects propagation delays... | 04/18/2000 |
| 6049567 | Mode coding method in a binary shape encoding In a mode coding method in encoding a binary alpha block (BAB) within a current frame based on the current frame and a previous frame including a plurality of BAB's, the BAB within the current frame is sub-sampled to generate a sample block and then a rec... | 04/11/2000 |
| 6049631 | Apparatus and method for adaptive coding a binary shape signal In an apparatus and method for encoding a binary alpha block (BAB) of binary pixels within a current frame based on the current frame and a previous frame including a plurality of BAB's, the BAB is adaptively encoded, wherein each frame has a top field an... | 04/11/2000 |
| 6046784 | Method and apparatus for concealing errors in a bit stream Bit streams are divided on a block-by-block basis based on information of bit numbers and a parity bit added to each bit stream is checked to generate a switching signal. Either each bit stream or a proximate bit stream for each bit stream is selected as ... | 04/04/2000 |
| 6046783 | Vibration preventing device for use in a television A television has a housing front portion, the housing front portion has a "standard thickness" meaning the thickness thereof is constant, with a speaker thereon. The television has a vibration preventing device having a vibration preventing structure inte... | 04/04/2000 |
| 6044658 | Automatic ice making apparatus for use in a refrigerator An ice removing mechanism includes an ice tray having a fixing projection at one end thereof and a sliding projection at the other end thereof, a rotating guide plate having a fixing groove at one side thereof to guide the fixing projection of the ice tra... | 04/04/2000 |
| 6044091 | Method and apparatus for scheduling cells based on pre-synchronized frames A method for scheduling a plurality of cells of a call via a connection linking a multiplicity of nodes which include a source node and a destination node is provided. A frame counter which counts down the time slots of each frame to be reset to a frame s... | 03/28/2000 |
| 6043925 | Thin film actuated mirror including a seeding member and an electrodisplacive member made of materials having the same crystal structure and growth direction An array of thin film actuated mirrors includes: an active matrix including a substrate, an array of connecting terminals; and an array of actuating structures, each of the actuating structures including an upper electrode functioning as a mirror as well ... | 03/28/2000 |
| 6041626 | Dual structure washing tub for use in a washing machine A washing tub for use in a washing machine has a reservoir water tub in a cabinet, a pulsator rotatably disposed at bottom thereof and a balancer mounted on top thereof. The washing tub includes an outer tube having a base and a body mounted on the base, ... | 03/28/2000 |
| 6035428 | Apparatus for deinterleaving and output-processing decoded data in a trellis decoder An apparatus deinterleaves decoded symbols and outputs the deinterleaved symbols in an appropriate form for external devices. In order to achieve the deinterleaving and outputting processes, the apparatus sequentially stores the decoded symbols in respons... | 03/07/2000 |
| 6034336 | Knob assembly for use in electronic appliances A knob assembly is utilized for selecting a desired function of electronic appliances. The knob assembly includes a front panel having a circular mounting hole at front thereof, a knob freely moved to a voluntary direction, and a front circuit board havin... | 03/07/2000 |
| 6034844 | Video cassette recorder equipped with head drum assembly having a bearing with pumping vanes A head drum assembly for use in a video cassette recorder includes a stationary drum, a supporting shaft fixedly fitted into the stationary drum, a rotary drum mounted around an upper portion of the supporting shaft, an upper and a lower bearing for rotat... | 03/07/2000 |