Bizarre Patents
Combination Beverage Container and Spittoon
A combination beverage container and spittoon includes a bottom portion including outer wall and a first inner wall defining a spittoon space.
PatentStorm News
Make the Most of Our Site
See this month's Top Inventors and Most Cited Patents.
Stay on top of the latest innovations by subscribing to an RSS feed.
Registered users: Manage your profile.
| Number | Title | Issue Date |
| 6285158 | Battery discriminating method, dry cell battery pack, and electronic device A battery discriminating method discriminates between smart battery packs and dry cell battery packs with a simple structure. A dry cell battery pack is composed of a case for storing a plurality of dry batteries connected in series, positive and negative... | 09/04/2001 |
| 6275528 | Picture encoding method and picture encoding apparatus On the basis of encoding condition and encoding difficulty parameter of material inputted at steps S31, S32, stability of pull-down pattern is calculated at step S33. The stability of the pull-down pattern is judged at step S34. In the case where the pull... | 08/14/2001 |
| 6266480 | Apparatus and method for effectively inhibiting unauthorized copying of picture signals which does not interfere with an authorized display thereof A digital satellite broadcasting system for providing copy protection or so-called macrovision signals which hinder the recording of designated picture signals and which do not adversely affect the performance of a television receiver. Such satellite broa... | 07/24/2001 |
| 6266454 | Device and method for processing, image and device and method for encoding image An image of lower spatial resolution is converted into an image of higher spatial resolution efficiently and highly accurately. For such conversion, pixel data is ex-pressed by vectors in a color space of R, G, B, and not only an R component of low resolu... | 07/24/2001 |
| 6262819 | Hologram image recording apparatus and method A hologram-image recording method and apparatus are provided which prevents or attenuates vibrations so as to produce a bright holographic stereogram having high diffraction efficiency. Such apparatus may includes an exposing recording portion for sequent... | 07/17/2001 |
| 6256282 | Optical recording medium and recording method thereof A novel recording medium capable of realizing high density, reliability in a recording/reproducing operation and facilitating the process which is performed by a drive apparatus is provided. An amplitude amount of wobbling of a track is made to be 10 nm to 15 ... | 07/03/2001 |
| 6256349 | Picture signal encoding method and apparatus, picture signal transmitting method, picture signal decoding method and apparatus and recording medium There is provided a picture signal encoding method in which a signal obtained on processing picture signals with encoding accompanying real-number calculations and the resulting quantized signal is outputted, locally decoded data of the encoded data and d... | 07/03/2001 |
| 6253024 | Apparatus for recording a digital video signal Digital video tape recorder which provides for the simultaneous recording of digital video signals and transmitting of those digital video signals either as analog or digital output signals, for example, for monitoring. In one mode, a recordable digital v... | 06/26/2001 |
| 6233735 | Near video-on-demand system and broadcasting method therefor A near video-on-demand (NVOD) system and method for incorporating and/or updating a commercial (CM) or promotion video program or the like in a video program. The NVOD system may include a controller, a high-speed digital reproducing device for reproducin... | 05/15/2001 |
| 6233393 | Apparatus for transmitting data in isochronous and asynchronous manners, an apparatus for receiving the same, and a system and method for such transmitting and receiving of such data In a system having a digital video disc (DVD) player and a number of presentation devices (such as a television receiver, video cassette recorder/reproducer, and so forth), the DVD player may transmit presentation data and a portion of control or navigati... | 05/15/2001 |
| 6229480 | System and method for aligning an antenna A system and method for aligning an antenna. Signals broadcasted over a number of channels for each of a plurality of orientations of the antenna may be received. From such received signals, information pertaining to at least one of (i) an error rate, (ii... | 05/08/2001 |
| 6226327 | Video coding method and apparatus which select between frame-based and field-based predictive modes An encoder considers a frame representing a picture as comprised of areas. For each area, the encoder decides which of frame-based or field-based orthogonal transformation will be most efficient at reducing spatial redundancy in that area. For each area, ... | 05/01/2001 |
| 6219456 | Picture coding apparatus and method thereof In a picture coding apparatus and a picture coding method, when a picture data is hierarchically coded, compression efficiency can be improved, and the deterioration of picture quality can be reduced. When a picture data is hierarchically coded by utilizi... | 04/17/2001 |
| 6215748 | Data storage with data masking array, apparatus and method therefor Data storage apparatus having an ordered data array of data items stored on a storage medium, in which deletion of a data item from the array leaves data storage space in which a newly stored data item can be stored, comprises means for storing a mask arr... | 04/10/2001 |
| 6201886 | Image collation device The present invention provides an image collation device having a simple whole structure which is applied, for example, as a fingerprint collation device. Linear images cut from the one image is stored in a memory means, and the other image is collated wi... | 03/13/2001 |
| 6198877 | Method and apparatus for recording programs formed of picture and audio data, data recording medium having programs formed of picture and audio data recorded thereon, and method and apparatus for reproducing programs having picture and audio data A data recording technique in which a file for a computer system is arranged on a recording medium between the TOC and video or audio data, thereby enabling the video or audio data to be readout at a high speed and reproduced either by the computer system... | 03/06/2001 |
| 6198769 | Method and apparatus for controlling a target amount of code and for compressing video data An apparatus and method for encoding input video data representative of a number of group of pictures (GOPs) each having a plurality of fields or frames. The apparatus includes a first encoder for processing received input video data so as to determine di... | 03/06/2001 |
| 6198876 | Method and apparatus for recording and/or reproducing data wherein padding data may be added during recording and removed during reproduction A data recording/reproducing apparatus in which plural disc-shaped recording/reproducing means are run in parallel. The apparatus is designed for avoiding the risk of the write/readout unit being changed in size to lower the transfer rate to raise the cos... | 03/06/2001 |
| 6195597 | Onboard information processing apparatus and automobile The present invention relates to an onboard information processing apparatus suitable for processing carried out by information handling equipment mounted on a movable body such as an automobile and relates to an automobile on which the information proces... | 02/27/2001 |
| 6195464 | Picture coding apparatus and method thereof In a picture coding apparatus and a picture coding method, when a picture data is hierarchically coded, compression efficiency can be improved, and the deterioration of picture quality can be reduced. When a picture data is hierarchically coded by utilizi... | 02/27/2001 |
| 6195126 | Apparatus and method utilizing a single image memory having a luminance region for storing luminance data, a chromatic region for storing chromatic data, a character region for storing character data, and a pattern region for storing pattern data A video signal processing apparatus and method for use with an electronic still camera or the like. An image memory is utilized which has a luminance data region for storing luminance data, a chromatic data region for storing chromatic data, a character d... | 02/27/2001 |
| 6192189 | Data recording method and apparatus, data recorded medium and data reproducing method and apparatus A data recording method is provided in which video data and plural channels of language data are divided into packets as units, and the video data and the plural channels of language data are recorded on a record medium along with the control information ... | 02/20/2001 |
| 6188434 | Apparatus and method for controlling exposure in a color image pickup device An image pickup apparatus and method for controlling an exposure so as to maintain proper brightness for a target or desired object regardless of the background brightness. Such image pickup apparatus may include a level sensing unit having a number of le... | 02/13/2001 |
| 6172622 | Demodulating device, demodulating method and supply medium A demodulator refers to an internal conversion table and demodulates data that was input. Said conversion table has elements to restrict the continuation of the minimum run and a non-determined code and also has a conversion rule to take the surplus of th... | 01/09/2001 |
| 6160574 | Stereoscopic image generation method and apparatus thereof The transform arithmetic operations by spatial image transform matrixes and perspective transform matrixes to a screen surface thereon are executed on source video signal representing two-dimensional image so as to generate left-eye and right-eye video si... | 12/12/2000 |
| 6157434 | Movie film having two digital audio data recording areas along its longitudinal direction The movie film has two tracks of left and right digital audio data recording areas in addition to a frame image information recording area in the form of frames, an analog audio data recording area, and left and right perforations. In these audio data rec... | 12/05/2000 |
| 6153950 | Power supply device for electronic equipment A power supply device for an electronic equipment is able to execute an accurate discrimination even when a battery, whose characteristics are different, is attached to the electronic equipment. A power supply voltage from a battery cell 11 provided in an... | 11/28/2000 |
| 6147714 | Control apparatus and control method for displaying electronic program guide A desired program is selected speedily and reliably from a plurality of programs. Reduced-sized still pictures of typical frames of programs to be broadcast on the respective channels are divided by program category and displayed as an electronic program ... | 11/14/2000 |
| 6144798 | Method of and apparatus for editing information recorded on magnetic tape An editing apparatus of relatively small size for editing material information highly efficiently and accurately with simplified processing capabilities has a plurality of tape transports, a selector for selecting input and output paths for the tape trans... | 11/07/2000 |
| 6137945 | Apparatus and method for editing recorded material A method and apparatus for editing recorded audio and/or video material, in which temporally successive material clips of a edited output material sequence are represented by corresponding clip icons on a display screen displayed in a display order corres... | 10/24/2000 |
| 6134201 | Data recording apparatus, method therefor, data reproducing apparatus, method therefor and record medium A data recording apparatus capable of preventing easily copying of information is disclosed with which, even if information is copied, the copied information cannot be reproduced, the data recording apparatus having a terminal to which encoder ID specific... | 10/17/2000 |
| 6128358 | Bit shift detecting circuit and synchronizing signal detecting circuit A bit shift value of a synchronizing signal is detected. That is, after respective hamming distances between data from the first part of the synchronization signal and the respective pre-detects words, which are calculated by hamming distance calculators,... | 10/03/2000 |
| 6125100 | Optical disc having data recorded in an encoded block form for improving error correction capability and an apparatus utilizing such optical disc An optical disc and an optical disc apparatus having an improved error correction capability. In an optical disc on which is recorded data encoded using an encoding block of a pre-set data volume as a unit for encoding, a data volume V of the encoding blo... | 09/26/2000 |
| 6122007 | Image pickup system having first and second imaging modes A CCD image pickup device 21 has all-pixel read mode and a double speed read mode. The number of lines in the vertical direction is 1/2 of that of the all-pixel read mode. In the double speed read mode, the number of pixels in the horizontal direction is ... | 09/19/2000 |
| 6119265 | Viterbi decoding method and viterbi decoding apparatus capable of increasing error rate In a Viterbi decoding apparatus operable under 6-value/4-state, most likelihood decoding is carried out, so that a shift between a reproduction signal and a reference amplitude level can be avoided, and a better error rate can be obtained. The Viterbi dec... | 09/12/2000 |
| 6115077 | Apparatus and method for encoding and decoding digital video data operable to remove noise from subtitle date included therewith Apparatus and method for encoding and decoding digital video data having subtitle data included therewith and which is operable to remove noise from the subtitle data utilizing correlations between a pixel of the subtitle represented by the subtitle data ... | 09/05/2000 |
| 6112012 | Recording multiplexed plural data encoded by plural methods and decoding same according to particular decoding method Encoding and decoding methods and apparatuses for storing and retrieving multi-channel data each encoded according to a different encoding method and stored in a multiplexed form utilize group information identifying each multi-channel data as belonging t... | 08/29/2000 |
| 6108451 | Picture coding apparatus and method thereof In a picture coding apparatus and a picture coding method, when a picture data is hierarchically coded, compression efficiency can be improved, and the deterioration of picture quality can be reduced. When a picture data is hierarchically coded by utilizi... | 08/22/2000 |
| 6104859 | Video signal transmission apparatus A video signal transmitting/receiving apparatus for converting video signals into picture data in predetermined block units for transmission to a transmission path in the asynchronous transfer mode in which a first video material formed by the video signa... | 08/15/2000 |
| 6101313 | High efficiency encoding and decoding of picture signals and recording medium containing same An encoder considers a frame representing a picture as comprised of areas. For each area, the encoder decides which of frame-based or field-based orthogonal transformation will be most efficient at reducing spatial redundancy in that area. For each area, ... | 08/08/2000 |
