Bizarre Patents
A method for inducing cats to exercise consists of directing a beam of invisible light produced by a hand-held laser apparatus onto the floor or wall.
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 |
| 7223947 | Domestic appliance and heating structure for a domestic appliance An electric heating structure of a domestic appliance includes at least one first electric heating track (23) having a positive temperature coefficient and at least one additional electric heating track (27, 28). A control structure (22, 25, 29)... | 05/29/2007 |
| 7196478 | Circuit arrangement A driver for driving a gas discharge lamp includes an inductive ballast implemented as auto-transformer having a central tap, connected between one output terminal and a first input terminal, and a triac connected between a second output terminal and a second input ... | 03/27/2007 |
| 6993182 | Method and apparatus for detecting scene changes in video using a histogram of frame differences The present invention is directed to method of detecting a scene change in video. The method includes a difference being calculated between consecutive frames of the video producing a plurality of difference values. A histogram is taken of the difference values. A s... | 01/31/2006 |
| 6856699 | Coding and noise filtering an image sequence The invention provides a method of and a device for coding (10*) an image sequence g(i,j,k)). The device (10*) has a noise filter (12) for noise filtering (12) the image sequence (g(i,j,k)), and for regarding the noise filtering (12 | 02/15/2005 |
| 6826232 | Fine granular scalable video with embedded DCT coding of the enhancement layer The present invention is directed to a method for encoding video data in an embedded fashion in order to achieve fine granular scalable video. The method includes the video data being transformed into a plurality of DCT coefficients. Further, the DCT coefficients ar... | 11/30/2004 |
| 6768432 | Method of converting a series of m-bit information words into a modulated signal This invention relates to a digital modulation method and apparatus used for recording an audio or video signal, computer data, and etc on a recording medium such as an optical or magneto-optical disc. Data words of m bits are translated into code words of n bits in... | 07/27/2004 |
| 6700893 | System and method for controlling the delay budget of a decoder buffer in a streaming data receiver There is disclosed a delay budget controller for use with a decoder buffer that receives streaming data packets over a data network from a streaming transmitter and stores the data packets in a plurality of access units for subsequent retrieval by a strea... | 03/02/2004 |
| 6665019 | Method and apparatus for spread spectrum clocking of digital video In accordance with one embodiment of the invention a spread spectrum pixel clock signal is generated to spread out the frequency bandwidth within which the peak emission of an electromagnetic interference signal occurs, so as to decrease the peak electrom... | 12/16/2003 |
| 6661914 | Method of reconstruction of tridimensional scenes and corresponding reconstruction device and decoding system The invention relates to a new method of reconstruction of tridimensional scenes. While conventional methods are often limited to the 3D reconstruction of the bounding volume of the concerned objects, the proposed method of recovery of a 3D geometric mode... | 12/09/2003 |
| 6642794 | Noise and input impedance matched amplifier An amplifier, in particular an RF amplifier is described having an amplifier input, the amplifier comprises: a first controllable semiconductor having a first controllable mainstream path coupled to first source means for controlling the first mainstream ... | 11/04/2003 |
| 6639943 | Hybrid temporal-SNR fine granular scalability video coding The present invention is directed to fine granular coding technique that includes both quality and temporal scalability. This is accomplished by utilizing a hybrid temporal/SNR scalability structure that is readily adaptable to fine granular coding techni... | 10/28/2003 |
| 6633515 | Method for storing audio-centered information Audio-centered information is stored on a unitary storage medium through a Table-of-Contents (TOC) mechanism that specifies an actual configuration of various audio items. In particular, in addition to the TOC mechanism a file-based access mechanism is as... | 10/14/2003 |
| 6631163 | Dynamic adaptation of complexity in an MPEG-2 scalable decoder A system and method for dynamically setting a complexity level for a scalable module in a video decoder. The method comprises the steps of: decoding a first GOP using an initial threshold value; determining an adjusted threshold value for the first GOP; a... | 10/07/2003 |
| 6628712 | Seamless switching of MPEG video streams A switching device SW allows to switch from a first compressed data input stream IS1 to a second compressed data input stream IS2, resulting in a compressed data output stream OS. This switching device comprises a buffer system BS intended to store the da... | 09/30/2003 |
| 6628583 | Method and device for recording information in linking block units A method and device for recording information signals on a partly recorded writable record carrier (11), e.g. an optical disc. An information signal represents at least one information unit. The record carrier has a recording track which comprises preform... | 09/30/2003 |
| 6625319 | Image compression using content-based image similarity A method for compressing a set of images that includes the steps of grouping the images into at least two clusters based on color content similarity, identifying at least one representative image in each of the clusters, all other images within each of th... | 09/23/2003 |
| 6625304 | Method of detecting displacement of a block of pixels from a first to a second image of a scene Displacement of a first block of pixels from a first to a second image of a scene is determined for applications of automated distance computation. The selection of corresponding blocks in the two images is performed and verified as follows. A first block... | 09/23/2003 |
| 6625298 | Method and system for embedding extra information, method and system for decoding The invention relates to a method and a system (100) for embedding extra information in an input signal (101). Groups of one or more candidate frames in the input signal (101) are associated with respective portions of the extra information. Each group is... | 09/23/2003 |
| 6625213 | Video encoding method based on the matching pursuit algorithm The invention relates to the field of video encoders and, more particularly, to an encoding method based on an adaptation of the matching pursuit method to an error texture coding process inside triangular meshes. Said process is restricted, at each itera... | 09/23/2003 |
| 6618445 | Scalable MPEG-2 video decoder A system and method for scaling an MPEG-2 video decoder subject to a resource constraint. A decoder system is provided for decoding compressed video data arranged in a group of pictures, wherein the group of pictures include I pictures, P pictures and B p... | 09/09/2003 |
| 6615335 | Compressed storage of information Disclosed is a method of compressing information for storage in a fixed size memory. The data items (D(k)) that constitute the information are divided into pieces (D(s,k)) of decreasing significance. For example, the DCT blocks of an image are hierarchica... | 09/02/2003 |
| 6614989 | Recording and editing HDTV signals A method is disclosed for compressing an HDTV signal (1) in such a manner that it can be recorded and edited with SDTV equipment (4,5). More particularly, the HDTV signal is recorded on digital recorders (e.g. DVCPRO) which have been designed for recordin... | 09/02/2003 |
| 6614446 | Method and apparatus for computing a computer graphics image of a textured surface A pixel value for a pixel is computed in a texture mapped computer graphics image. Surface coordinates are computed that map to a location of intersection of a 3D surface with a line of sight from the pixel. A surface coordinate offset vector is computed ... | 09/02/2003 |
| 6608937 | Low bit rate video coding method and system In the Improved PB-frames mode, one of the options of the H.263+ Recommendation, a macroblock of a B-frame may be encoded according to a forward, a backward or a bidirectional prediction mode. The invention relates to a method of encoding a sequence of pi... | 08/19/2003 |
| 6606329 | Device for demultiplexing coded data The invention relates to a device for demultiplexing coded data corresponding to multimedia objects. The data is organized in a bitstream divided into individually accessible portions--for instance Access Units for an MPEG-4 compliant bitstream--themselve... | 08/12/2003 |
| 6594310 | Partition coding method and device The invention relates to a method of coding segmented pictures, or partitions, divided into homogeneous regions. Said method, called intra-mode coding process, comprises, for each successive partition, the steps of translating the picture of the labels as... | 07/15/2003 |
| 6591016 | Variable bitrate video coding method and corresponding video coder The variable bitrate coding method according to the invention includes an iterative process including a first coding pass and a second prediction pass. The coding pass allows for a picture coding of a sequence with a constant quantization stepsize (and qu... | 07/08/2003 |
| 6590931 | Reconfigurable FIR filter using CSD coefficient representation The present invention is directed to a reconfigurable finite impulse response (FIR) filter that processes data tap values with canonical sign digit (CSD) coefficients. The FIR filter according to the present invention includes a shift group associated wit... | 07/08/2003 |
| 6580759 | Scalable MPEG-2 video system A system and method for scaling a video system, such as an MPEG-2 video decoder, utilizing an improved data pruning implementation. A scalable data processing system is provided, comprising: a sequential data path for processing multimedia data, including... | 06/17/2003 |
| 6577747 | Detection of auxiliary data in an information signal Data is hidden in an information signal by encoding payload in to relative positions and/or polarities of multiple (possibly equal) embedded watermarks. The payload is retrieved by computing the correlation between the watermark(s) and the signal as a fun... | 06/10/2003 |
| 6574276 | Video coding method and corresponding video coder The invention relates to a video coding method based on an adaptive frame/field encoding mode. In order to avoid an impairment of the image quality and of the compression efficiency when a video sequence comprises a lot of motion or on the contrary quasi-... | 06/03/2003 |
| 6571260 | Memory reclamation method A method and apparatus for reclaiming memory space allocated to data structures comprising data objects linked by identifying pointers. A repetitious cycle is performed including the following steps of traversing the data structures to identify and mark a... | 05/27/2003 |
| 6570921 | Data compression assembly having several data-compression channels A data compression assembly has several data-compression channels (DCC). The data-compression channels may be, for example, encoders which encode different programs in accordance with an MPEG standard. A data-compression channel comprises a data compresso... | 05/27/2003 |
| 6564382 | Method for playing multimedia applications The present invention relates to a method of playing a set of multimedia applications (A), each multimedia application including a list of tasks (TTD). The method includes the steps of creating a common scheduler (SCH) at a start time, in order to provide... | 05/13/2003 |
| 6553146 | Method and arrangement for encoding video images When embedded memory compression is used in the recursive loop of a predictive (MPEG) encoder/decoder, a given compression factor must be achieved. To this end, the image is divided in segments, i.e. groups of (macro)blocks. Each segment is feedforward co... | 04/22/2003 |
| 6553110 | Selective telephone caller identification service A method of selective telephone caller identification includes the steps of providing a list of telephone numbers of second parties to which a first party is willing to release identification information regarding the first party (101). This list is suppl... | 04/22/2003 |
| 6546155 | System and method for rotation invariant representation of texture in images There is disclosed an image processing device capable of receiving an image file having a first texture representation in rotation variant format and converting the texture representation to a modified texture representation in a rotation invariant format... | 04/08/2003 |
| 6539071 | Frequency correction at the receiver end in a packet transmission system The invention relates to a system for transmitting packets from interactive terminals to a head station. The terminals intended for consumers are provided with local oscillators which are not very accurate and use carriers having frequency errors which ar... | 03/25/2003 |
| 6538672 | Method and apparatus for displaying an electronic program guide The invention relates to a method of and apparatus for displaying an electronic program guide. The method includes the step of displaying an axis (21) on the screen (20) which corresponds to a particular program attribute (e.g. channel name, broadcast tim... | 03/25/2003 |
| 6532263 | Scalable video coding system A system for coding video data comprised of one or more frames codes a portion of the video data using a frame-prediction coding technique, and generates residual images based on the video data and the coded video data. The system then codes the residual ... | 03/11/2003 |
