Did You Know...
...that in 1800 ether was first used by partyers as a fun diversion? Sniffing the gas led to hilarious and raucous laughter as people watched each other become more and more intoxicated and silly. Several doctors independently realized the value ether would have to anesthetize surgery patients. Of those who claimed rights to the "discovery," none had a happy ending. One had a seizure and died defending his rights. Another spent his life in an asylum because he had been denied acclaim. A third became addicted to chloroform and, in a New York City jail, he soaked a cloth in the drug, severed an artery and bled to death.
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| Number | Title | Issue Date |
| 7640570 | Remote task scheduling for a set top box Systems and methods for remotely scheduling tasks that are transmitted to a set top box and implemented on the set top box. A task service includes a website that provides program guide data to users. From the program guide data, a user selects a task. The website g... | 12/29/2009 |
| 7627889 | Remotely accessing and programming a set top box Systems and methods for remotely programming a set top box and for remotely scheduling an event on a set top box. A set top box includes a server that allows an access device to access the set top box over an always on connection between the set top box and a networ... | 12/01/2009 |
| 7577981 | Updating embedded firmware in a video system An electronic device (18). The device comprises an analog (16) interface for receiving an analog waveform. The device also comprises an image screen (20) and circuitry (42) for at times displaying an image on the image screen in response ... | 08/18/2009 |
| 7571457 | Advanced set top terminal with electronic mailbox for cable television delivery systems A novel advanced set top terminal having electronic mail capable of digital decompression, menu generation, interactivity, and other advanced functional capabilities for use in a television program delivery system (200) is described. The invention relates to ... | 08/04/2009 |
| 7571456 | Downloading apparatus and method therof for digital broadcast receiver A downloading apparatus and method for a digital broadcast receiver which updates a control program of an associated microcontroller with a control program received in a broadcast signal. The downloading apparatus examines the control program prior to initializing t... | 08/04/2009 |
| 7565678 | Methods and devices for discouraging unauthorized modifications to set top boxes and to gateways Methods and devices are disclosed for discouraging unauthorized modifications to set top boxes and gateways. Resource information is received that describing the number of disk drives and/or the capacity of each disk drive. A processor communicates with a database t... | 07/21/2009 |
| 7536708 | System and method for context-based searching and control of an integrated communications center A context-based search system (3800) for control of a digital personal media stream manager (102), for example, to control the programming of a video recording device (114). Such a system may be maintained by a service provider and can identify ... | 05/19/2009 |
| 7436811 | Multicasting data method in a radio communication system The present invention provides a method for receiving broadcast data in a system where broadcast data is transmitted on a plurality of frequencies. A user device monitors (302) a first frequency (108) for broadcast data to be transmitted on the first f... | 10/14/2008 |
| 7430753 | Method to enable cooperative processing and resource sharing between set-top boxes, personal computers, and local devices A system and method enables a set-top box to share the processing, communications, and storage resources of another local device, such as a personal computer, other set-top box, or an electronic appliance. The set-top box is interconnected with the other local devic... | 09/30/2008 |
| 7406706 | Method and system for devices efficiently sharing information regarding the content of a digital television bit-stream A method and system for efficiently allowing a controller device to receive information from a tuner device regarding the content of a digital television bit-stream. The present invention first receives a digital television bit-stream at a tuner device. The digital ... | 07/29/2008 |
| 7386871 | Program guide system with real-time data sources A program guide system is provided in which an interactive television program guide that is implemented at least partially on user television equipment receives program listings data and real-time data such as sports scores, news data, and the like. The real-time da... | 06/10/2008 |
| 7376751 | Automatic identification of a set-top box user to a network Methods, apparatus, and computer-readable media are disclosed for enabling a user of data services over a network to automatically register for such services by plugging in a set-top box, such as an advanced set-top box, or other IP clients such as a Web pad, and en... | 05/20/2008 |
| 7373589 | Keyword creation method and its apparatus A keyword creation method and its apparatus to simply create keywords in user's retrieving a desired item of information from a vast amount of information. The habitual situation characteristics and the degree of typical liking tendency of a user are calculated on t... | 05/13/2008 |
| 7373652 | Server-centric search function in an interactive program guide Techniques for searching a program guide database. In accordance with a method, one or more search criteria (e.g., keywords) are received and a request for a search is then sent, along with the search criteria, to a head end of an information distribution system. In... | 05/13/2008 |
| 7373656 | Automatic configuration for portable devices The present invention relates to a portable device configured to interact with any number of host computing devices. In operation, the portable device will initially appear to a host computing device as a known device type. The host computing device will be configur... | 05/13/2008 |
| 7367043 | System and method for generating metadata for programming events Metadata for a programming event may be generated by receiving descriptive information and timing information for the programming event and analyzing this information to determine category goodness of fit scores for the programming event corresponding to categories ... | 04/29/2008 |
| 7363047 | Apparatus and method for establishing feedback in a broadcast or multicast service A method and apparatus for establishing feedback channels in an MBMS (multimedia broadcast/multicast service) for UMTS (Universal Mobile Telecommunication System) by selectively establishing RRC connections with terminals that are capable of transmitting uplink feed... | 04/22/2008 |
| 7363645 | Interactive electronic program guide for use with television delivery system An interactive electronic program guide is disclosed for use with a television delivery system. The guide is generated by a set top terminal that receives a television signal from an operations center and extracts from the signal individual programs for display on a... | 04/22/2008 |
| 7363384 | Selection of content in response to communication environment A content transfer service manager node of a computer network manages the transfer of content over the network from a content provider node to a user node. The characteristics of the configuration of the user node are determined, including the user nodes capabilitie... | 04/22/2008 |
| 7356034 | Terminal device, method for processing communication data inside the terminal device, and program for implementing the method A terminal device, includes: a device driver section for controlling an interface section that is connected to a network; a protocol stack section that is connected to the network via the device driver section based on a communication protocol at higher than or equa... | 04/08/2008 |
| 7350157 | Filtering by broadcast or recording quality within an electronic program guide A memory associates a media quality indicator with each media program in a set of media programs. A filter selects from the set those media programs having at least a specified media quality. A display interface displays a list of the selected media programs in an e... | 03/25/2008 |
| 7349976 | Audio-on-demand communication system An audio-on-demand communication system provides real-time playback of audio data transferred via telephone lines or other communication links. One or more audio servers include memory banks which store compressed audio data. At the request of a user at a subscriber... | 03/25/2008 |
| 7349030 | Segment buffer loading in a deinterlacer A display processor integrated circuit includes a display processor portion and an on-chip programmable logic portion. The programmable logic portion can be configured to implement custom video and/or image enhancement functions. The display processor portion perfor... | 03/25/2008 |
| 7337456 | Advertisement method, advertisement apparatus, advertisement receiver and recording medium An advertisement method considers the circumstances of individual users. This invention comprises a received advertisement database which stores advertisement data; a time obtaining section which obtains the present time; a preference obtaining section which obtains... | 02/26/2008 |
| 7313792 | Method and system for servicing software A system and method for improved software servicing by installation of an updated version is provided. Using branch versioning techniques that support multi-branch development and release versioning techniques that support multi-version development, an update packag... | 12/25/2007 |
| 7305475 | System and method for enabling a client application to operate offline from a server One disadvantage of the client/server computing model is the client's strong dependence on the server. A system and method are disclosed for enabling a client application to operate offline from the server. For each request, the client application registers a reques... | 12/04/2007 |
| 7305699 | Method and apparatus for generating carousels An apparatus for generating one or more carousels. A carousel includes a plurality of modules, at least one of which exhibits multiple instances, that are arranged in a module schedule. The apparatus may create, through multiple iterations, two or more module schedu... | 12/04/2007 |
| 7296055 | Information providing system, information providing apparatus, information providing method, information processing apparatus, information processing method, and program Disclosed is an information providing system in which the information providing apparatus first receives a connection request from the first information processing apparatus. Upon receipt of the connection request, a check is made to see whether the information prov... | 11/13/2007 |
| 7293279 | Advanced set top terminal having a program pause feature with voice-to-text conversion A system for automatically pausing a video program in response to detection of the occurrence of a audio communications event or triggering event. In response to an incoming phone call, message, web page, or other communications information, the system pauses the vi... | 11/06/2007 |
| 7281261 | Remotely accessing and programming a set top box Systems and methods for remotely programming a set top box and for remotely scheduling an event on a set top box. A set top box includes a server that allows an access device to access the set top box over an always on connection between the set top box and a networ... | 10/09/2007 |
| 7278165 | Method and system for implementing digital rights management In one embodiment, a content license is created that defines parameters for accessing a piece of digital content. A first logical expression in the content license defines a plurality of playback devices that are authorized to access the piece of digital content. A ... | 10/02/2007 |
| 7269842 | Time shifting enhanced television triggers Enhanced television broadcasts including triggers with expires attributes may be utilized in a variety of situations where the expires attribute may adversely affect the utilization of the trigger. For example, in situations where the broadcast is recorded, playback... | 09/11/2007 |
| 7266516 | System and method for creating a customized electronic catalog A system and method for creating a customized product catalog. The customized catalog is created in response to a request to search an electronic catalog that has data representative of a plurality of products each having one or more attributes. The search request i... | 09/04/2007 |
| 7260829 | Terminal with multiple audio and video A novel advanced set top terminal capable of digital decompression, displaying picture-on-picture, outputting multiple video channels, outputting multiple audio signals, outputting multiple audio channels corresponding to a single video channel, and other advanced f... | 08/21/2007 |
| 7249366 | Control of a system for processing a stream of information based on information content A segment announcing system is disclosed that contains one or more segment announcement receivers that receive one or more announcements over a network connection and/or other communication connection. The announcements contain content information about the content ... | 07/24/2007 |
| 7243084 | Information processing method and apparatus for billing An information processing apparatus for receiving data, such as content data. During the time the content data is being downloaded by a terminal over a communication network, the volume of downloaded data being displayed is made smaller than the actual volume of the... | 07/10/2007 |
| 7240113 | Networked conditional access module A networked Conditional Access Module provided on an IEEE 1394 network, by defining a Conditional Access Module as a Conditional Access Subunit of the IEEE 1394 network, providing AV/C Conditional Access Commands to allow communication between the Conditional Access... | 07/03/2007 |
| 7234155 | Automating commerce on a broadcast programming distribution network A broadcast programming network device includes a tuner capable of being tuned to any one of multiple broadcast video programming reception channels. When tuned to a particular channel, the broadcast video programming scheduled for that channel and icon related data... | 06/19/2007 |
| 7234035 | System and method for maintaining applications with their current versions A system and method for a communication terminal to manage memory and maintain a current application version for multiple applications are provided. The system and method provide for managing memory in a communication terminal coupled to a server device enabling the... | 06/19/2007 |
| 7231651 | System and method for insertion and modification of advertisements Advertisements or commercials are integrated into an entertainment program or display by designating locations or fields in the entertainment program or display into which targeted advertisements or commercials may in inserted and/or modified, so that the advertisem... | 06/12/2007 |