...that when IBM conducted a market study of Chester Carlson's invention in 1959, the company concluded that it would take only 5000 units of his new product to saturate the market? IBM therefore declined to be part of the new product introduction. Too bad for IBM. Carlson's invention was the xerography process, and his new product was the beginning of the Xerox Corporation. It is estimated that every day, worldwide, 3,000,000,000 copies are made!!
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| Number | Title | Issue Date |
| 7957251 | Systems and methods for reduced latency loop recovery Various embodiments of the present invention provide systems and methods for reduced latency feedback in a data processing system. For example, some embodiments provide a data processing system that includes a variable gain amplifier, a processing circuit, a data de... | 06/07/2011 |
| 7864652 | Gain control circuit and optical recording and reproducing device using thereof A gain control circuit to determine gain by a current ratio of mutual conductance. The gain control circuit includes a first gain control circuit in which positive and negative phase input signals are supplied, gain is changed based on a first control signal, and po... | 01/04/2011 |
| 7813253 | DVD-RAM disc discriminative reproducing device The gain controlling portion sets a gain of an RF amplifier to a maximum range when an activation process starts for an optical disk. The binary process condition setting portion sets an upper threshold level and a lower threshold level corresponding to 80% of upper... | 10/12/2010 |
| 7706239 | Apparatus for detecting a pre-pit signal An apparatus for detecting a pre-pit signal at different laser power intensities of an optical disk drive. The apparatus includes an amplifier for receiving a push-pull signal acquired from an optical disk to generate an adjusted signal, a multiplexer for receiving ... | 04/27/2010 |
| 7701833 | Automatic gain controllers and methods for controlling voltage of control gain amplifiers An automatic gain controller includes a voltage control gain amplifier amplifying input signals in response to a control voltage and producing output signals. A level detector detects peak and bottom levels of the output signals of the voltage control gain amplifier... | 04/20/2010 |
| 7532560 | Signal processing circuit for optical disc drivers and the related method A signal processing circuit for adjusting an input signal and generating a corresponding digital output signal in an optical disk driver is provided. The signal processing circuit includes an attenuator for receiving and attenuating the input signal and then generat... | 05/12/2009 |
| 7436752 | Method and apparatus for signal equalization in a light storage system A method and apparatus for signal equalization in a light storage system is disclosed. The method includes observing run length of an RF signal read from the optical disc; classifying run lengths into sets; calculating the mean of certain run lengths; comparing the ... | 10/14/2008 |
| 7298683 | Optical information recording/reproducing apparatus with mechanism for correcting spherical aberration and method using same An optical information recording/reproducing apparatus is provided that condenses a light flux from a light source on an optical recording medium and effects recording/reproduction and comprises a light source; an objective lens; a spherical aberration generating me... | 11/20/2007 |
| 7295502 | Optical desk apparatus An error pulse is generated from a PRML circuit, and reproduction compatibility with a conventional apparatus is established. After a reproducing signal output from an optical head is equalized by an analog equalizer, sampled by an A/D converter at every clock, and ... | 11/13/2007 |
| 7295499 | Wobble signal reproducing circuit The present invention has an object to stably reproduce wobble signals of all disks of CD-R/RW, DVD-R/RW and DVD-RAM by one wobble signal reproducing circuit. In the wobble signal reproducing circuit, an AGC (AUTOMATIC GAIN CONTROL) circuit for equating a push-pull ... | 11/13/2007 |
| 7263046 | Photo-detector amplifier circuit for optical disk device A two-stage amplifier of a first-stage amplifier 21 and second-stage amplifiers 22 and 23 is provided. A writing mode and reproducing modes are switched in the first-stage amplifier 21 by switching a parallel circuit of a feedback capacit... | 08/28/2007 |
| 7251206 | Optical signal converter and method of controlling amplification gain according to rotating speed of optical disc An optical signal converter and a method or controlling an amplification gain according to a rotating speed of an optical disc. An optical signal detector detects an optical signal reflected from an optical disc in a reproduction mode and converts the detected optic... | 07/31/2007 |
| 7248706 | Audio-signal detecting device An audio-signal detecting device to be disposed in a user's earmuffs for protecting his eardrums against noise of high-decibel level is comprised of a receiving unit, a first audio-signal amplifying unit, a second audio-signal amplifying unit, a peak-detecting and i... | 07/24/2007 |
| 7215632 | Signal processing apparatus and signal processing method An optical disc system comprises a gain offset unit for giving a gain and an offset to an inputted reproduction signal, an A/D converter, a peak detector, a bottom detector, an amplitude detector for calculating a signal, an offset detector for calculating a signal ... | 05/08/2007 |
| 7209423 | Adaptive writing method for high-density optical recording apparatus and circuit thereof An adaptive writing method of a high-density optical recording apparatus and a circuit thereof. The circuit includes a discriminator for discriminating a magnitude of a present mark of input NRZI data and magnitudes of leading and/or trailing spaces of the input NRZ... | 04/24/2007 |
| 7203149 | PLL circuit and data read-out circuit Disclosed is a PLL circuit having a voltage-controlled oscillator, to which a difference voltage across non-inverting and inverting input terminals is input as a control voltage, for oscillating at a frequency in accordance with the control voltage; a phase comparat... | 04/10/2007 |
| 7170847 | Means for limiting an output signal of an amplifier stage An electronic circuit is provided which can autonomously handle an input current (Ii) having a relatively wide dynamic range without being overdriven. The electronic circuit comprises an amplifier stage (AMPST) having an input (IP) for receiving the input... | 01/30/2007 |
| 7158471 | Device and method for reading multilayer optical disk with compensation of shading effects The invention refers to a device and a method for scanning an optical data carrier by means of a main scanning beam being reflected by the data carrier and being detected by means of a photodetector, the data carrier having first and second layers to be scanned, the... | 01/02/2007 |
| 7151409 | Programmable low noise amplifier and method A programmable gain low noise amplifier includes a tail current transistor (Q3) having a source coupled to a first reference voltage (VDD) and a drain coupled to a tail current conductor (18) and, in a differential input embodiment, a plurality of pair... | 12/19/2006 |
| 7133346 | Photo-detector amplifier circuit for optical disk device A two-stage amplifier of a first-stage amplifier 21 and second-stage amplifiers 22 and 23 is provided. A writing mode and reproducing modes are switched in the first-stage amplifier 21 by switching a parallel circuit of a feedback capacit... | 11/07/2006 |
| 7102967 | Method and apparatus for tracking error detection in optical disk driver A method and apparatus for tracking error detection in an optical disk reproduction system. The tracking error detecting apparatus generates a tracking error signal as a difference signal of optical detection signals generated by more than two optical detectors posi... | 09/05/2006 |
| 7085477 | Television apparatus A ROM 51 stores a plurality of volume set values and a plurality of level change rates corresponding to each other and an IC 5 accepts a volume set value specified by a user when carrying out volume setting. Moreover, it is decided whether a reproducin... | 08/01/2006 |
| 7078668 | Photoelectric conversion apparatus A photoelectric conversion apparatus includes a photoelectric conversion element and a logarithmic conversion unit for converting a signal from the photoelectric conversion element to a logarithmically compressed voltage by means of a diode characteristic of p-n jun... | 07/18/2006 |
| 7072130 | Auto-ranging attenuators for read channels A recording system, such as a magnetic or optical recording system, sets input attenuation level setting and variable gain amplifier (VGA) operating region during zero gain start (ZGS) by sharing the ZGS adjustment between attenuator settings and VGS gain setting. F... | 07/04/2006 |
| 7068584 | Signal processor The signal processor includes an analog filter, an analog-to-digital (A-D) converter, an adaptive equalization filter, a quality value calculating circuit, and a control circuit. The analog filter removes high-frequency noises of a played-back signal from a recordin... | 06/27/2006 |
| 6990056 | Optical disk device A recordable or rewritable optical disk device capable of reproducing a wobble signal accurately at a high S/N ratio to thereby get address information even at a time of high-speed recording is disclosed. An optical disk is formed with wobbled guide tracks, and the ... | 01/24/2006 |
| 6967906 | Circuit and method for detecting mirror signal for optical disc apparatus A circuit and a method of detecting a mirror signal for an optical disc apparatus, the method includes detecting a bottom envelope from a radio frequency signal and providing a bottom envelope signal thereof, amplifying the bottom envelope signal according to a cent... | 11/22/2005 |
| 6954408 | Signal calibration and signal generation method A radio frequency ripple zero crossing signal calibration method for an optical disk reader undergoing a track following to track seeking transition is disclosed. The method utilizes sampling to obtain radio frequency ripple peak level during a track seeking operati... | 10/11/2005 |
| 6928036 | Harmonic correction in phase-locked loops Correction for harmonic disturbances on rotating storage media in a phase-locked loop. The effects of harmonic disturbances in a phase-locked loop are reduced by employing harmonic correction. Harmonic correction may be present in the loop at all times, or may be sw... | 08/09/2005 |
| 6888783 | Wobble detection circuit corresponding to a plurality of media having different pre-formats and optical disk apparatus having reduced size A wobble detection circuit detects a signal by a common photodetector (light receiving) element from several kinds of media having different pre-formats. Further, the wobble detection circuit changes a gain for amplifying the signal in a wobble signal detection proc... | 05/03/2005 |
| 6847602 | Data detection in optical disk drives using decision feedback equalization A method and apparatus in an optical disk system employing a decision feedback equalization (DFE) technique to provide a boosted signal resolution at a data slicer input while minimizing noise. In one embodiment, an optical equalizer includes a feed forward equalize... | 01/25/2005 |
| 6845080 | Automatic gain controller for preventing peaking in optical disc reproducing system and method therefor An automatic gain controller (AGC) for preventing peaking in an optical disc reproducing system includes a capacitor for being charged to a voltage corresponding to a control current as a control voltage; an amplifier for inputting the optical disc reproducing signa... | 01/18/2005 |
| 6785207 | Wobble signal reproducing circuit The present invention has an object to stably reproduce wobble signals of all disks of CD-R/RW, DVD-R/RW and DVD-RAM by one wobble signal reproducing circuit. In the wobble signal reproducing circuit, an AGC (AUTOMATIC GAIN CONTROL) circuit for equating a push-pull ... | 08/31/2004 |
| RE38538 | Apparatus and method for recording and reproducing information from a plurality of recording medium having different thicknesses and recording densities A laser diode applies a laser beam through a grating, a beam splitter, and an objective to a compact disc. A laser beam reflected by the compact disc is applied through the objective and the beam splitter to a photodiode. The objective has a large numerical aperture... | 06/22/2004 |
| 6735162 | Apparatus and method providing a mirror averaging function to generate a mirror signal from optical data on an optical disc In the context of mirror modulation (56, 90, 104) extraction during track seek or jump modes of an optical disc reading device (12), such as a DVD ROM, a mirror averaged level (i.e. the dc level (52) of the RF envelope (34)) is held so th... | 05/11/2004 |
| 6707780 | Prepit detecting apparatus A prepit detecting apparatus which uses an optical recording medium having information recording tracks on which information is recorded and guide tracks each of which guides a light beam to the information recording track and on which prepits for saving pre-informa... | 03/16/2004 |
| 6646964 | Harmonic correction in phase-locked loops Correction for harmonic disturbances on rotating storage media in a phase-locked loop. The effects of harmonic disturbances in a phase-locked loop are reduced by employing harmonic correction. Harmonic correction may be present in the loop at all times, o... | 11/11/2003 |
| 6606284 | Gain controlling apparatus and method, information reproducing apparatus and method, and information recording apparatus and method A gain controlling apparatus includes a pre-amplifier for roughly adjusting a gain of a generation signal, which is generated on the basis of a reception signal from an optical disc; a variable amplifier for finely adjusting the gain on the basis of the r... | 08/12/2003 |
| 6587407 | Information reproducing method and information reproducing device An information reproducing device for reproducing digital signals with an optical head from an optical disk includes a first equalizer for waveform-equalizing a reproduction signal, an adaptive learning device for renewing the equalization properties of t... | 07/01/2003 |
| 6580676 | Recording information reproducing apparatus with crosstalk canceler A recorded information reproducing apparatus has a crosstalk canceler to ensure fast convergence of the values of filter coefficients of an adaptive digital filter and stable operation. The recorded information reproducing apparatus comprises a reading un... | 06/17/2003 |